Work Makes Me Cheat

A long, long time ago I used to post on this thing here called a blog. It held stories about random encounters with the boys on whom I have momentary and fleeting crushes, celeb sightings around NYC, and just general nonsense that I thought up and spewed out. It was fun, those happy golden days that I’d spend tapping away on my computer, rewriting sentences because the Grammar Nazi in my brain refused to accept a preposition at the end of a sentence. I’d also go off on tangents like googling “ending with a preposition” to make sure I don’t come off sounding retarded and spend far too long reading the Grammar Girl’s post about prepositions only to get halfway through and remember I have a blog post to write. Oh the things I used to do.

Sadly, something called “Work” got in the way of the special relationship between Blog and me. Work and I started seeing each twice a week at the beginning of summer. It was nice and casual. You know, just one of those Friday-Saturday kind of things. But then, something happened. A manager was sent to another store and suddenly hours freed up. Work wanted to see me almost every single day. It got all hot and heavy for a while and I tried to keep Blog from feeling lonely. Except the thing is, Work doesn’t want me to come home and just sit around with Blog. No, Work wants to come home exhausted after standing for hours on end dealing with idiotic customers. And Work even expects me to go to the gym afterwards. Or before. Work isn’t all that picky. And so after spending far too many hours on my feet and with people who really shouldn’t be allowed to reproduce, I just haven’t had all that time for Blog.

We’re not breaking up. No sir*. We’re not even taking a break. Mostly, we’re just going back to talking. We get to not see each other for weeks at a time and not feel guilty. It’s a wonderful thing.

But before we get back to talking, let me tell you a few more things about Work.

The fitting rooms at the Store do not come with someone standing there to take clothes that didn’t work back unless it’s Christmas, Back to School, Tax Free Weekend, or Black Friday. We don’t get enough hours to hire someone to sit in the fitting room all day. Hell we don’t even get enough hours to have more than one associate working a shift Monday-Thursday. That means that it’s just me and a manager with an entire store filled with people who want to try stuff on or even buy it. So when someone comes out of the fitting room and asks us what we want them to do with the stuff that didn’t work, we nicely (or in varying degrees of nice) reply that they should put it back where they found it.

Yesterday, Manager told a girl that. Honestly, the girl looked like a little fatter and a bit uglier version of Blake Lively. I even made a mental note to tell Funny Coworker about it because he has the world’s biggest crush on Blake Lively. Anyway, Manager told Fat Blake to put the clothes away on the floor. At the time, Manager also had her hands filled with a huge pile of jeans and I was helping a customer.

After a few minutes, I noticed Fat Blake + friend at the registers. I walked over and asked them to switch because I was ringing on a different one. Fat Blake did but she left behind a pair of jeans on the other side.

“Are you getting those?” I asked.

She shook her head.

“Oh.” I gave her a Look.

She smiled. “I just didn’t feel like walking over there to put them back.”

“Really?” I gave her another Look but didn’t say anything else. I finished ringing her up without saying another word and gave her the bag of clothes.

Then, as she was leaving, she stopped to watch and see if I went to put away her jeans. I did. There’s a reason she’s Fat Blake. And that’s because she “just doesn’t feel like walking over there”. Or anywhere.

We also had three customers who casually informed me that $200 doesn’t buy as much weed as it used to. I guess the recession sure is setting in.

*A few days ago two little girls called me “ma’am”. Then, the next day at the beach another kid called me “ma’am”. I’m 19. I’m so not old enough to be a “ma’am”. Or am I?!?