YEAH, WE DON'T GOT THAT

I've never been a people person. I've never had great faith in humanity. What I did have, working in retail utterly destroyed. Pencils actually does carry a reasonable selection of merchandise (not that it's in stock-- but technically we carry it). Being a cashier, people often stop on their way in to ask me if we carry a particular item. Usually it's stuff like register tape (back half of aisle two) or stationary (aisle one on the left). But every now and then I get very special customers who inquire about items such as aquariums (the same neck-tattooed customer followed up asking if we sold XBox games-- if only there was a store that sold both aquarium supplies and console games), facial hair trimmers, and lawnmowers  (at a store two doors down from a Sears). There are also those customers whose sole purchases are things like Smooth Away, Snuggies (ugh), sunglasses (really? we're who you thought of?) or our over-priced candy.

Then there are the customers who were obviously never hooked on phonics. It's usually the older crowd who asks for ink "cart-lidges," but dipshits of all ages ask for "cayenne" and "mag-netta"  color cartridges. Once, while I was ringing up a couple, the wife picked up one of those retractable pens that shows a different message on the barrel every time you click it. She clicked it a couple of times, glanced thoughtfully at the tag and murmured, "hm... rotating massage pen..." I just stared at her for a moment as I quietly wept inside. I didn't bother correcting her. Another time I was ringing up a large piece of foam board and I was having trouble maneuvering the bar code beneath the scanner. Noticing my difficulty, the customer commented, "Don't kill yourself." Finally getting it, I replied, "It's just a bit cumbersome." "Cumbersome?" he repeated. "That's a good word... cumbersome." For the rest of the transaction he repeated the word quietly to himself as if it was a riddle he was trying to figure out.

They can't remember their own phone numbers yet I'm the one making $7.68 an hour.