[Customer Service]

It’s a Sunday and I’m having a relatively bad day, all things considered. Sundays are always the worst for work, because A: We close early on Sundays so you’re working an open to close shift no matter what. B: Shoppers are needy and I fucking hate needy shoppers. And C: Your so sick of the people you work with that your jaw hurts from doing that teeth clenching thing you do when your trying not to kick people in the crotch. So like I say, all things considered, Sundays aren’t my best. Its about 5:00pm on this particular Sunday and I’m trying to get some of the clothes from the fitting room put away while my fools for coworkers are strutting aimlessly around the floor wondering if I’m watching them. In the middle of my jean folding and coworker death threat writing, a 15 year old girl in a white jumper with giant buttons wonders mindlessly up to my side and stares at me for a moment. “Do you work here?” she asks in some dreamy teenage girl language that I didn’t understand, even in middle school when all girls spoke in awkward giggles. “Um yeah,” I say. That was an accident, what I meant to say was, “No I just really like the way the jeans feel on my forarms, my name tag is just so I don’t have to introduce myself to my bus driver, a time saver really, and I need this walkie talkie that’s uncomfortably pulling on the back of my pants so I can easily radio my mom to pick me up when Im done molesting these jeans and avoid all those long distance charges, Oh and also, the buttons on your jumper resemble frosted doughnuts or large moldy pickles, did you know?” I can just tell her that latter I decide. She stares at me unblinking, oversharing her story of a friend who came in here yesterday for a skirt, and that she didn’t see the skirt, but the friend saw the skirt, which wanted the skirt, and she wanted to see the skirt, to see if she wanted to get the skirt, that her friend wanted, for the friend as a gift. “Um Okay,” I say a little to sassy for a weekday, but seeing as its Sunday and I get mad in general when people speak to me while I’m working, I thought it not completely uncalled for, I mean I’m clearly in the middle of sexing some jeans and this dreamy eyed 8th grader is wasting my time. “What does it look like? I ask, “I mean, I know youuu didn’t see it, obviously, but did she tell you what it looked like?”She stares off in deep contemplation, thinking much too hard on this question.“It was a short skirt” she says. “Oh.” I say, strongly annoyed at my decision to take this job. We have around forty short skirts scattered all over the store, I'll just look there for you real quick. “Does it have anything on it? Like a drawstring? Or Buttons? "umm," she pauses, this ones hard. "Maybe a drawstring, but I dont think so."Im frustrated, I can hear it in my voice but I cant stop it. "Okay..how short is it? do you know the color? Maybe a pattern?” She thinks for a moment then replies slowly, “She said it had pandas on it…..but I didn’t see it.” You’d like to think that mentioning the freak skirt had zoo animals on it would have been the easiest means for location, but if we put it in our panda section where we put our panda clothes and panda food for our pandas, the short skirt description would have come in complete handy. Good lookin out. So I bring her to the infamous skirt placed in plain view about 7 feet from the scene at which we’re having this life changing conversation. “This is the only panda skirt we have, its relatively new so all of the sizes should be there.” She stands there momentarily staring at nothing in particular. I contemplate reminding her what we’re doing at the panda skirt site, thinking that maybe the motion shook the glitter in her head to much on the walk over.“MY FRIEND SHOPLIFTED YESTURDAY!” She shouts in a half scream, half panicked mumble. ...........“Um, alright.” I say awkwardly.“She did it yesterday, she needed two dollars, so she just took it, and I have a guilty conscious so I had to tell you, my friend shoplifted." she says in what was the fastest shed talked since catching my attention...........“Oh, ok.... I’m sorry..about.. that..um.” “So you’re not going to do anything? She asks concernedly. “No..um, no Im not..I don’t know your friend, and theres nothing I can really do about it now.” I really need to get away from this freak show.“Oh good,” she sighs “It was that shirt over there, do you see it, that one on the table.”I follow with my eyes to the pointed direction imitating a good employee who cares about shoplifters and customers and all that crap.“Ok, well, thanks.” I say finally feeling the "we're done here vibe" and quickly make my way back to the jean pile.I see the girl about ten minutes later dreamily drifting towards the check out with a pair of sunglasses and a hat. My jaw hurts.

[A New Dresser? That Sounds Terrific!]

Tonight there was a dresser on the side of our street, and I’ve been in the want of one, so Amy and I decide to order pizza shuttle and pick the abandoned furniture up on the way back. So we’re on our way after shuttle, and we stop and stick it in the trunk to bring it home (which is right down the street) I have a hatch back so its just kind of hanging out. We get there and Amy gets out to direct me, I’m in the process of backing the car up towards our ally, when I hear this loud yelling. Sounds like someone’s yelling mumbles from across the street, I don’t see anyone so I continue backing up. The yells are getting louder. I was just about to tell Amy to get in the car when this ENORMOUS man comes walking up the sidewalk, talking to himself and headed straight towards Amy. Saying things like “Let me get that motherfucker for you, god bless you,” “I’m a big black mother fucker,” “I’m gonna get this mother fuckin thing,” “God bless you, your good people,” “I love you people.” Amy’s holding her pepper spray that her aunt gave us for Christmas inside of her purse. she also gave us chocolate and flashlights, but since I didn’t have either of those on me, I decide that the best thing to do is to stay in the car and just back into him if he tries to molest us or anything. So the giant is basically tearing the dresser out of the back, pretty much ruining the hatch part of my hatch back, neverminding our persistent pleadings of “no its ok, we really got it,” and “be careful, uh don’t break it.” After about two minutes of excessive motherfucking, and self proclamations, the dresser breaks free and crashes to the ground landing gently on a massive rock. So apparently somewhere in the midst of things we must have offered a prize reward to any monster who could give us a hand with our sword in the stone so to speak. So he’s asking for money now, I see Amy rummaging in her bag clearly pretending to look for spare change, poorly at that. If the ogre hadn’t been preoccupied with insanity I think he might have caught on. Since Amy had done her best and come up short, and he still was not pleased, she then offers him a piece of pizza. This seemed a fair deal to the troll, so we grabbed him the best piece of vegetarian (my side because trolls don’t like pineapple and green peppers.) and sent him on his way. I think we all know the moral of this story. Pizza can save the world.

[Fingers are Expendable]

It’s a Tuesday Night around 10:25, and I’m just getting out of work. It’s a nice night, the airs thick and warm. If I didn’t know any better Id think it was summer. I decide to call Amy and see if she wants to come to the lake. Why I didn’t just wait till I was home to talk to her is beyond me. She answers the phone a little shaky; I didn’t think anything of it at first, but then I hear the wind in the background gurgling the mouth piece.
“Where are you?” I ask.
She laughs slightly “at the emergency room.”
“What! What are you doing there?”
“Oh I got my finger caught in the espresso grinder at work.” She says in a much to comfortably calm tone for someone who just tried to grind off an extremity.
At this thought I nearly gag/blackout/drive off the road/thank myself for never working at a coffee house. She insists it’s not so bad, but horribly painful. She’s been there since around 9:00 and still hasn’t seen anyone. Worried, I meet her at the hospital.
I’ve driven up and down this road hundreds of times, how could I have never noticed a hospital? I see one small sign and follow the road to the left. There’s construction and obstructions blocking my view as I glance back and forth trying to find some sort of emergency room signs, entrances or bloody half dead amputees flocking towards neon lighting. I pass the entrance. Mother fucking one ways, they will be the end of me. Now I’m circling what I assume to be an emergency haven amidst the forest of construction fences and orange tape. It’s a god damn structure Christmas and I can’t get inside. Finally I’m back to the entrance, coming up the narrow driveway I start to notice the complete lack of parking. How can there be no parking at an emergency room? I begin the rigid search of a parking spot when I pass Amy standing outside the doors smoking. She still hasn’t been seen yet? This place is rich. I ultimately end out on the roadside, deciding on the walk uphill to go ahead and bleed to death before ever coming here for any gunshot wounds or would be finger grindings. I meet up with Amy and begin the frigid wait amongst the freaks and creeps that reside in the St. Mary’s hospital emergency room. An hour later deciding that now would be a good time to make a scene. Laughing obnoxiously, we’re starting to get restless. Who can really blame us for yelling things like “have you ever seen someone bleed to death?” and “you’re about to.” It’s an emergency room, I’m sure it wasn’t an absurd question, inappropriate, maybe. Just then a man in his mid twenties bursts through the door holding a boy of similar age in his arms. The boy is unconscious. “Great,” Amy sighs, “Now we have to wait for the nearly dead guy.” Seeing as she’s bleeding to death in a hot prison of diseased weirdos, I decide not to judge her to harshly for this severe lack of consideration. They finally call Svinicki, I’m guessing mostly to get us away from the estranged patients in the lobby before we start a riot, and we’re shuttled into one of those awful rooms that smell like plastic and grandmothers. While the nurse fills out the proper forms I take the opportunity to notice her complete lack of bedside manor. She’s most likely in her late twenties, although it’s hard to tell through the canyons of stress related frown features and harsh age lines. I contemplate shaking her to let the pretty out, thinking that might be the small white room syndrome talking, I decide to do nothing. She leaves us, promising the doctor will be in shortly. I wonder what shortly means in emergency room terms.
About thirty minutes later I’ve stolen a hospital gown(the good fabric kind), a doctors mask, some plastic gloves, a biohazard bag(unused unfortunately) and some cotton swabs, figured out how to turn on the oxygen tank, checked her ears with that ear flashlight jazz, found out how much pain she was having by a diagram scale from one to ten of faces ranging from happy to miserable (she was a severe, it just had a straight mouth) in the time it took them to come in,(while I’m still wearing the gloves, which I decide to play off as my own) clean it and put a fancy bandage on. Driving home I decide how much I hate hospitals, and how badly I can’t wait to go back.