Trip type: Business

Airline: Delta

Route: MSP-ATL

If you know better than to engage a commercial linoleum salesman in conversation, you might be smarter than [someone who’s the same height as] a fifth grader.

This morning’s trip started off smoothly, despite it putting me back at the airport only 15 hours after I’d stepped out of it (more on that to come). Then I met Kurt (maybe with a C but I feel like it’s a K). And it went a little something like this:

Kurt: Good morning.

Me: Good morning.

K: Business or pleasure?

Me: At 6am it better be business. You?

K: Business. On my way to Birmingham to sell a public storage company some linoleum.

(Intuition tells me to say something non-committal. Curiosity wins.)

Me: Linoleum?

K: Yeah, I sell commercial linoleum.

(Intuition and curiosity spar again. Guess who wins.)

Me: Interesting.

K: It really is! (Oh boy.)

Kurt then regales me with some finer points of linoleum installation which I will gloss over for sake of your sanity and mine (apparently it’s very different to install in different climates–who knew?!). Then he segues into telling me how he helped a friend install some linoleum this weekend.

Kurt: Menard’s is really in trouble though! They didn’t wrap the pallet correctly so the roll  bursted through my pickup’s window on the drive home!

Me: (couldn’t resist) Bursted?

K: Yeah, bursted right through!

(In Kurt’s defense, dictionary.com does list bursted as a past-tense option of burst but I think we can all agree that it sounds stupid.)

Luckily/unluckily, Kurt’s coworker showed up to occupy the seat next to him at this point in the conversation. Luckily, it took Kurt’s attention off of me. Unluckily, it meant I got to hear in even more detail how the linoleum roll bursted through his truck’s back window and how he’s going to litigate Menard’s if he has to.

Needless to say, I was more than a little stabby by the time we hit 10,000 feet and I could finally plug in some music.

[On an unrelated note, there were two amazing mullets on my flight as well. One was a kid which I guess I should forgive and one was a woman who must have been 40-ish. She literally looked like she’d been let out of a time capsule earlier today with her complete 80s look of tapered jeans, high tops and a mock turtleneck. Unless acid wash jeans are making a come back in which case I’m screwed.]