Adventures in Retail Episode 1: "I been drinking since seven o'clock."

A lot of folks think working in retail is wiggity wack and many think the same is true of working the graveyard shift. When I tell people I work the graveyard shift in the retail sector, the common response is "How can you do that?"

It's easy if you heed the advice of the Carter Family and "keep on the sunny side." It also helps if you generally tend to find the behavior of insane and/or drunk people more amusing than irritating.

Last night a man in a green sweater staggered into the store and collided with the stack of shopping baskets at the entrance, knocking them over. He continued to stagger to the bathroom, unable to miss making impact with a necktie display. We just assumed he was drunk like half the other people hanging out in and around the store so when he went into the men's room, we thought he was going to just vomit in there. A while later he left. Not long after, a co-worker was informed by a customer that the men's room looked like Dracula's napkin. I checked it out myself and saw that the floor and the sink were covered in blood. He wasn't drunk at all. He just lost a ton of juice.

Another of my co-workers was given the honor of cleaning it up. I went back to the cash register. One man bought over $100 worth of candy canes.

Later on, at around 3:40 am I was behind the register when a big drunk dude with a thick Jamaican accent and real bad hiccups asked me when the next bus was coming by. I told him that the buses stopped running two hours ago. He said "I know, *hiccup* I missed my bus. I need to know *hiccup* when the next one is coming."

"Not until about 5:30ish."

He said "Aw fuck, *hiccup* you mean I *hiccup* really got to wait a whole hour?"

"It's more like two hours, sir."

"Fuck."

So he walks out of the store. My co-worker who had cleaned up the blood was working the register while I tidied up around the cosmetics isle. The dude came back 20 minutes later and asks if he can take a nap somewhere in the store. My co-worker politely tells him that that would not be permissible and the man becomes irate, basically yelling fuck a bunch with hiccups in between and stormed out yet again only to walk back in and lay down in the store's entrance and go to sleep. We just left him alone there because we figured it wasn't worth the hassle to try and deal with him for the two hours before his bus shows up.

5:10 comes around and my manager wakes him. He doesn't want to move, saying "I was having a nice nap."

She lets him know that the bus is going to be there soon. He growls "I KNOW!" then in a soft voice he repeats "I was having a nice nap." She told him he couldn't stay there any more and he goes "leave me alone, fuck." So by this time she's had it and tells him if he doesn't leave right now she's calling the cops so he gets up quick and leaves. My manager goes back to what she was doing before.

He comes back in not more than 5 minutes later, walks up to me and says "where's your deodorant?" I point him to the appropriate isle. He says "How much does it cost?" I tell him that that varies. He goes "Yeah, but how much does it cost?" I told him to read the price tags. It was then that I noticed that homeboy had pissed his jeans. He asks "do you have the spray?" I answered in the affirmative and entreated him to go back there and get it. The next thing I hear is the alarm that gets activated every time the deodorant case is opened go off and continued to do so for an entire minute. He walks up to my register absolutely reeking of body spray. I could smell it from a short distance and by the time he got to me it was almost unbearable. I asked him if he found the deodorant he was looking for. He said "You have a lot of different kinds of deodorant. That's good."

Then he says "let me ask you something man, what would you do if your manager tells you he's trying to get you fired?"

I said "if my manager is trying to get me fired?"

"Yeah."

"I dunno, maybe start looking for another job."

"No no no, I don't mean that. I mean how would you feel if your manager, he just a small man, he say to you 'I am trying to get you fired.'"

"I would think that that was not very encouraging to say the least."

"He is a small man. Maybe only five feet. Maybe even less than that. I might have to fight him for this but I don't want to. It would be too easy. That's not a fight."

"Yeah, you don't want to be known as the guy who beats up midgets."

"Exactly. Where is the challenge? They should give me someone like Shaq. That would be a fight."

"That's true, but I doubt that Shaq would try to get you fired."

He laughed and said "that's true. He would give me a million dollars instead of being a pain in my ass."

My boss sees that he is here and yells at him again. "Get out of the store like I told you before."

He goes "You have a problem with me?"

She said "Yeah, I do have a problem, you're in here drunk."

"I AM DRUNK AS HELL!" he roars.

"I can see that, now get out."

"I AM DRUNK AS HELL!"

"Get out before I call the cops."

"You want to know something?"

"Go!" He is heading toward the exit.

"I tell you something. I'm drunk as hell. I been drinking since seven o'clock!"

"Good, I hope you're proud of yourself. Now get out."

"I am proud." He's almost gone.

"Good."

"I am very proud of myself." He's just out the door. "Hey! You want to come settle this outside?"

"You want to fight a woman? What kind of man are you?"

He doesn't answer. He just wanders off. Then one of my favorite customers comes in. She's a super-cool Portuguese lady who's always really cheerful and every time I see her she tells me facts about Portugal. Today she informs me that she was going to fill out an application for a job at my store the day after the last time I saw her but was afraid that she wouldn't get hired due to her poor penmanship. "Nobody can read it" she says. I told her she should just have someone with good handwriting fill it out for her since we don't have to do any writing at all here.

"Oh you people here in America all have such wonderful handwriting. In my country nobody can write very well. Over there you have to get a private tutor and spend a few years practicing but over here you all can do it so clean and so clear."

I suggested that maybe the educational system in Portugal doesn't concentrate on penmanship as much as the one here does. She said "That's exactly right. Over there nobody cares if you write good or not. They probably think it's the parents job to teach them at home but the parents can't write good and they don't care. They don't even care if the kid does his homework most of the time. So of course they don't care about handwriting."

"Yeah," I said, trying to pretend like I know something about Portugal, "it's like 'mow the lawn and then leave me alone.'"

"Exactly, only in Portugal we hire somebody else to mow the lawn. We don't do it ourselves."

So yeah. To recap: Retail + The Graveyard shift = Non-stop party. You people with fancy hotshot jobs like Investment Banking and Civil Engineering might be able to watch TV Links in your office all day and get paid way more than me, even though you can watch every episode of 30 Rock while sipping the finest champagnes in your well lit cubicle, I am still having a way better time than you.