The other day at work I helped these women at the register. I was perfectly polite to them, while they completely ignored me, yapping to each other the whole time. As they were leaving, one said,

“Sure would be nice if you smiled sometimes.”

Sure would be nice if you’d bothered to acknowledge my presence, but you didn’t, did you? Also, you might have noticed I am nine months’ pregnant, huge, my feet swollen to twice their normal size, my back aching, my head hurting, my allergies going crazy, and I can’t take a damn thing for them except Tylenol which only works if you weigh 60 pounds or under. And I have gained 53 pounds so far, so I’m definitely not in that weight range.

So, you can imagine how I’d react to this bullshit:

Smile Monitor

This just sounds like a workplace shooting incident waiting to happen. If I had to pretend to have the perfect smile on every morning – and got criticized if I “looked too serious” – I would definitely go Joker after a while.

In Japan guns are banned, unless you’re a cop or a Yakuza, so it would be more like a workplace stabbing incident. Japanese people get all stabby when they get stressed enough.

Counterglow’s comment made me smile for real, though:

Darwin at work. The sociopaths who can flawlessly fake a “natural” smile will move to the top, while honest people who try to smile even when they’re having a shitty day will wind up being penalized.

Perfect. Exactly who I want to be working next to…some whack job who’s got a great smile because he’s happily contemplating all the ways to fit the next body into his freezer.