Fernando is finishing up the helping of a customer one Saturday when he asks a question he has asked of this customer countless times in the past: “Receipt or popcorn?” For it is Saturday, and this means customers are entitled to a complimentary bag of microwave popcorn if they so choose, and of course anyone can opt to possess the receipt at any time.
Instead of automatically responding “Popcorn” as he had numerous times in the past, the man says, “What? One or the other?”
“No. Not at all.” Then, after a brief pause during which the customer's face screws up in ultimate confusion, “My use of the word 'or' in that disjunction was of the inclusive, rather than exclusive, sort.”
“Huh?”
“Your taking of the popcorn does not preclude taking the receipt, if that is also what you desire.”
“Huh?”
Fernando feels as though he's making things worse because this education in grammatical logic is going nowhere. So he reaches to his popcorn bin and sets a bag atop the rented movies and says, “Forget it.”
“Oh. Okay. Thanks, man.” And the customer leaves.
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