Dear Bank Clerk: That Wasn’t What I Asked

Dear bank clerk: I was not attempting to enter your daily trivia question. I do appreciate you handing me a roll of Smarties. However, that wasn’t what I asked for. Technically, I asked you: “Please tell me that the answer to ‘Where does Emperor Palpatine shop’ is not ‘the Darth Maul.'” This was not an attempt to answer. It was a desperate plea for you to tell me that the joke was not that bad.

You just handed me the roll of Smarties instead, the prize for a correct answer.

I understand that you are not responsible for the quality of the joke. I get this. I also appreciate that you just hand out Smarties for the correct answer, that you were just doing your job and perhaps thought I was being clever in how I phrased my answer.

I was not.

Couldn’t you have lied? If not, couldn’t you have just shrugged and said: “I wish I could?” Merely handing over the Smarties made you complicit in this terrible joke, ignoring how terrible it was and my protests against such. Perhaps there was nothing you could do, but what I really wanted was some admission that the joke was really bad.

We both know it was.