Ok but why do you care what some store clerk fucking thinks about you?!? I mean it's not like you are going to walk into that store and he's going to point at you, laugh, and loudly say "Hey look everybody! It's the asshole who called to see if we were open!"
Plus he's getting minimum wage to answer questions from assholes who call in anyway. It's his job!
Not picking on you here, because you're right as rain in the cold light of day, but... if it was only that easy. I don't know if "change" is the right word, because I don't feel like I have changed, but when I was in college, I was so self-conscious about people that if my class started and I wasn't in the room, I would turn around and go back to the dorm rather than walk in. When I did my senior thesis presentation, in front of the entire engineering school, I blacked out a little, in the sense that I don't remember ANY of it. I did it, we did a good job (presenting a parking lot design on campus - that ultimately got built, by the way!) but I don't remember even a second of it. I must've heard Gene Simmons say 1,000 times something to the effect of, "just go up and talk to them (women). The worst they can do is say "no", and you move on to the next one. You only need one "yes"." Now, I'm still self-conscious about certain things, but I have no problem initiating conversations. And one of those things that I'm self-conscious about is that notion of "what are they thinking?"
It's hard for me, because I don't want to be oblivious. There's something I value about being self-aware, and while I certainly think I'm the cat's meow (kidding, sort of) I also think we're all flawed, myself included. I want to be as realistic as I can, and sometimes that means being overly critical about things that don't really matter in the long run. Leaving a wake of "holy FUCK is that guy an idiot" is one of those things.
Odd tangent, but I watched a four-hour bio on Garth Brooks the other night. And there's a lot to make fun of about him. He's not shy, and he's clearly insecure in the way that many celebrities are, and yet there's... well, there's a whiff of insincerity about him. He got choked up like 2,000 times in the doc, and I'm like "you're Garth friggin' Brooks. Gimme a break." But I realized about 3 and a half hours in, that that's who he is. He's an emotional raw nerve, and it feeds everything he does. He has this need to be loved and liked and admired (some of his record sales records are... gamed, for lack of a better word), and while it's easy for me to be judgemental from a distance, there's not ONE PERSON that was interviewed - including ex-wives, his kids, ex-bandmates, people who should have or could have had a grudge - who took a shot at him. They were honest - the ex was up front about what he did or didn't do as a husband or a dad - but every one of them at one point or another said the same thing: he cares, maybe too much, and it's what makes him "Garth Brooks
TM". I'm not Garth Brooks, and yet, I think there's something to that idea of wanting to be better at every opportunity.