No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

I'm on my way to an appointment this morning and I'm stopped at any one of the million traffic lights that lead to our local outlet center. These traffic lights are close together, and are carefully and strategically timed, so that the resultant situation on the roadway resembles Los Angeles rush hour. On Labor Day. Only with more cars. Maybe less honking. The outlet center attracts shoppers from all over the world, literally. People come from Japan and stay in hotels in order to shop here. No fooling. You stroll around, and the announcements over the loud speaker are in at least five different languages. One of them is English. So, I'm sitting waiting for the light to change and it happens. The car next to me has their window rolled down and its occupants are looking at me plaintively. I have nothing better to do for the next 27 seconds or so of my life, so I slide my passenger window down, and being polite, ask "Can I help you?" A couple is in the car; the man apparently is in charge of both driving and speaking. "Where's the mall?" he shouts. "Up your ass" is the first thing that wants to come out of my mouth, since he is without any manners whatsoever.  As I am with manners, however, I say, "Do you mean the Outlet Center?" "Yes!" comes the reply. "Straight ahead," I say. He points over to the exit ramp to the right, which will take him on the thruway and far, far away from the Outlet Center. I consider this. "No," I tell him, "straight ahead." (He could throw a rock at it at he's so close.) I can only hope someone stole his wallet.