Although you have spoken to each other hundreds of times, she acted as if you were a first-timer and not the loyalest of customers, which you most certainly are.

Despite a relationship that goes back many years, during the summer a cashier at your neighborhood petrol station has apparently forgotten that you existed.
 
The awful truth was discovered on Sunday, the day after you returned from a month-long visit to your home country followed by a stay in the hospital after spraining your ankle while chasing a taxi in which you had left a half-full pack of Mentos. 
 
After filling your car and wondering about your contribution to climate change, you went inside and saw the cashier to whom you had grown so close that she once let you have a free car wash even though your car-wash punch card needed another punch.
 
“Bonjour,” you said in a way that sounded like a cross between an old bird chirping and a C note being played on a rusty trumpet that had been passed around an entire room of drunken trumpet players at 2 a.m. and never cleaned.
 
“Bonjour,” she replied flatly as though you were a first-time customer.
 
You waited for the inevitable “how was your summer?” or “you got some sun.” Neither came. She then asked if you had filled your car with petrol. Your heart sinking, you replied in the affirmative.
 
Wait! You had got so suntanned, you told yourself triumphantly, that she obviously did not recognize you. You recited your pump number very slowly so she would focus on your voice, causing memories of you to repopulate her mind like hundreds of baby snails in the garden after a spring shower.
 
It didn’t work. No hint of recognition. 
 
You wondered: how many times had you spoken to her and had profound if not brief conversations? How many times had one of you commented on the weather, the roadworks, or the fact it was Monday or Friday or almost Friday? Hundreds, if not more. Had those exchanges held no value?
 
And yet there she was acting as though you were a stranger, not the loyalest of customers, which you are. Unless you are on the other side of the city, you only ever fill up your car at this petrol station. You’ve got the fidelity card to prove it. And the points on your card. And the free gifts.
 
The large stuffed animal with the very logo of that very petrol station! It cost you 200 points! How could she have forgotten? She suggested that you give it to your spouse – if you wanted a separation, you added! You both laughed so hard that you nearly cried. 
 
What had happened to that bond? That love? Had it all been an act? Automatic responses to your own vapid and nearly immutable words: hello, pump three, not today thanks, by card, goodbye? If the petrol station employees we see two to three times per week don’t notice our absence, who will? Are they nothing more than automatons? 
 
‘Tis a cold, dark world, you concluded, as you thanked the cashier and said goodbye in the same voice and tone as always, leading her to believe that it is you, in fact, who is the robot.

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