Before I landed a job working at the most innovative company in the world, I worked as Employee #598724 at a retail organization. In order to protect their integrity, I won’t disclose their name, but let’s just say it’s the largest electronics retailer in the United States. We’ll call them “West Buy.”
“West Buy” was an interesting place to work. We were all a bunch of youths in our late teens/early twenties, making more money than we probably deserved, and everybody fucked each other. EVERYBODY. I don’t mean figuratively. Literally, everyone seemed to be having sex with someone else there.
There were these weird pockets of employees who all lived together, splitting rent three or four ways, and leaving plenty of expendable income, and for some reason this just led to everyone getting it on. It was uncanny, and I’ve never experienced it anywhere else I’ve ever worked. I doubt there was a single man or woman under the age of twenty-five working there who was dating anyone outside of the store.
I spent the majority of my time there in the warehouse, doing all the work for half the pay the lazy, worthless salespeople earned. You ever wonder how all that product gets into the store? It’s unloaded by bitter, angry, hate-filled young men forced to stay there until two in the morning, only to have to turn around and at six and come back for the morning deliveries, while the pampered, brown-nosing, cocksucking sales staff gets to go home no later than ten p.m.. Not that I hold any resentment or anything.
After three and a half years of being underappreciated in the warehouse, I was coerced into taking a position on the sales floor by one of my best friends. Because clearly I’m a people person and interacting with dim-witted customers is sure to be a recipe for success.
He had me convinced that we would make an unbeatable team in the media department, selling things like game systems, DVDs, and music, because it was what we knew. This was the last time I ever listened to anything he has ever told me.
The reason being that “West Buy” doesn’t care about sales of game systems, software, CDs, or DVDs. There is little to no mark-up on items like that. It’s the accessories and the service plans where “West Buy” makes their money – most of which are useless and unnecessary. When buying an original Xbox, which comes with a built-in eight gigabyte hard drive for saving games and more, we still had to try and convince customers that they still needed a memory card. My friend was exceptionally good at this thanks to his lack of a moral center; I was not.
Most of the time I would simply wander the floor, trying to avoid assholes and their stupid questions (you call them “customers”). Occasionally, one would grab me and I would tell them what they were looking for was in some random aisle just to get them away from me, then run to the back room and cower inside a refrigerator box until I was sure they had left.
There were two customers in particular I avoided like the goddamn plague. One was a tall, older man who stunk worse than anything I’ve ever smelled. His hair was always tousled, his clothing was filthy, he wore sunglasses at all times, and he always spoke with his teeth gnashed together, which made him difficult to understand.
Now, I know what you’re thinking: Perhaps his appearance and unacceptable personal hygiene is a result of low income. Maybe he’s a stinky, smelly, sweaty, dirty, greasy, nasty, unwashed person who leaves a cloud of B.O. that hangs in the air for fifteen minutes after his passing because he’s poor, and I’m just an asshole for judging him. He was in there every week, buying ten or more DVDs at a time. If you can afford to buy movies, you can afford a fucking bar of soap.
You could always tell when this man had been around by the stench that lingered. He left a trail of awfulness everywhere he went, but to stand next to him was enough to make you gag. Whenever I saw him enter, I immediately retreated to the warehouse and hid in my Fortress of Solitude (the fridge box).
Less olfactorily offensive, but no less obnoxios was the man…woman… thing… I honestly don’t know. I really don’t. I wish I were kidding, but I’m not. I have no fucking clue whether this person was a man or a woman, and it haunts me to this very day.
It would come in every week, and also had a penchant for DVDs, but had the annoying habit of asking if every. single. goddamn movie had special features. You know how you can find out? Turn the goddamn package around and read the list of special features!
Because it had a voice that was somewhat high-pitched and feminine, I originally thought it was a female. The thin moustache gave me pause, but I’ve seen women with more hair on their upper lip than I’m capable of growing, so I considered that it may have been a hormone problem. Then it threw me for another loop one day when it picked up a Girls Gone Wild DVD from our “Special Interest” section and began commenting on the hot girls. I started to believe perhaps it really was a man, but I suppose it could have been a lesbian too. I just chalked it up as one of life’s great mysteries and tried to avoid contact with it at all costs.
The video game section, which should have been my favorite area to work in, became a constant source of irritation thanks to parents using our demo systems as makeshift babysitters for their stupid children while they shopped around. There were two brats I especially hated. The first was a Chaldean kid who came in just about every day for months on end and would play for hours. I don’t know if his mother thought we were a daycare center or what, but he would stand at the demo units until we had to forcibly turn them off to get rid of him. He even had the nerve to ask for a chair on several occasions.
Every time he came in, he asked if Grand Theft Auto: Vice City was out yet. I gave him the same answer every time – “Not until October 27th” – but the next time he was in the store, he’d ask again. This kid couldn’t have been more that ten. Not exactly age-appropriate for Grand Theft Auto, and his mother was obviously one of the clueless masses who believed whatever her son told her instead of doing any research herself. That little bastard bugged me for months, asking the same question over and over, but I had my revenge. When the game finally came out and his uninformed mother brought him into the store to purchase it for her future-felon child, I warned her the game contained explicit and violent content including, but not limited to, killing police officers and having sex with prostitutes. More importantly, once the game was opened, it could not be returned. He tried to tell her it wasn’t that bad and accused me of lying, but I ignored him and warned her, “This is the worst game I’ve ever seen in my life. I wouldn’t buy it for my son.” They left empty-handed, with that little shit begging his mom the entire way.
The other troublemaker was an Asian kid, probably in his young teens, who would accost people playing on our Xbox demo unit. Having worked through the Xbox and Gamecube launches, I can definitively say the Xbox was the more popular console. We sold out of our supply of Xboxes in a few scant hours, meanwhile I sat at a table with two pallets of untouched Gamecubes behind me the day that system launched. I can only assume – and I’m basing this solely on racial stereotyping – that since he was Asian, his family had stock in Nintendo and he wanted the Gamecube to succeed, so he spent his time telling everyone playing the Xbox that the Gamecube was better. Then he’d go over to the Gamecube demo and tell whoever was playing that it was better, just in case they needed affirmation, I guess.
He would also spread ridiculous, unfounded rumors, and end each one with, “Do you know about this? Have you heard about this?” Every time he said those magic words, the urge to punch him in the face swelled. Nobody has heard your rumor, because you just made it up. Go away. I hate you with the fury of ten thousand burning suns.
Those were some of the regulars, but the one-timers were just as bothersome, asking for help as they do. Oh, you want to know where Aaliyah is filed? Do you know the alphabet? Oh, you want to know if I have Monster Balls? Wait, what?!
Yes. A lady once asked me if I had Monster Balls.
Halle Berry had just won her Oscar for Monster’s Ball, and anyone who has ever worked in media retail knows there is a phenomenon that occurs anytime someone wins a major award (Oscars, Grammys), or dies. People flock to the store to buy that person’s work, just to show they’ve been fans all along. A lady approached me one afternoon, looked me straight in the eyes, and asked, “Excuse me, do you have Monster Balls?” – which is an entirely different question than “Do you have Monster’s Ball?”
I don’t know how I did it, but I managed to keep a straight face, and I simply responded, “Yes. Yes I do.” I’m pretty sure cheap pornos start that way, but I took her to the section where Monster’s Ball was kept, grabbed a copy of the DVD, and then I pulled my dick out.
OK, that last part may or may not have actually happened. I didn’t show her where the movie was.
Comments