The closing shift on a Sunday night in a liquor store is almost painfully slow compared to the hustle and/or bustle of a Friday night. The shelves stay stocked, the bottles in the stacker boxes gather dust, and I spend more time than necessary staring at my fingernails and wondering why my polish never stays on for longer than a day before it chips horribly.
Sunday nights are, for the most part, boring. When I get bored, I get a little weird. Weirder than normal, actually. On my Friday night shift, someone watching the security tapes will undoubtedly be treated to footage of me dancing like an idiot to whatever song is playing on the radio, bouncing up and down as I get excited about something stupid, and making a general fool of myself. Friday nights are fun and I feed off the energy of my customers. Sunday nights, the footage of me is rather subdued, as I check my phone for text messages in the long gaps between shoppers. My brain starts meandering, I start daydreaming, and before I know it, I've let my brain do whatever it wants.
Which is where it gets interesting.
As a veteran of the stage, I've spent over half my young life learning to adapt my own physical traits and my voice to create a character that is distinctly not me. It's a skill and an art form, certainly, but these days, my acting abilities are used fucking with my customers.
I didn't intend to do it, I really didn't. But a man came in about halfway through my shift and purchased a 6-pack of Guiness. For those of you who aren't history geeks like myself, Guiness had a birthday April 25th, 250 years old. The man buying his Guiness shares that birthday, only not so old. We chatted a bit, and before he had finished four sentences I had picked up his beautiful Irish brogue. I can't help myself. If I hear an accent, I will pick it up almost instantly, and it takes me forever to get rid of it. When I returned from Holland after a week, it took me almost a month before the Dutch mannerisms and slang dissolved from my vocabulary. So, since I was bored, I made no effort to rid myself of the Irish accent. I laid it on thick for the rest of the evening, just to see how people would react to it. The results are in, and this is what I've discovered:
-The sleazier guys wont hit on me if I sound foreign. My standard fare of foisting off date offers or phone number requests diminished instantly as soon as I sounded snooty and European.
-People don't notice that you're not answering their questions directly when you speak with an accent. I was frequently asked "Where are you from? What accent is that?" To which I would reply, "It's Irish." Which is true. It's an Irish accent. It's just not real.
-My coworkers are endlessly amused by me.
-It's hard to sing along with the song on the radio when you're faking an accent.
-I'm apparently good at faking accents because I have a diverse vocabulary that already includes some European slang.
I'm sure there's more things that are interesting about faking an accent at work, but those are the really crucial ones. Sometimes, when nothing blog-worthy happens in my Spenard Paradise, I have to make my own fun.
27 April 2009
26 April 2009
It's Hard Out There For A Pimp.
Friday night in my slice of paradise, the Spenard store. Despite my general distaste for going to work on a Friday night, I didn't complain much beyond some dark muttering to myself as I dragged myself off my cozy couch with my blanket and my TV shows on the internet. In a mere 8 hours I would be on my way home, exhausted, with sore feet and probably a sore back from the various tasks involved in running a liquor store, but it would be another adventure, almost certainly.
The first thing I am greeted with when I get to work is the breaking news that I have failed an in-house sting. I am diligent about carding my customers, to the point of annoying some of the regulars and older people. Apparently, the one time I was either too distracted or too busy to ask to see someone's ID, it's apparently a friggin spy reporting back to upper management. Awesome. So, now instead of working next Friday night on my normal shift, I have to sit through another class to re-certify for my TiPS certification. That's my punishment? To sit through a class where I already know all the answers? And on top of that, since the class takes all day, I officially don't have to work next Friday night?
Awesome. I have next Friday night off. I'm going to have a life for once next weekend, hooray!
So, I sign my form on the failure slip (which, by the way, also says I was very sweet, pleasant, helpful, and professional, so suck it) I clock in and get back to my normal duties. I'm on the busy cash register, as usual, and eyeing all the customers with a newfound suspicion, wondering which one of them ratted me out to the Fuzz. Friday night brings in most of the regulars - the Japanese businessman who comes in once a week for a fifth of Crown Royal ("You always smile, you are so pleasant. It really brightens the whole store, your smile."), the obnoxiously flirty guys who keep asking me when I'm going to go to the movies with them (the answer to that is never), a guy I actually went to elementary school with and his bottle of sparkling asti spumante, and the girl who works at the Bear Tooth who comes in every Friday night after her shift for a bottle of chilled chardonnay. My regulars, who know me and love me, and make my job easier by always having exact change or bailing me out by giving me their small bills when I'm running low. I love them all and all of them love me. Because the system works - the system called Reciprocity.
Five points to the first person who names the quote in that last paragraph. Musical and character and song for full marks.
But, as it's been said in song and rhyme, it's hard out there for a pimp. At least, that's what I assume, because last night I met my first pimp, who came in with two of his professional ladies. I knew what the relationship dynamic was the instant they walked in - instinct or intuition, I'm not sure, but I knew I was dealing with, er, business partners. The girls were dressed up in tight jeans and heels with too much makeup and too many pieces of bling, each with an air of a bruised and beaten housewife who is too proud to admit that she's unhappy. The man they were with displayed his diamonds on his chest as he brought a case of beer to my counter and allowed the girls to select a pint each of their choice. Their IDs were valid, and as I began ringing up the items, I mused to myself about how these girls fell into a life of prostitution. It is, of course, one of the world's oldest professions, and in some cultures is even a noble profession. In Anchorage, Alaska, however, the life is hard and usually painfully brief, as the culture of indifference ignores the dangers they face on the street - not only from clientele but from the pimps who are supposed to protect them. My musing was brought to a sudden and screeching halt when, as I handed over the receipt (can pimps write off liquor purchases for their professional ladies?), he looked me up and down appraisingly and opened his mouth.
"You know, you're a fine looking girl. How much they pay you to work here? You know what? It doesn't even matter. I can guarantee that you'll make more money if you come and work for me. You have a unique look about you. You can look Asian, you can look white. You're very versatile. You'd be a money maker for sure. What do you say?"
What DO you say in a situation like that besides "No flippin' way, buster!" or some variant thereof?
I wish I could remember exactly what I said. I hope it was more acidic and witty than "No flippin' way, buster!" but I'm afraid we'll never know, because evidently I have the attention span of a squirrel and can't remember trivial things like the punchline to my blog.
It may be hard out there for a pimp, but it's also hard to be a stand-up comedian working in a liquor store, who apparently can be a chameleon prostitute. Me love you long time.
The first thing I am greeted with when I get to work is the breaking news that I have failed an in-house sting. I am diligent about carding my customers, to the point of annoying some of the regulars and older people. Apparently, the one time I was either too distracted or too busy to ask to see someone's ID, it's apparently a friggin spy reporting back to upper management. Awesome. So, now instead of working next Friday night on my normal shift, I have to sit through another class to re-certify for my TiPS certification. That's my punishment? To sit through a class where I already know all the answers? And on top of that, since the class takes all day, I officially don't have to work next Friday night?
Awesome. I have next Friday night off. I'm going to have a life for once next weekend, hooray!
So, I sign my form on the failure slip (which, by the way, also says I was very sweet, pleasant, helpful, and professional, so suck it) I clock in and get back to my normal duties. I'm on the busy cash register, as usual, and eyeing all the customers with a newfound suspicion, wondering which one of them ratted me out to the Fuzz. Friday night brings in most of the regulars - the Japanese businessman who comes in once a week for a fifth of Crown Royal ("You always smile, you are so pleasant. It really brightens the whole store, your smile."), the obnoxiously flirty guys who keep asking me when I'm going to go to the movies with them (the answer to that is never), a guy I actually went to elementary school with and his bottle of sparkling asti spumante, and the girl who works at the Bear Tooth who comes in every Friday night after her shift for a bottle of chilled chardonnay. My regulars, who know me and love me, and make my job easier by always having exact change or bailing me out by giving me their small bills when I'm running low. I love them all and all of them love me. Because the system works - the system called Reciprocity.
Five points to the first person who names the quote in that last paragraph. Musical and character and song for full marks.
But, as it's been said in song and rhyme, it's hard out there for a pimp. At least, that's what I assume, because last night I met my first pimp, who came in with two of his professional ladies. I knew what the relationship dynamic was the instant they walked in - instinct or intuition, I'm not sure, but I knew I was dealing with, er, business partners. The girls were dressed up in tight jeans and heels with too much makeup and too many pieces of bling, each with an air of a bruised and beaten housewife who is too proud to admit that she's unhappy. The man they were with displayed his diamonds on his chest as he brought a case of beer to my counter and allowed the girls to select a pint each of their choice. Their IDs were valid, and as I began ringing up the items, I mused to myself about how these girls fell into a life of prostitution. It is, of course, one of the world's oldest professions, and in some cultures is even a noble profession. In Anchorage, Alaska, however, the life is hard and usually painfully brief, as the culture of indifference ignores the dangers they face on the street - not only from clientele but from the pimps who are supposed to protect them. My musing was brought to a sudden and screeching halt when, as I handed over the receipt (can pimps write off liquor purchases for their professional ladies?), he looked me up and down appraisingly and opened his mouth.
"You know, you're a fine looking girl. How much they pay you to work here? You know what? It doesn't even matter. I can guarantee that you'll make more money if you come and work for me. You have a unique look about you. You can look Asian, you can look white. You're very versatile. You'd be a money maker for sure. What do you say?"
What DO you say in a situation like that besides "No flippin' way, buster!" or some variant thereof?
I wish I could remember exactly what I said. I hope it was more acidic and witty than "No flippin' way, buster!" but I'm afraid we'll never know, because evidently I have the attention span of a squirrel and can't remember trivial things like the punchline to my blog.
It may be hard out there for a pimp, but it's also hard to be a stand-up comedian working in a liquor store, who apparently can be a chameleon prostitute. Me love you long time.
20 April 2009
Beautiful Language
I know, this is the second post of the day. But I can't let my blog become disorganized and address two different dates in the same post, and I've been lazy and not updating as quickly as I should. So shut up and keep reading, because this one is going to be short and sweet.
Sunday night, Spenard store. Closing with a filler employee as my regular coworker called out sick with some sort of illness that may or may not have been a severe case of spring fever on a beautiful Sunday evening. The store was slow, and since I was technically the regular employee with seniority, I got to be the awesome person and run the show. I got a key to the store (technically borrowed, but now they know I can be trusted with one and I will get my own), was entrusted with the balance of the change bank (which came out even as it was supposed to. Hooray for advanced math skills! Thanks, college education!), and the general operation of the store. It was a fun evening, all in all, with a lot of new faces that had just flown in from all sorts of places and shared stories with me. I wore my Amsterdam shirt and was able to talk about the beauty of my favorite city and tell some of my amusing stories.
Then, I glanced over at two guys in the wine department. Both were tall, good-looking, slender men, selecting a chardonnay. Nothing out of the ordinary, until I realized they were communicating in American Sign Language. I took ASL for two semesters in college, and while I've lost a lot of the vocabulary due to lack of practice, I picked up the general feel of the conversation.
When they arrived at my counter, I rang them up and ran his debit card. As I waited for the receipt to print out, the man paying for the wine turned to his friend and signed rapidly - first he shook his right hand as though he had burned it, then pointed to me, then waved his fingers in a circle around his face and opened his hand like a starburst. The second man nodded his right hand up and down vigorously and repeated the sign on his own face, three times with three starbursts. Translation: "WOW. She is beautiful." "Yes. Very very beautiful."
I tried not to grin or blush as I handed him his receipt. He signed "thank you" by placing his fingers under his chin with the back of his hand facing me and drawing them across his chin in my direction.
I signed back.
I drew my fingers across my chin in a mirror image of his last sign, then pointed at him, raised my pinky finger against my chest, pointed my index finger at my head, pointed at him, waved my fingers in a circle around my face with my own starburst, and then held up two fingers.
"Thank you. I think you're beautiful, too."
Zing.
Sunday night, Spenard store. Closing with a filler employee as my regular coworker called out sick with some sort of illness that may or may not have been a severe case of spring fever on a beautiful Sunday evening. The store was slow, and since I was technically the regular employee with seniority, I got to be the awesome person and run the show. I got a key to the store (technically borrowed, but now they know I can be trusted with one and I will get my own), was entrusted with the balance of the change bank (which came out even as it was supposed to. Hooray for advanced math skills! Thanks, college education!), and the general operation of the store. It was a fun evening, all in all, with a lot of new faces that had just flown in from all sorts of places and shared stories with me. I wore my Amsterdam shirt and was able to talk about the beauty of my favorite city and tell some of my amusing stories.
Then, I glanced over at two guys in the wine department. Both were tall, good-looking, slender men, selecting a chardonnay. Nothing out of the ordinary, until I realized they were communicating in American Sign Language. I took ASL for two semesters in college, and while I've lost a lot of the vocabulary due to lack of practice, I picked up the general feel of the conversation.
When they arrived at my counter, I rang them up and ran his debit card. As I waited for the receipt to print out, the man paying for the wine turned to his friend and signed rapidly - first he shook his right hand as though he had burned it, then pointed to me, then waved his fingers in a circle around his face and opened his hand like a starburst. The second man nodded his right hand up and down vigorously and repeated the sign on his own face, three times with three starbursts. Translation: "WOW. She is beautiful." "Yes. Very very beautiful."
I tried not to grin or blush as I handed him his receipt. He signed "thank you" by placing his fingers under his chin with the back of his hand facing me and drawing them across his chin in my direction.
I signed back.
I drew my fingers across my chin in a mirror image of his last sign, then pointed at him, raised my pinky finger against my chest, pointed my index finger at my head, pointed at him, waved my fingers in a circle around my face with my own starburst, and then held up two fingers.
"Thank you. I think you're beautiful, too."
Zing.
Plastic Hardships
Friday night in the Spenard store is usually my favorite shift. The guy I close with is cut from the same personality cloth as I am, and so the duties are equally balanced and there never is a dull moment as we harass each other and make lightearted jabs at each others' expense. He runs the stockroom, keeping our clientele swimming in fifths of liquor and bottles of wine while I run the register counter and feed the tobacco addiction as well as the alcohol sales.
"I hope you don't mind," my coworker says, "but I just hate running the register while you're around, because I don't do anything. I can be sitting here ready to ring someone up, but there's always a line waiting for you because you sparkle so much."
It's true. I have a bright and shining personality and people are attracted to it. I'm like an electric bug zapper, fun to look at, but possibly lethal if you get too close to the light. The shiny happiness can be gone if you mess with me or my store, and while we were starting to go into our nightly cleaning routine, the shiny happiness faded as the man I had just been talking to about our vodka selection ran out of the store with a bottle tucked under his arm. We ran to the door after him, but by the time we were outside the store he was nowhere to be seen. I yelled after him as he ran out of the store, and fumed quietly when he got away with his prize.
Really? You're going to steal from us when I have a very good description of you from talking to you for at least two minutes? When every camera in the store has gotten a good look at your face? When the company I work for has a 90% conviction rate on shoplifters and robberies? Good idea, buddy. Let's just see what you got away with, and we'll see if the jail time and fines are going to be worth it....
...a plastic bottle of Smirnoff vodka. That's it? That's what you risk jail time and a criminal record for? Honestly, if you are going to steal from a liquor store, why not at least steal something good?? Why not take off with that bottle of Grey Goose vodka? Or, for that matter, if Smirnoff is really what you are after, why only grab the fifth in plastic when there's a 1.75 liter bottle sitting right next to it, also plastic?
Maybe it's because I don't have a criminal mind. My scheming is always civil in nature and usually plots the downfall of my many social rivals or the eventual unraveling of society as we know it, but I just don't understand the drive to steal something of a sub par quality when there's much better stuff to choose from.
White male, 6'`1" or 6'2", dark hair with streaks of grey, unshaven but not with an actual beard. Slender build, straight nose, bluish green eyes. Darker complexion, looks like he spends a lot of time in the sun because the skin on his face is weathered. Wearing blue jeans and a black jacket, possibly Carhartt in origin. If you see this man, ask him if he likes Smirnoff vodka. If he does, kick him in the leg for me for making me run across the parking lot for no damn reason.
"I hope you don't mind," my coworker says, "but I just hate running the register while you're around, because I don't do anything. I can be sitting here ready to ring someone up, but there's always a line waiting for you because you sparkle so much."
It's true. I have a bright and shining personality and people are attracted to it. I'm like an electric bug zapper, fun to look at, but possibly lethal if you get too close to the light. The shiny happiness can be gone if you mess with me or my store, and while we were starting to go into our nightly cleaning routine, the shiny happiness faded as the man I had just been talking to about our vodka selection ran out of the store with a bottle tucked under his arm. We ran to the door after him, but by the time we were outside the store he was nowhere to be seen. I yelled after him as he ran out of the store, and fumed quietly when he got away with his prize.
Really? You're going to steal from us when I have a very good description of you from talking to you for at least two minutes? When every camera in the store has gotten a good look at your face? When the company I work for has a 90% conviction rate on shoplifters and robberies? Good idea, buddy. Let's just see what you got away with, and we'll see if the jail time and fines are going to be worth it....
...a plastic bottle of Smirnoff vodka. That's it? That's what you risk jail time and a criminal record for? Honestly, if you are going to steal from a liquor store, why not at least steal something good?? Why not take off with that bottle of Grey Goose vodka? Or, for that matter, if Smirnoff is really what you are after, why only grab the fifth in plastic when there's a 1.75 liter bottle sitting right next to it, also plastic?
Maybe it's because I don't have a criminal mind. My scheming is always civil in nature and usually plots the downfall of my many social rivals or the eventual unraveling of society as we know it, but I just don't understand the drive to steal something of a sub par quality when there's much better stuff to choose from.
White male, 6'`1" or 6'2", dark hair with streaks of grey, unshaven but not with an actual beard. Slender build, straight nose, bluish green eyes. Darker complexion, looks like he spends a lot of time in the sun because the skin on his face is weathered. Wearing blue jeans and a black jacket, possibly Carhartt in origin. If you see this man, ask him if he likes Smirnoff vodka. If he does, kick him in the leg for me for making me run across the parking lot for no damn reason.
13 April 2009
Spenard Easter
Following my misadventures in Mountain View, I gleefully returned to my regular habitat in the Spenard store, which is literally on the wrong side of the railroad tracks, tracks visible from the massive front windows overlooking the busy thoroughfare. An endless array of people from all walks of life patronize the Spenard store, which makes for an interesting night on most nights. However, Easter Sunday is the day that even the most hardened alcoholic takes a step back and remembers that there are finer things to appreciate in life than booze, perhaps even the company of friends over a meal or some sort of spiritual enlightenment in a house of worship. Whatever the reason, the closing shift was painfully slow and not only did my coworker and I manage to keep the place stocked without hurrying the entire night, I spent some quality time dusting the shelves and washing the glass of the coolers. As I busied myself, worrying about what sort of blog could possibly come from an easy night like this, I realized a profile of my liquor store home turf was in order.
From the Mountain View regular who woke up somehow on the wrong side of town and shuffles to the front counter wordlessly to buy a half pint of R&R to hold him over until he can get enough quarters in his grubby fists to purchase that coveted plastic fifth of Monarch Vodka to the world-weary traveler passing through on her way home from the airport, my clientele is never boring. The best is the glamorous prostitute, who comes in every night with a different man on her arm, no purse, producing her identification from regions best left unspoken, and smiling with all the charm that a meth-using whore possesses. Together, they wander the aisles, and she points - "I want that. One of those. I want one of those. And some candy." Seriously, dude. You've already paid for her. Getting her liquored up is not strictly necessary at this point. You're going to want that candy, though, so that later you can get the taste of shame out of your mouth as you stagger back home to whatever life you lead, and hopefully it doesn't involve a wife or girlfriend waiting patiently for you to "get out of the office," you treacherous bastard.
For every 4 customers in the Mountain View store, I was able to sell alcohol to perhaps 1 or 2 of them. In Spenard, the refusals to sell are fewer and farther between. However, the refusals to dole out my phone number are terribly regular. I've also noticed that the bravado and persistance of the man asking for that date or my digits is inversely proportionate to how much they are spending once they reach my counter and are dazzled by my sparkling personality and apparently classic good looks. Wow, two 40s of Steel Reserve and "a pack of your cheapest menthol cigarettes"? Why don't I just get naked now and save you the hassle of impressing me and passing my field STI test? Oh, you're paying for your goods with wrinkled cash from the bottom of your pants pocket that looks like it's been recently plastered against a sweaty stripper's body, and now I'll have to use hand sanitizer on every part of my body that's been exposed to your cheap cologne, but sure. Let's go out. Let me guess? You want to split the bills evenly because you "don't believe in chauvanism and women are equals" in your eyes? Please. Buy a bottle of Patron Silver or Laphroiag 10 year old scotch and we'll talk.
Just for the record, it's terribly inappropriate to tell me if I wore a shirt that showed "just a little more cleavage" and "did some jumping jacks" I'd "go wherever I wanted in life." Evidently a woman's brain is securely lodged in her mammary glands, and the brain is only stimulated by up and down movements. I'd give myself a friggin black eye if that were true.
Fuck you. I'm smart. And no, you can't have my phone number.
From the Mountain View regular who woke up somehow on the wrong side of town and shuffles to the front counter wordlessly to buy a half pint of R&R to hold him over until he can get enough quarters in his grubby fists to purchase that coveted plastic fifth of Monarch Vodka to the world-weary traveler passing through on her way home from the airport, my clientele is never boring. The best is the glamorous prostitute, who comes in every night with a different man on her arm, no purse, producing her identification from regions best left unspoken, and smiling with all the charm that a meth-using whore possesses. Together, they wander the aisles, and she points - "I want that. One of those. I want one of those. And some candy." Seriously, dude. You've already paid for her. Getting her liquored up is not strictly necessary at this point. You're going to want that candy, though, so that later you can get the taste of shame out of your mouth as you stagger back home to whatever life you lead, and hopefully it doesn't involve a wife or girlfriend waiting patiently for you to "get out of the office," you treacherous bastard.
For every 4 customers in the Mountain View store, I was able to sell alcohol to perhaps 1 or 2 of them. In Spenard, the refusals to sell are fewer and farther between. However, the refusals to dole out my phone number are terribly regular. I've also noticed that the bravado and persistance of the man asking for that date or my digits is inversely proportionate to how much they are spending once they reach my counter and are dazzled by my sparkling personality and apparently classic good looks. Wow, two 40s of Steel Reserve and "a pack of your cheapest menthol cigarettes"? Why don't I just get naked now and save you the hassle of impressing me and passing my field STI test? Oh, you're paying for your goods with wrinkled cash from the bottom of your pants pocket that looks like it's been recently plastered against a sweaty stripper's body, and now I'll have to use hand sanitizer on every part of my body that's been exposed to your cheap cologne, but sure. Let's go out. Let me guess? You want to split the bills evenly because you "don't believe in chauvanism and women are equals" in your eyes? Please. Buy a bottle of Patron Silver or Laphroiag 10 year old scotch and we'll talk.
Just for the record, it's terribly inappropriate to tell me if I wore a shirt that showed "just a little more cleavage" and "did some jumping jacks" I'd "go wherever I wanted in life." Evidently a woman's brain is securely lodged in her mammary glands, and the brain is only stimulated by up and down movements. I'd give myself a friggin black eye if that were true.
Fuck you. I'm smart. And no, you can't have my phone number.
Mountain View
Ah, Mountain View. When the manager of the store called me this morning and asked if I could fill in a gap for a few hours in the early evening, I admit my face twisted into a grimace of mixed revulsion and apprehension. I'm a 25 year old, attractive (that's not narcissism, I've got confirmed sources who will tell you the same thing) white female, and the M.V. store has a notorious reputation for the most besotted and repugnant clientele. Having really no excuse to not take the shift, I agreed and begrudgingly put down my book.
"Don't put your purse on the floor," advised the assistant manager when I arrived. "We've got a bit of a problem with this shrew." No sooner had she finished her sentence than the shrew appeared from under the desk, boldly taking a crumpled receipt in its mouth and meandering back into its lair. Great. Drunks and vermin. And it's not even 5pm.
My feeling of general unease was not unfounded. I spent four hours politely declining date offers, politely asking the same guy three times to stop lifting his shirt to show me his "chiseled abs" ("I love your hair," he declared. "You've got that sexy Asian thing going for you. That's hot.") and not-so-politely declining the sale of fifths of Monarch vodka in the plastic bottle to the swaying, incomprehensible sea of humanity that flowed in and out of the store like so much flotsam. Or perhaps jetsam, it's really difficult to tell when you're temporarily blind-sided by the fog of cheap beer and dollar shots of rum that don't make it out of the parking lot.
"What? I'm some sort of bad guy?" asked a belligerent, drunken man when I seized his precious booze.
"No, sir. But you can't produce valid ID for me, I can tell you've been drinking, and I cannot legally or ethically sell you alcohol today. You can feel free to come back tomorrow and try to buy that bottle of R&R with a dizzying array of dimes, nickles, and pennies - all of which smell suspiciously like you've stored them in your last bottle of R&R after you drank the lot of it in a single day."
I didn't say that last part out loud.
Unfortunately.
"I'm the bad guy now? I'm some sort of bad guy?" My cheery demeanor disappeared. Time to, as they teach in the TIPS class, assert my authority and take control of the situation.
"It's time for you to leave, sir. You can come back tomorrow but if I see you on the premises again tonight I will have to call APD."
"So I am a bad guy to you, huh?"
"Not unless you do as I've asked and you leave my store immediately. I won't ask you again. You can leave now and there's no harm done, or you can continue to harass me and I'll have you arrested for trespassing and you won't be welcome in any of our stores ever again. The choice is yours."
"Damn. That's coldhearted."
But it worked. The threat of being permanently 86'd from a chain of liquor stores struck fear into his heart and he left, defeated. Triumphant, I returned to the queue of eager customers only to start the process over again.
"Here's my ID. Can you answer a question for me? Do you have 40s of *insert unfamiliar name here*?" She looked barely 21, but her ID was in order and the UV light confirmed that it is authentic.
"Nope, if it's not in the cooler, it's not here."
"Okay, thanks." She stuffed the wad of abused dollars into her pocket and walked out of the store. Minutes later, she reappeared at my counter with a 40 of Miller High Life (you know, the champagne of beers).
"Here's my ID again, even though you just saw it." Her manner was agitated, and my gut told me something wasn't right.
"You were just in here, where did you go when you left?"
"Just....outside...."
"Are you buying this for someone outside in the parking lot?"
"Uhm...why?"
"Because if you're buying for someone underage, or someone who is already drunk, that's illegal and you could be arrested." Not to mention that I would lose my job, get sued by the company that fired me, and be fined by the state. Not on my list of things to do, honestly.
"Oh, they're not drunk. They're just....drinking." Really? Seriously? Are you that dense, you pretty, young thing? How exactly do you stand to benefit by purchasing a 40 ounce bottle of terrible malt liquor for strangers who leer at people like yourself in the parking lot as though leering was quickly going out of vogue?
Taking the 40 from her and putting it on a shelf beneath my register, I told her politely to leave the store, because I wasn't selling her anything. She actually looked bewildered as she left, as though the explanation I gave her in slow, carefully metered words - "You could get arrested" - wasn't enough.
Depravity and debauchery and sleaze. I'm swimming in an endless sea of it.
"Don't put your purse on the floor," advised the assistant manager when I arrived. "We've got a bit of a problem with this shrew." No sooner had she finished her sentence than the shrew appeared from under the desk, boldly taking a crumpled receipt in its mouth and meandering back into its lair. Great. Drunks and vermin. And it's not even 5pm.
My feeling of general unease was not unfounded. I spent four hours politely declining date offers, politely asking the same guy three times to stop lifting his shirt to show me his "chiseled abs" ("I love your hair," he declared. "You've got that sexy Asian thing going for you. That's hot.") and not-so-politely declining the sale of fifths of Monarch vodka in the plastic bottle to the swaying, incomprehensible sea of humanity that flowed in and out of the store like so much flotsam. Or perhaps jetsam, it's really difficult to tell when you're temporarily blind-sided by the fog of cheap beer and dollar shots of rum that don't make it out of the parking lot.
"What? I'm some sort of bad guy?" asked a belligerent, drunken man when I seized his precious booze.
"No, sir. But you can't produce valid ID for me, I can tell you've been drinking, and I cannot legally or ethically sell you alcohol today. You can feel free to come back tomorrow and try to buy that bottle of R&R with a dizzying array of dimes, nickles, and pennies - all of which smell suspiciously like you've stored them in your last bottle of R&R after you drank the lot of it in a single day."
I didn't say that last part out loud.
Unfortunately.
"I'm the bad guy now? I'm some sort of bad guy?" My cheery demeanor disappeared. Time to, as they teach in the TIPS class, assert my authority and take control of the situation.
"It's time for you to leave, sir. You can come back tomorrow but if I see you on the premises again tonight I will have to call APD."
"So I am a bad guy to you, huh?"
"Not unless you do as I've asked and you leave my store immediately. I won't ask you again. You can leave now and there's no harm done, or you can continue to harass me and I'll have you arrested for trespassing and you won't be welcome in any of our stores ever again. The choice is yours."
"Damn. That's coldhearted."
But it worked. The threat of being permanently 86'd from a chain of liquor stores struck fear into his heart and he left, defeated. Triumphant, I returned to the queue of eager customers only to start the process over again.
"Here's my ID. Can you answer a question for me? Do you have 40s of *insert unfamiliar name here*?" She looked barely 21, but her ID was in order and the UV light confirmed that it is authentic.
"Nope, if it's not in the cooler, it's not here."
"Okay, thanks." She stuffed the wad of abused dollars into her pocket and walked out of the store. Minutes later, she reappeared at my counter with a 40 of Miller High Life (you know, the champagne of beers).
"Here's my ID again, even though you just saw it." Her manner was agitated, and my gut told me something wasn't right.
"You were just in here, where did you go when you left?"
"Just....outside...."
"Are you buying this for someone outside in the parking lot?"
"Uhm...why?"
"Because if you're buying for someone underage, or someone who is already drunk, that's illegal and you could be arrested." Not to mention that I would lose my job, get sued by the company that fired me, and be fined by the state. Not on my list of things to do, honestly.
"Oh, they're not drunk. They're just....drinking." Really? Seriously? Are you that dense, you pretty, young thing? How exactly do you stand to benefit by purchasing a 40 ounce bottle of terrible malt liquor for strangers who leer at people like yourself in the parking lot as though leering was quickly going out of vogue?
Taking the 40 from her and putting it on a shelf beneath my register, I told her politely to leave the store, because I wasn't selling her anything. She actually looked bewildered as she left, as though the explanation I gave her in slow, carefully metered words - "You could get arrested" - wasn't enough.
Depravity and debauchery and sleaze. I'm swimming in an endless sea of it.
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