The Twisters & The Knotters
So, you're in this kind of upscale
grocery store,
where they actually trust you
to package and price your own produce.
It works like this:
Very rustically organized loose fruits
and veg, in a wood highlighted,
low lighted
space.
You take as much
as you want;
they provide the plastic bags
and the twistees.
You collect your food, put it in
the bag, take note of the code,
enter said code into the
scale, weigh and price
the product.
OK?
Easy enough.
A child could do it,
and many children have done it,
taken to the upscale grocery by his mom,
the kid gets a kick
out of weighing and pricing
the food. Alec Baldwin,
for instance,
may have done this as a child,
for the sole purpose
of making his mother happy.
And it was this very evening,
as I was trying to open some spinach
purchased earlier at the upscale grocers,
struggling
with a poorly tied knotted bag,
that I thought that oft thought thought:
There are two kinds of people in the world:
The Twisters
and
The Knotters.
Now, I'm sure you're just
dying to know what
this all means:
Well, it's simple, and
it manifests itself at the moment
of trying to open the bag.
I confess, I am a knotter.
By that, I mean:
when at the upscale grocery store, putting
my spinach into
its plastic bag,
I realize:
there are no twistees to be seen.
I scan
the produce horizon,
and all
I see
are empty twistee containers.
So, what do I do?
I knot it.
I'm sure that if I looked,
just a little further,
or planned my bag closure for later in the department,
I would most definitely find twistees.
Somewhere.
Most definitely.
But do I wait?
No.
I knot it,
then weigh it,
then price it,
then get on my way.
Now the Twister people are the ones
who do all the things I just told you I don't do,
or better yet,
they find an employee and say:
"you're out of twistees."
Thus, the employee replenishes the twistees,
often faster, depending upon
how many Twisters have pointed out
the deficit.
Now, at the moment of trying
to open the package at home,
the difference between Twisters and Knotters
becomes even more apparent,
because the Knotters realize
fairly quickly
for the umpteenth time,
that they just wasted a perfectly good bag.
Faced with the encased spinach,
the Knotter rips,
and knows they cannot reuse
that bag if any of the product remains,
therefore, they need another storage item
for the remainder
of the spinach.
This is why Knotters have quite a selection
of fancy zip lock bags or other
assorted storage devices. Either that, or they
keep using the same tattered bag, and then
end up throwing it all out - spinach and bag.
Twisters, on the other hand,
have quite a nice collection of twistees at home,
so they can reuse that bag, easily.
Furthermore, since they have such terrific foresight,
Twisters generally finish all of
whatever
they have in their fridge,
because they remember twisting the twistee
on that planned portion of food.
Knotters, on the other hand,
often forget what's in the fridge, and it
rots and leaks
all over.
In general, then, Twisters are more frugal and efficient,
and Knotters just
kind of don't give a damn.
Knotters, in fact, get frustrated over the whole thing,
especially since they generally don't have time
to clean their fridge,
so they do
one of two things:
a.) they start shopping at the local big box
flourescent lit store, because it's easier
and results in a multitude of small packages in
the fridge they can't ignore
or
b.) they buy a new fridge
or
c.) both a & b
Twisters, on the other hand, make their fridges last
forever, and always know
what's in them.
Now, before you go forming your conclusions,
about Twisters and Knotters; let me
add another dimension to the
analysis:
after these shoppers
Twist or Knot,
they all place their own personally packaged
produce
on a scale, and enter
a code,
the appropriate code
for that item.
Now, no one's watching --
hell,
there are no twistees here!
Where's the person
who's supposed to make sure
there are twistees?
(Where ever they are,
I'm sure twistees are the last things
on their list of tasks to do.)
So, anyway, unmanned,
unsurveilled, who is to keep
a shopper from marking spinach
with a cheaper price,
or tossing an exotic fruit in
with a few fuji apples?
Yes, this is where the division
between Twisters & Knotters
gets blurred,
because the most diligent Twister might also be
the one who knows what she
can mix in with the romaine, and get
cheaper.
And the Twister may also be
the person who knows the check-out
people (oh, the poor check-out people, who
are burdened with the task of making sure
the shopper has grapes in a bag priced for grapes).
So, this particular Twister knows exactly which
check out person is tired and not looking at what
they're doing, so that frugal Twister
is also getting a double, maybe triple bargain.
If they're really meticulous,
they have coupons, and they might end up
getting paid for their trip
to the upscale grocery store.
Meanwhile there's a Knotter struggling to find
her glasses in her purse, so she can see
the correct code. She may get it wrong
the first time,
and goes back and gets it
again, until it's right.
These pathetic people generally waste a lot of money
and time. But
they're kind of funny to talk to.
So the Knotters of the world, as a consituency,
are really not deserving of
reproach.
This is not to say, too,
that all Twisters are
schysters; indeed,
some of my best,
kindest
friends
twist and they also always
get the right code.
In fact, on my better days,
I do that, too.
And there are Knotters who wrongly code, and degrees of coding and closure in between.
So what does this all mean,
in the larger scheme of things?
Does it mean that there are not two different kinds of
people in the world,
but rather a vast multitude of individuals.
Or it may also meant there is
really only one kind
of person:
the Sometime Twister & Sometime Knotter
who wishes they could be
consistent?
Either of the above could be true,
as could this, which I read
on a fortune cookie
the other day:
There are two kinds of people in the world:
those who think
there are two kinds of people in the world,
and those
who do not.
