Mofo1995

A few weeks back I was at my store working when a customer told me he was tired. He told me that he was "the kind of tired that sleep doesn't fix." I told him I was too, and we went back and forth griping about our daily lives. At a certain point in the conversation, I leaned forward on my counter. Catching his attention, I said, "You know what I'll never get tired of though?"
"What?" He asked, genuinely interested. 
"I'll never get tired of the great great deals here at [company name]." We both laughed, and by all audible appearances it was genuine laughter the likes of which people usually give bemusing and corny jokes. But I felt something shift, something changed. We both laughed but we were both worse off for the joke. Emotional trust and genuine expression of emotion was cheaply sold for a grimy advert. As if a lover stopped you in the middle of the night to advertise Cheeri-o's, as if a friend on their deathbed used their last words to shill for Ritz crackers. In a way, I felt like I sold my soul.