Your Attention, Please

A young lady enters the store one afternoon and selects a movie to rent. She had been in before, but always as a second fiddle to another of Fernando's customers, and this is her first time being the name on the slip. Unfortunately for Fernando, he has no idea what her name is. He retrieves the movie for her in the hopes that she'll finish the matter which demands all her attention by the time he returns.

Alas, she does not. “Could I get your name please?” he asks her as he returns to his place at the counter.

The young woman is, however, still engrossed in texting, perhaps with another of Fernando's patrons who had experienced some ineptitude when it came to social niceties. She does not look up from her important work and mumbles something which sounds vaguely like “Tannnnnyehlleh.”

Fernando presses his lips together. “I'm sorry, I didn't get that.”

She ignores him.

Okay then. Fernando fills out the slip for a Tascribblescribblescribble. It is not as though his penmanship would have rendered the proper name in any way more legible. She still has given Fernando no attention. “There is an additional service charge, you know.”

“Kay puttionere.” She still has not looked up nor paused in her texting, and doesn't seem to care that Fernando is making things up whole cloth.

“It's fifty dollars.”

“What?” She looks up, finally, but she does not seem upset by this grossly inflated number. She hadn't heard Fernando, but she does place a five dollar bill on the countertop.

“It's fifty dollars.”

Now she's confused. Still not outraged, like most people might be, but it's a step up from apathetic. “Why is it so much?”

“You ought to start paying attention to the words which other people say."

“Wait what? Hold on.” She returns to her texting.

Fernando takes the bill and puts it in the till. One reaps what one sows. “You're all set.” She ignores that too.

Fernando walks away and returns to his business in the office. At some later point during the day, when he happens to glance over his shoulder at the counter, the young lady had gathered enough of an attention span to collect her movie and walk out.