Let it be known to all that I do like my job. I like my job very much, in fact, so it does not bother me at all to find myself on register duty on a Saturday - not in the latter of our two buildings, however, but the former.
The first store where I cannot listen to my own music (however "old folk friendly" it has to be) but must listen to B93.3 (and while, yes, they do play U2 and Queen and... they also won't shut up about Michael Jackson - and while, yes, it might or might not be a shame that he's gone, he also molested little children (got away with it because of his name) and did I-don't-want-to-know-what with/to his "biological" children, and there are other important people who have died or are dying that deserve a tiny, passive mention). The first store where there really isn't a whole lot to do other than organize the jewelry wall, an impossible feat and yet I try so hard and surely that is the definition of madness. The first store, with its counter too short and the popcorn machine which works in fits and spurts. The first store, where customers neither shut off the light to the bathroom nor wash their hands (because there's very little toweling in the trash can for the amount of people who go in and out of that restroom).
At least I don't have to deal with certain coworkers complaining about certain other coworkers, right?
Or the young teenager who does nothing to hide the long stares he gives me from his spot on the floor by the videos (whose fancy is adorable, but I really don't want to have to procure a Rita Hayworth poster and a rock hammer)? That polite white boy with the syntax of 50 Cent, who for once was not bound to his "Pops" and the confines of the second building and its video tapes? Yeah. He stopped by with two of his friends (and how I would love a rich, silken complexion such as theirs). All three of them were dressed nicely, as if they were on their way to work at a country club golf course. Whatever they were dressed for, Blondie was wearing too strong an aftershave.
Most assuredly, in this first building I don't have to deal with the exceedingly creepy and off-centre gentlemen who buys things he doesn't take home (there are still things of his sitting out on the lawn more than a month after he bought them), the exceedingly creepy and off-centre gentlemen who repeatedly mispronounces my name and once asked me out for ice cream - and here I quote - "Boy, you look interesting! I'd love to escort you down to - " [a place I've never heard of] " - for ice cream." The man is a least sixty-five. I thought he was joking. He was not.
Back to my original train of thought:
It doesn't really matter where I am because the difficult people always find me. They hunt me down like a wounded gazelle. They fly to me like moths to a flame. No. They orbit around me in wondrous arcs like planets to the Sun.
These difficult people come barging into the store before we are open, as if they own the place or are royalty or are so hated by the rest of humanity that they must pull stunts like these in order to save themselves from a lynching (in which case, why don't they order things on-line? It works well for those afraid of the "market", those few who would not show up for the highly anticipated lynching of these hated eager beavers even if they were promised money, and a lot of it).
These difficult people complain about the prices of everything. No matter how cheap something is and therefor how utterly stupid they'll sound they will always try to talk the price down, apparently thinking that they're at a tag sale and not a place of business. Seriously, do they do this at Kohl's?
These difficult people will stand in the line and sigh dramatically if things aren't moving quickly enough - then they'll come back later on with their carts loaded to heaping, demanding that each item be placed in a certain bag because they obviously don't have the time or patience to do all of that themselves when they get home.
These difficult people saunter into the store five minutes to closing - "Oh, I'll be quick!" - and take their sweet, sweet time. Even when we shut the lights off, even when we make a few hundred closing announcements, even when we explain to them that we really need to be closing down and, yes, we do mind if they use the dressing room - even when... they shop. The difficult difficult people don't buy a thing; they're waiting around until we all leave so that they can break into the building and take what they want (and thankfully Mullet Man doesn't stop by anymore, not since we installed that fiendishly simple latch on his beloved breached door).
Most customers are good people, though. They have their moments, but they're good.
These aforementioned moments typically involve my tattoos - because, obviously, I am a walking art exhibit. My tattoos are, of course, not my own but the world's. Please, by all means, gawk and comment. Please, poke and prod and ask questions about what they mean - as if they are meant for you, as if they hold significance for you. What am I but the canvas they are painted on?
A lot of people nicely ask what my left arm says, or what the banner on my right arm reads, or what's going on with my right upper arm. Mainly it's the text on my left arm. Usually always it's the text on my left arm, and when I read the tattoo aloud to these curious people they look at me as if I've just sprouted a second head. They don't get it.
A few people will yell, "Stop moving! I'm trying to read your arm!" (in a nasty tone of voice, as if I've affronted them somehow by, I don't know, doing my job and ringing up their items). These people don't so much look at me as a sideshow freak with two heads, but merely blink.
I can hear the cogs turning in their heads. I can see their thought, each individual word shooting up into the air like blooming fireworks. They do not think, "I just accosted you for this thing which I do not understand? I'm so sorry!" but instead, "I just took an extra minute out of my life for that? What the hell is all that supposed to mean, huh? I don't read. I wouldn't know that this came from a poem even if Robinson Jeffers himself crawled out of the grave and bit me in the ass."
Of course, they only smile and tell me "How nice."
Fewer people still simply grab me.
I'll be handing them back their change and one beefy hand will come flying toward me as they grab my wrist. With quite a bit of force they'll do this, grab me and pull me forward so that they can read my arm whilst also taking my blood pressure (for they haven't at all relaxed their grip).
It never fails that the grabbers will then sneer and say something along the lines of, "That stuff don't wash off, honey."
Here I reply by feigning shock. "Well, at least the coroner will have something to look at," I say because I cannot spit. I cannot maim or yell or beat. I cannot say "Suck dirt and die", though I want to so badly.
At least no one peed in the dressing room - again.
I mean that seriously, and if you are sensitive to this breed of things here is where you might want to stop reading.
Once upon a time, the restroom in the front building was not in working order. Not having the strength of bladder to walk the short way to the next available bathroom, a customer grabbed a small wooden barrel from our eternal Christmas display and somehow sneaked into an open dressing room with this small wooden barrel. In this unlocked dressing room, the customer urinated into the barrel.
How this individual was able to do this, pee into a wooden barrel in a small dressing room with walls that do not extend all the way to the ceiling -
(note how the ceiling does not meet the door frame)
- how this could be done without being heard is beyond my comprehension. How this individual could then simply leave that used barrel under the stool of that first dressing room is also beyond my grasp.
Worse yet, the urine must have been sitting in the dressing room for quite some time - at least long enough for it to acquire scent, long enough for that scent to grow into a foul stench strong as a pair of hands around the throat.
All I know is, I was the only one to notice that something dastardly was afoot. At 3.00. An hour before the store closed, six hours into the working day, and I'm the one (called up from the other building to help close) who has to stick her head into the first dressing room and all but vomit from the odor.
How can you be working up there all day and not notice the repugnant, viciously atrocious, disgusting odor of piss in a small wooden barrel? How can you be a customer and not say something? How can you be a customer in that dressing room and not faint?
How can you pee in a dressing room in the fist place? What kind of person does that? I mean, if you have a medical condition we can deal with that - you can use the employee bathroom - but to do that? Have you no soul?
The first store where I cannot listen to my own music (however "old folk friendly" it has to be) but must listen to B93.3 (and while, yes, they do play U2 and Queen and... they also won't shut up about Michael Jackson - and while, yes, it might or might not be a shame that he's gone, he also molested little children (got away with it because of his name) and did I-don't-want-to-know-what with/to his "biological" children, and there are other important people who have died or are dying that deserve a tiny, passive mention). The first store where there really isn't a whole lot to do other than organize the jewelry wall, an impossible feat and yet I try so hard and surely that is the definition of madness. The first store, with its counter too short and the popcorn machine which works in fits and spurts. The first store, where customers neither shut off the light to the bathroom nor wash their hands (because there's very little toweling in the trash can for the amount of people who go in and out of that restroom).
At least I don't have to deal with certain coworkers complaining about certain other coworkers, right?
Or the young teenager who does nothing to hide the long stares he gives me from his spot on the floor by the videos (whose fancy is adorable, but I really don't want to have to procure a Rita Hayworth poster and a rock hammer)? That polite white boy with the syntax of 50 Cent, who for once was not bound to his "Pops" and the confines of the second building and its video tapes? Yeah. He stopped by with two of his friends (and how I would love a rich, silken complexion such as theirs). All three of them were dressed nicely, as if they were on their way to work at a country club golf course. Whatever they were dressed for, Blondie was wearing too strong an aftershave.
Most assuredly, in this first building I don't have to deal with the exceedingly creepy and off-centre gentlemen who buys things he doesn't take home (there are still things of his sitting out on the lawn more than a month after he bought them), the exceedingly creepy and off-centre gentlemen who repeatedly mispronounces my name and once asked me out for ice cream - and here I quote - "Boy, you look interesting! I'd love to escort you down to - " [a place I've never heard of] " - for ice cream." The man is a least sixty-five. I thought he was joking. He was not.
Back to my original train of thought:
It doesn't really matter where I am because the difficult people always find me. They hunt me down like a wounded gazelle. They fly to me like moths to a flame. No. They orbit around me in wondrous arcs like planets to the Sun.
These difficult people come barging into the store before we are open, as if they own the place or are royalty or are so hated by the rest of humanity that they must pull stunts like these in order to save themselves from a lynching (in which case, why don't they order things on-line? It works well for those afraid of the "market", those few who would not show up for the highly anticipated lynching of these hated eager beavers even if they were promised money, and a lot of it).
These difficult people complain about the prices of everything. No matter how cheap something is and therefor how utterly stupid they'll sound they will always try to talk the price down, apparently thinking that they're at a tag sale and not a place of business. Seriously, do they do this at Kohl's?
These difficult people will stand in the line and sigh dramatically if things aren't moving quickly enough - then they'll come back later on with their carts loaded to heaping, demanding that each item be placed in a certain bag because they obviously don't have the time or patience to do all of that themselves when they get home.
These difficult people saunter into the store five minutes to closing - "Oh, I'll be quick!" - and take their sweet, sweet time. Even when we shut the lights off, even when we make a few hundred closing announcements, even when we explain to them that we really need to be closing down and, yes, we do mind if they use the dressing room - even when... they shop. The difficult difficult people don't buy a thing; they're waiting around until we all leave so that they can break into the building and take what they want (and thankfully Mullet Man doesn't stop by anymore, not since we installed that fiendishly simple latch on his beloved breached door).
Most customers are good people, though. They have their moments, but they're good.
These aforementioned moments typically involve my tattoos - because, obviously, I am a walking art exhibit. My tattoos are, of course, not my own but the world's. Please, by all means, gawk and comment. Please, poke and prod and ask questions about what they mean - as if they are meant for you, as if they hold significance for you. What am I but the canvas they are painted on?
A lot of people nicely ask what my left arm says, or what the banner on my right arm reads, or what's going on with my right upper arm. Mainly it's the text on my left arm. Usually always it's the text on my left arm, and when I read the tattoo aloud to these curious people they look at me as if I've just sprouted a second head. They don't get it.
A few people will yell, "Stop moving! I'm trying to read your arm!" (in a nasty tone of voice, as if I've affronted them somehow by, I don't know, doing my job and ringing up their items). These people don't so much look at me as a sideshow freak with two heads, but merely blink.
I can hear the cogs turning in their heads. I can see their thought, each individual word shooting up into the air like blooming fireworks. They do not think, "I just accosted you for this thing which I do not understand? I'm so sorry!" but instead, "I just took an extra minute out of my life for that? What the hell is all that supposed to mean, huh? I don't read. I wouldn't know that this came from a poem even if Robinson Jeffers himself crawled out of the grave and bit me in the ass."
Of course, they only smile and tell me "How nice."
Fewer people still simply grab me.
I'll be handing them back their change and one beefy hand will come flying toward me as they grab my wrist. With quite a bit of force they'll do this, grab me and pull me forward so that they can read my arm whilst also taking my blood pressure (for they haven't at all relaxed their grip).
It never fails that the grabbers will then sneer and say something along the lines of, "That stuff don't wash off, honey."
Here I reply by feigning shock. "Well, at least the coroner will have something to look at," I say because I cannot spit. I cannot maim or yell or beat. I cannot say "Suck dirt and die", though I want to so badly.
At least no one peed in the dressing room - again.
I mean that seriously, and if you are sensitive to this breed of things here is where you might want to stop reading.
Once upon a time, the restroom in the front building was not in working order. Not having the strength of bladder to walk the short way to the next available bathroom, a customer grabbed a small wooden barrel from our eternal Christmas display and somehow sneaked into an open dressing room with this small wooden barrel. In this unlocked dressing room, the customer urinated into the barrel.
How this individual was able to do this, pee into a wooden barrel in a small dressing room with walls that do not extend all the way to the ceiling -
(note how the ceiling does not meet the door frame)- how this could be done without being heard is beyond my comprehension. How this individual could then simply leave that used barrel under the stool of that first dressing room is also beyond my grasp.
Worse yet, the urine must have been sitting in the dressing room for quite some time - at least long enough for it to acquire scent, long enough for that scent to grow into a foul stench strong as a pair of hands around the throat.
All I know is, I was the only one to notice that something dastardly was afoot. At 3.00. An hour before the store closed, six hours into the working day, and I'm the one (called up from the other building to help close) who has to stick her head into the first dressing room and all but vomit from the odor.
How can you be working up there all day and not notice the repugnant, viciously atrocious, disgusting odor of piss in a small wooden barrel? How can you be a customer and not say something? How can you be a customer in that dressing room and not faint?
How can you pee in a dressing room in the fist place? What kind of person does that? I mean, if you have a medical condition we can deal with that - you can use the employee bathroom - but to do that? Have you no soul?
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