Pondering the Big Questions

OK, here's what I want to know. Why is it when you buy an ice cream cone the person behind the counter always -- and I mean invariably -- takes your order, goes off and makes the ice cream, hands the cone to you, and then proceeds to ring up your order, thus forcing you to dig awkwardly through your wallet while you grip your ice cream precariously in your other hand? Why don't they take your money before they make your cone? Or at least sit it in that little cone-holder device most ice cream places have (but which of course is always located out of reach of the customer) while they ring you up? Is it some petty act of vengeance on the part of ice cream vendors? "I may be stuck in this tedious minimum-wage job while you are out enjoying yourself with tasty dairy treats, but at least I can exercise this miniscule amount of power over you! Ha!" Or possibly a means of discriminating against single people? "If you're that much of a loser that you don't even have anyone to hold your ice cream for you, you really have no business eating it." Or what?

OK, there are probably ways to avoid doing the ice cream/wallet juggling act. Like, you could get out the exact change while the person's making the cone (assuming you're lucky enough to have exact change, of course), so that all you have to do is hand it to them when the time comes, or even leave it sitting on the counter, if you're feeling especially lazy or uncoordinated. But most places in the US, at least, you have to be something of a math whiz to pull that off. I mean, the sales tax in, say, Albuquerque, New Mexico is 5.8125%, for reasons which have never remotely been clear to me. By the time you've either done that in your head or put away your calculator, they're probably already handing you the ice cream.

When I am Emperor of the World, these things will be done properly. Also, I will impose heavy fines for public misuse of apostrophes, pulling into the driveway and honking to get someone to come out of a house instead of walking up and knocking on the door, and failure to turn off cell phones before entering a movie theater.