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Tomorrow is my last day at Home Decorating Store. In the past month, I have been realizing that I could do more with my business and actually get in some fiction writing during the 15 hours I spend stocking, selling, and dealing with customers, rude and kind. Joe insanely suggested that we use that 15 hours a week to work out, and I laughed so hard his face was covered with spit.
From my previous posts you’d logically think that I hated working there. Not so! I actually had tears in my eyes when I gave my notice. I really liked my co-workers and I liked talking to people all day, even though I wanted to scream at people to stop being so consumerist.
I really am going to miss getting out of the house and talking to people other than my husband and the cats. Actually, I decided to get a job outside my office when some Jehovah’s Witnesses came to my door one day, and I invited them in and we read bible verses together and I asked them to pray with me.
So, Shopgirl is now going to spend part of her writing time at Panera or the library, giving both her and the Big Guy a break from seeing each other 24 hours a day. At least then we’ll have something new to talk about, other than, “Have you noticed the grapes are going bad?”
I have never been a graceful girl. In fact, around anything breakable I seem to sprout elbows all over my body and an extra set of legs – on roller skates.
When I was about six, my mom enrolled me and my sister in ballet classes. After a short period of horror and frustration, the ballet teacher insisted I begin with tap lessons to learn something about – ahem – the beat. So for several miserable years I learned the “shuffle-ball-step” in increasingly ugly satin costumes. I was the chubby showgirl in black and pink spots, the chubby bumblebee in black and yellow stripes, and – you get it.
I obviously never learned to move my body to a beat because in Junior High Marching Band, I had to get remedial lessons from my band conductor on how to march. Apparently I could walk like normal people do, but once I started to march, my arms and legs went into epileptic fits and I injured other people with my clarinet.
My childhood is marked with many family stories of clumsiness, like the time I spilled a whole bowl of hot gravy over myself. Or the wedding banquet where I tapped my glass so enthusiastically that I smashed a hole in the side of it. The time I accidentally set the lounge chair on fire. Or almost cut off my thumb. Or knocked over twenty plants on a shelf aboove the bathtub. Or…
Ah, then came high school. In my Michigan school district, Phys Ed was not a requirement for graduation. Our high school didn’t even have a gym. So when I moved to Illinois a week before the beginning of my Senior year, I was horrified to learn that I’d need to make up four years of gym in order to graduate on time. Thankfully, the counselor offered help: part of my Phys Ed requirement could be made up by aerobics classes at the local community college. Without even inquiring about the nature of aerobic classes, I enrolled.
I believe the class was titled Aerobics: Humiliation 101. Oh, the humanity. I was a rhino in a room full of gazelles. I bounced left while people were bouncing right; my arms and legs flopped around like cooked spaghetti; I kicked people so many times that they began moving their mats away from me. By the end of the semester my mat was an island way off to the side of the mainland class.
After that, I managed to avoid much embarrassment and breakage for many years. And then I thought it would be a good idea for me to get a job at a shop where they sell stacks of glassware, china, vases, and pottery. I believed I had overcome my past. But no.
Whenever something is broken in our store, we document it on a write-off log. My initials appear on the log more often than anyone else’s. In fact, every time someone hears a crash in the store, they holler, “Angela, was that you?”
“Ye-es.”
One day I had three minutes before clocking out, and my manager congratulated me. “You haven’t broken a single thing today.”
On my way to the register to clock out, I bumped into a reed diffuser and it shattered on the floor.
Around Home Decorating Store there are many phones, each with a microphone. And the other day I learned that the managers keep all the microphones on at all times. They can hear what we’re saying from the manager’s office.
Now I know why the long-timers walk to a certain area of the store when they want to gossip or chit-chat. And I’ve been wondering – what have I said by these microphones? Have I been appropriate?
It’s a little creepy.
Home Decorating Store has set new quotas for each “Sales Associate”. We must put tic marks on a sheet for each email address and phone number we collect from the customers. We must also discuss the store credit card with each customer and mark each refusal. We are “celebrating the no’s”, because it takes 40 no’s to get a yes. I’ll get there around 2010.
So a middle-aged couple came up to my register. “Could I start out with a phone number?”
He gave me the number.
“And an email address?”
“We already get your emails.”
“Do you mind if I enter it again? It’s part of the cashiering process.”
The woman burst out, “Could we just skip this part?” Then she stalked off.
I stared after her. “I’m sorry if I offended her.”
The man shook his head. As I rang him up, I myself became more offended. Was it so hard to just say, “No, thanks.”? How did that woman think it was OK to talk to someone that way?
Once the transaction was done, I collected some shopping baskets and walked up front to put them away. The rude woman was sitting on a chair.
“Thanks for your politeness,” I said, as I walked by.
“WHAT?”
“Thanks for your politeness.”
“Well go ahead and say that if it makes you feel better,” (a rather illogical comeback, after all) she said to my back. Her husband collected her and they walked out.
I folded up placemats that someone had flung around a display counter. Then I noticed the woman had come back inside and charged up to me, wagging her finger in my face. “For your information, I am the customer and if I say no, that means no.”
“Yes, but you don’t have the right to treat someone rudely.”
“I WASN’T BEING RUDE!”
“Ma’am, I’m here to work, not to argue,” I said, and walked away. I was a little afraid she’d keep following me around the store like an angry gremlin, waving her finger at me, but presumably she left.
As my anger cooled, I started to regret the situation. It would be wonderful think I had pointed out someone’s rudeness and she suddenly saw the ugliness of her behavior and made permanent changes in the way she treated cashiers. But this woman didn’t even understand what I had pointed out as rudeness. Instead, I had let my anger take the reins and fired up someone else’s anger.
And so I added to the ugliness of the world. Who knows what this woman had going on in her life? What might have happened if I treated her with love instead of irritation?
Sigh.
Next time a cashier treats you sweetly, please give her/him a big hug from me.
