my first customer yesterday was a rather large linebacker of a man with a circus weightlifter droopy thick mustache and hair lightly curling around his wifebeater. after helping him with a few things and cracking my silly jokes (i had a good customer-laughing-with-me day yesterday), he kept saying about how much he wanted to take me out for 'beers'. endearing, but no.

in store memo said "let's have fun this weekend!" to officemax, apparently "fun" equals wearing a sports team shirt or uniform and sneakers instead of regular officemax attire. i have no team anything, though my brother and i found these OBNOXIOUS fuschia socccer uniforms at value village. over the last year, we've found three of them plus one in an equally obnoxious teal. i decided to wear it as a sports uniform.

so i'm at work in this lovely satin shirt and walking around, greeting customers. as the district manager and district loss prevention lady were also there, i heard them going up and down the aisles asking everyone 'need help finding anything?' now, if i'm shopping and i'm asked if i'm finding everything i need repeatedly every 30 seconds, i'm going to become irritated (or paranoid that i'm incompetent or that they think i'm stealing, the more likely emotion), so i just walked around saying "hello!" and smiling at everyone. (those of you that linger on every word i ever write or remember every thing that i have ever said will remember that once last year when the loss prevention lady was there when i was exhausted and ill beyond ill, that she talked to the manager about my 'nasty attitude', saying that i need to be taught to at least greet every single customer within talking distance with a hello.) after a few laps around the store and a gazillion VERY odd looks, i realized that my nametag had flipped over, so there was NO way that you could tell that i worked there. so here i am, some weird VERY badly dressed lady with a line across her forehead (i put a cap on my hairdye during the formenting process, and the indent from the cap stayed VERY purple-ey across my forehead for almost the entire evening) walking around and yapping "hi! hi! hi! hi! hi!" to every person i see.

speaking of very badly dressed... after that incident, i ended up behind a register for the entire evening. i realized later that you can't tell from the front of my shirt that it's a team shirt of any kind, really, and it truly looked like i just forgot my uniform and really just dressed extremely badly. coupled with the fact that i was the only one to dress up (other than roxana, who was in a kc chiefs shirt)... ah, yesh.

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