The Not Very Quiet American

I was at my local electrical shop today, mulling over and discussing a potential purchase. Bizarrely, this shop is called Paris Silk. I call it Paris Hilton.

I was talking to the chap behind the counter about electrical goods when there was a bit of a commotion to my left. A bearded chap with an American accent was shouting into his mobile phone. We were all slightly distracted by this. I was trying to listen to what the shop assistant was telling me, but was actually more interested in what the American chap was saying. I could tell that the shop assistant felt the same way, as he kept breaking off in mid-sentence and flicking his eyes to the right.

The American was clearly angry about something and wanted everyone in the shop to know it. My conversation with the shop assistant came to an end, so I was able to devote my full attention to the American. "You've offended him!" he barked into his phone. "I can't believe that you've done that! You've upset him!"

This went on for some time, but it also developed embarrassingly. You know how some films have very cringeworthy expositions in the first 10 minutes? Where someone in a bit of dialogue says something very unrealistic because it provides a piece of important information about a character or something? Wish I could think of an example...

Anyway, it felt like that was what he was doing. He was trying to tell everyone in the shop, for some unknown reason, how in touch with local culture he was. He carried on shouting into his phone thus:

"Do you mean to say that you did that to our customer? You ripped up his business card in front of him? That Chinese customer of ours? Did you know that will have offended him? You've probably lost us his business! If you rip up the name of a Chinese person in front of them it offends them!"

He was turning this way and that to ensure that his voice carried to all parts of the shop while he continued to labour his point.

"Don't phone him, don't contact him, don't do anything. I'll come down there myself and sort it out. If you ever do anything like this again I'll fire you on the spot. Idiot!"

And then, possibly in response to the victim of his tirade:

"I'll calm down later!"

Then he hung up and told the person next to him, whose conversation he'd interrupted with his grotesque display of "look at me, I know my local culture", that one of his staff had offended someone Chinese by ripping their name up in front of them.

It got worse.

Ella and I left the shop to get a coffee while we were deciding whether to buy something electrical. Who should arrive but beardy American. He was carrying a laptop and a small rucksack, but he made a great show of struggling through a gap between two tables as if he was carrying two slabs of concrete. He sat down, opened his laptop and turned it on with a flourish and a little look round to see if anyone was watching him. We, of course, were, but averted our eyes when his observed us. He then did a magician's gesture as the laptop fired up, as if the magic of computer technology oozed from his fingertips.

We left 15 minutes later and he hadn't touched the thing. I think he was just making sure that everyone in the coffee shop knew that he had a laptop. And that he could turn it on.

Finally, we made our way back to Paris Hilton (the electrical shop) to tell them whether we were going to buy something. I walked up the steps at a fairly normal pace, then proceeded into the narrow aisle. Ella was a few metres behind me. I came to a wider bit in the aisle and suddenly, beardy American appeared to my right, then bounded extravagantly in front of me like some kind of triple jumper. Ella had been watching him walking behind me and she told me he'd been doing an impression of a train, as if to suggest I was walking too slowly and I was holding him up.

I didn't say or do anything, but I was seething. I did that muttering under the breath thing that Mutley does in The Wacky Races, actually, but that didn't seem enough. Hopefully I'll bump into him again and something will come to me.

Can anyone top this account of a display of attention seeking behaviour?