I am about to go wander around India for ten days with no internet, so I figure I should leave something long here for you to chew on (not figuratively LITERALLY CHEW IT) until I get back. So here is something that I posted before on my ghetto blog that doesn’t exist anymore. I have edited it since then. It is better now. But still REALLY LONG. And also BATSHIT CRAZY. Enjoy it if you have the patience.
The Disability Special
I am about to tell you the sort of story you don’t hear often – a story of screaming, disabilites, and bagging at a professional level. But first, some background.
Back when I was a bagger at The Store, I worked under a supervisor named Rob. Despite the fact that he was a low-level manager of a grocery store, Rob was one of the few Store employees who harbored the illusion that his job was extremely difficult and taxing. He was constantly stressed and borderline overwhelmed by his duties, which were watching other people work and, occasionally, counting money. Truly, if he had had business cards, they would have said “Rob: Doer of Difficult and Taxing Things.” And then there would have been a little picture of a man fighting a dragon. Or, more likely, a little picture of Jesus getting crucified.
An interesting fact about Rob is that, instead of saying things like “time for your break,” he would increase efficiency – at least in his mind – by pointing at you, pointing towards the break room, and then marching stalwartly away. His unwillingness to speak was so great that he really could have been thought of as a mime enthusiast. However, I’m pretty sure that he was actually a minimizing-interaction-with-other-people enthusiast. The man was not a fan of others. Especially when they touched him. If The Store was crowded and people accidentally brushed past him to get where they were going, he would visibly flinch.
On an entirely different (but equally important) note, part of my job as a bagger was to help disabled customers with their shopping. This typically meant blind customers, or customers in wheelchairs who couldn’t reach the higher shelves. Disabled customers were defined broadly, though – once, I helped a woman who thought that she was being followed by an all-male choir.
I said, “So like… do they want to sing to you?”
“Oh no. They want something even worse than that.”
In cases like that, the man-to-man customer service got a little taxing – especially when, on her way out, that woman peed in the store’s entryway – but it was usually fine.
Except one day. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by mae1023 
