Beyond Vanitas
I recently had an incident where I tried to return sausages to the store. It was a prepackaged and pre-cooked set of four so I thought returning the meat the next day was not a big deal. I did a few errands, then arrived at my local grocery store ready to exchange my highly fattening pork sausage with (what I perceive to be) healthy chicken sausage.
I was directed to a female manager. She slowly reached for my receipt and goods. Scowling she inquired “Is there anything wrong with this?” I said, “No, I just bought the wrong kind.” She stares at the receipt and the date, mouth down-turned and eyes slanted with suspicion, nose wrinkled with disgust. (Not the face of good customer service in other words). She calls for another manager. The more in charge, decision-making manager takes hold of my sausage package. He fingers it and manhandles my yesterday purchased pack of four pork sausages. What seems to hours pass. Finally, “These are warm!” he declares. I, now feeling protective of my mistakenly bought precooked meat, say “ well that is because you are grabbing at them causing friction!” “No,” shaking his head, “we cannot accept these back. They are warm. They have not been refrigerated!” I argue for a moment that the sensation of temperature varies and about the rate of travel to the store from my apartment. Irritated I snatch back my 4 meat tubes from the manager’s meat hooks. “FINE!” I spun on my toes and took off out the door in what could be connoted as a huff. The two managers loathed me as I them, of this I am sure.
Why could they have not said in a friendly manner, “Oh it is our store policy that you cannot return any meat products unless they are teeming with maggots. So sorry dear and loyal customer!” If that were the case I would have laughed at my ridiculous request while confessing, “Oh yes that makes great sense! I will not feel shame and hide from you the next time I am buying my groceries that I seem to buy almost daily here. Thank you kind grocers!”
In the end, I went home and later cooked those four sausages up in a pasta dish. I wanted to hate them. But, I didn’t.
What I did do is become obsessed with the shape and color and the grotesque form of sausages and began painting them.
