Almost Famous

I mentioned in my last post that I’ve served someone who shared their name with a famous country singer. Well, I haven’t served anyone who was a celebrity in their own right, though from the grainy shots I’ve seen in tabloid magazines of people like Heidi Klum and Jennifer Love Hewitt at supermarkets, in time I may just have my brush with fame.

But for now, I’ll have to settle for two degrees of separation and former minor rock stars.

Today, I served a burly man who said that he was from New Zealand. Upon answering yes to his question of whether I knew of the film Whale Rider, he told me that he was ‘From there’. I could only assume that he meant he was from the place where the film was set and that he wasn’t delusional and under the illusion that his life is a film, a la Adaptation or Stranger than Fiction.

Jokingly, I asked whether he knew Keisha Castle-Hughes, the star of Whale Rider. Without changing expression, he replied carefully, ‘Yeah, I know her.’

‘Really? That’s interesting,’ I said, grinning slyly.

‘Well, I last saw her when she was really little.’ He waves a hand at around knee level to show how small she was. ‘I’m friends with her father.’
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A few weeks back, I had a very interesting conversation with a man I served at the beginning of my morning shift. I’m constantly surprised by how greater things can grow from mere small talk, and this was one of those occasions where talking about the weather can sometimes lead the person you’re conversing with to telling you about their time in a rock band.

Well, I did say sometimes.

It all began when I said how fortunate it was that it would cool down by Sunday because I was attending a music festival that weekend. This prompted the man to ask whether I played any musical instruments, to which I replied that I dabble with the piano and the bass guitar but I’m not particularly stellar at either. I added that I sing better than I play.

Then I returned the question. And it opened up a Pandora’s Box. The man, as it turned out, was in a band for seven years. He was, apparently, the lead singer and played rhythm guitar. (Boyfriend later argued that it is very rare for rhythm guitarists to also be the lead singer and insisted that he was pulling my leg.)

Further questions revealed that his band composed a few original tunes but mostly played covers (‘We covered around two hundred songs’). They played at various functions and clubs, and even opened up their own club, entertaining there most nights of the week. Thinking of all the nightclubs I had seen in the city open up and disappear or re-vamp themselves six months later with a new name and a lick of paint, I said that nightclubs don’t often have a very long life span. In response, he said that contrary to popular trends, his club lasted many years.

Everything he said was in past tense, with a certain hint of nostalgia, so I asked why his band disbanded. Ruefully, he told a dramatic story about how one day on stage he had a mental blank. He couldn’t remember what song they were meant to be playing and how to play the song on his guitar. He had to ask the drummer to remind him. It was then, he intoned, that he realized that he didn’t want to be in the band anymore. They were playing up to six nights a week and he was burned out. Things had become almost robotic for him, he was operating on auto-pilot. Very simply, he’d lost his passion for making music.

‘…And I haven’t touched a guitar since,’ he finished.

Yes, it was a very grand tale.

I’m undecided about whether it was a true story though. I see no reason why he would have made anything up, and why he would have gone to the trouble of weaving lies for a humble checkout operator. But, I guess I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt. Not simply because I like to think the best of people, but because it was quite a nifty ol’ story.

Oh, that old time of rock and roll.

Freak like me

On Friday, I served My Chemical Romance.

Okay, it wasn’t the My Chemical Romance, but it may as well have been.

The motley crew were a trio of kids, representing almost the full spectrum of troubled youth. They looked dysfunctional, but were defiant, clearly asserting that they had as much right to be shopping as anyone else did.

The one who stood out the most was a girl with dyed black hair and, on quick count, with eight piercings in her head, mostly confined to her face. A second girl was a faded blonde whose arms were covered with scars and large white bandages. Accompanying the two was a boy in an oversized hooded jumper. While his female companions had emo/pseudo-goth and self-destruction covered, he contributed by being young and disoriented.

Quite young, actually. The two girls seemed four years his senior, and they were only eighteen at most. And quite disoriented – he followed the entire proceedings with a dazed expression on his face, moving only to take instructions from his friends.

The shopping transaction in all other respects was like any other. People needed to be fed and so they were buying food. In surveying their purchases – two bottles of salad dressing, one lettuce (the only vegetable), chips, biscuits, frozen goods – I deduced that they were new to the whole grocery shopping thing. That or they were stocking up for a few days on their own without parental supervision.

‘Do you all live together?’ I commented casually.

The raven-haired girl responded for all of them. ‘Yeah, this is the first time we’ve gone shopping for groceries.’

‘Oh, okay.’

‘We’ve bought so damn much this time – luckily we won’t have to spend very much the next time we come out.’

She broke off to gently chastise the other two for picking out so many things. ‘Jesus, you guys, this is going to cost me something like two hundred dollars.’

The young boy looked bewildered and apologetic. The other girl replied defensively, ‘Nah, it’s not going to come up to that much. One-thirty max.’

‘I say one-twenty,’ the boy finally piped up.

‘Well, okay, but this is going to send me broke, y’know,’ said the black-haired girl.

There was a quiet moment in which I processed their items without saying a word. Beep, beep. Bag. The three talked amongst themselves for a moment, with the black-haired girl moving back and forth between the groceries on the conveyor belt and her two friends at the completed end of the checkout. Without warning, she turned to me.

‘Do you have kids?’ she asked, completely out of the blue.

A little thrown back, I replied, ‘Uh… no, I’m a little young for that.’ I said the words hastily and wondered whether I’d chosen my reply wisely. I couldn’t be sure whether the young boy wasn’t hers. They did seem too similar in age, but you never know. And I’m not just saying this because she seemed “troubled”, as any prim adult might call her.

‘Well don’t ever have any.’ She jostled the boy. ‘This guy is costing me a fortune.’

‘He’s not yours,’ I blurted.

‘Nah, he isn’t. But sometimes he seems like it.’ She ruffled his hair affectionately and he gave a small smile.
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As we approached the last twenty-odd items, the trio put forward a new round of guesses as to what the purchases would come to.

‘One-eighty,’ the black-haired girl said firmly.

‘No, it’s going to be no more than one-sixty,’ said the blonde.

‘One-seventy!’ said the boy.
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The final total came to just over one-sixty. Pulling out a card, the black-haired girl reluctantly punched her pin number into the eftpos machine and pressed enter. She sighed. ‘At least it won’t cost so much next time.’

I was just glad that she wasn’t using a credit card. Considering their monetary concerns, using credit would utterly ruin them, if not managed correctly.

When we parted, the three waved congenially to me and thanked me for their help. Despite appearances, the three of them were actually much more normal – and friendly – than many of my other customers. It’s a shame that others won’t judge them to be that way.

Where the wild things are

Being placed on an express checkout when you: A) Haven’t been at work for four days and B) Have never worked express before, is as pleasant as stubbing your little toe on a table leg and as disorienting as riding one of those spinning, circular things at the park.

On express you get the worst of two worlds. Firstly, there’s added pressure on you to process items quickly. Secondly, there is little time to talk with customers. And talking is probably the best aspect about my job. (I refrain from saying ‘the only good aspect’). But despite these factors, I nevertheless managed to hold a couple of reasonably interesting conversations.

One man who I served bought around 25 tins of cat food. As per usual, when someone buys a medium to large quantity of pet food, I ask how many cats or dogs they have. Yesterday, there was one couple, whose purchases were 90% cat food (total coming to around $30) told me that they owned two cats and fourteen kittens. Anyway, the man with the 25 tins of cat food said that he only had one cat. I commented that pets seem to have a huge variety in food these days, eyeing a can of seafood flavoured meat as I said this, and the customer agreed. He added that his cat was very fussy.

As I processed the transaction, I thought about the cat that I had hit with my car the other day and hoped that it wasn’t his. I was driving down my street, some way from my house, when this black and white cat jumped in front of me. It had been standing on a grassy patch just before the curb next to a man in a green shirt and as I approached it looked at me with some trepidation but decided to dash across the road nevertheless.

It wasn’t fast enough, however. As I passed the man (who fortunately hadn’t chosen to cross in front of me with the cat), I knocked the cat with my front bumper. I hadn’t swerved to one side because I thought that there would be a worse result – I might run it down flat with a tyre. And I hadn’t braked suddenly because there was no time to.

It all happened very quickly. I saw the cat spring up, then heard a thump. I slowed down and stopped a few paces ahead, looking in my rearview mirror to see if the cat was alright. There was a black lump in the middle of the road which was still for a moment, but then it leapt up and ran underneath a parked car on the opposite side of the road. The man who had been standing next to it followed it calmly to the car, opened the passenger side front door, got in, and closed the door – without checking the cat.

Because of the man’s indifference and because the cat had gotten up, I thought that there was little point in me reversing back to the scene of the crime to check on things. So I put the car in motion again and drove off.

With the thought lingering in my head that the person standing before me could have been the man I’d seen on my street, I scanned, bagged, and processed the transaction. The customer didn’t seem perturbed, though, so I decided that he wasn’t the same man.

But then again, the man from my street hadn’t seemed perturbed either.

On the record

Strange things have been happening to me lately at the checkout. Songs have been popping into my head, forming a soundtrack that is in complete contrast to the mundanity and relative sedatedness of working. I’ve been recalling quotes from movies and obscure TV shows at appropriate moments.

It started this week, I think, or perhaps last Friday. One minute my brainwaves were running at alpha level and I was grabbing products off the conveyor belt, and the next Pete Doherty’s voice was blaring in my head and I was thinking, ‘You’ve got nothin’ on your mind/ you’re bleedin own you two bob cunt’.

The quotes that I thought of were a little more respectable.

On Tuesday there was some kid in the background screeching like a car doing high revs with the handbrake on, and the woman I was serving kept shaking her head but was smiling in that ‘Kids will be kids’ sort of way. I smiled back at her and said carefully, ‘That reminds me of a quote from a film. Have you seen Sleepless in Seattle?’

She said yes, so I continued on.

‘Well, Tom Hanks says to the woman he’s on a date with, “Do you have kids?”‘

(This remark resonated with the customer and she exclaimed, ‘Yeah, I remember that part!’)

‘Anyway, his date replies, “No” and he quipps, “Would you like mine?”‘

The customer laughed and said that she recalled that part of the film. She then joked about how she wouldn’t give her children away; rather, she’d sell them off at the right price.
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I had just finished my shift yesterday and was walking to the back of the store to clock off when I stopped by the open fridge to look at the desserts on display. I noticed a small pavlova that was marked down to $1.49 and I decided to buy it.

At the express checkout, when my pavlova was being processed by the checkout veteran who I mentioned in a previous post, two middle-aged women queued behind me and started talking amongst themselves. The one nearest to me placed a crusty cob (a bakery item) on the counter of the express checkout and laid down next to it a long breadstick. As she was doing this, she asked her companion, ‘You didn’t break the bread, did you?’

Her companion was making her reply when I turned around and said wryly, ‘Isn’t that a biblical reference?’

The two paused for a moment before laughing and saying, ‘Oh, it is too!’

And on that high note, I paid for my pavlova, took it and left.

I’m with the band

Stop me if you’ve heard this one.

A man wearing a Smiths t-shirt walks into a supermarket with his mother. He meets another man in the checkout queue in a Rammstein t-shirt. The checkout girl tells the Smiths man that she prefers just Morrissey and it sparks a conversation about Morrissey’s various albums and songs. He says that he likes The Smiths’ album Meat is Murder, referring to his shirt.

To the Rammstein man the girl asks whether he caught the band when they were in Perth two years ago. He muses over this then tells me that he missed them and can’t remember what he was doing at the time but that he saw Rammstein in Germany.

The two men and the mother leave. Checkout girl continues her duties.
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(Well, it kind of happened like that. The two actually came in on different days.)

Spiders from Mars

A one-off encounter with a stranger who tells you that you are special is an amusement, and mildly flattering in an eerie sort of way. A second encounter, however, is just plain creepy.

On the day after I served the Japanese guy, he came to the store again.

I had been heading for the service/smoke shop area, preparing to drop my belongings off before opening up a checkout, when I bumped into him. He was dressed in all white, including a white baseball cap, and when I noticed him I mentally winced.

‘I had just been thinking about you, and look, here you are,’ he said, looking at me in wonderment.

With a forced smile I replied, ‘Oh really? That’s interesting.’

Silver chains dangle from his neck. On one of them is a crucifix pendant. I thought of how he had said that he was a very spiritual person and at the time I’d thought of Buddhism.

In his hands are several grocery items and he asks me where the olive oil is. Turning my head to look at the signs above, I tell him that cooking oils are in aisle 8. Thinking that our encounter would end there, I glanced at the clock beyond the service desk. Three minutes to eleven thirty. Three minutes until my shift is to start.

He tells me that I’m special. I give a wry smile and hope that we’ve reached the end of the conversation. But no, he spews forth a slew of other questions, mainly about what I’m studying.

Then he asks me when my birthday falls.

I’m terrible at lying on the spot, even when it comes to something as simple as faking a birthdate. It’s kind of like how people are asked their mobile number by someone they don’t want to court and in dishing a random set of numbers they end up giving three digits more than a mobile number contains. So, when he asked, I hesitated and thought to myself that a birthdate isn’t particularly revealing information, and then gave the information – minus the year – to him.

A look of delight, then – ‘Really? That’s amazing, that’s my birthday too!’

I feign surprise. ‘Really? Wow.’

Considering how his birthday was the same as mine, it was rather odd that he then asked what star sign I belong to. Upon supplying it –

‘Ah. Librans are very intelligent and they often have a third sense about things. They can usually learn things much faster than other people can.’

‘Is that right? Good to know I was born with those abilities.’ I looked at the clock again. Twenty-nine past eleven.

‘What’s your phone number?’

I inhaled before replying. ‘Uh, I’m afraid I already have a boyfriend.’

There is no change in his facial expression. ‘No, I’m not after a relationship. I just think you’re very special. And we have the same birthday, isn’t that interesting?’

I struggle to respond. ‘Um, right.’ Fortunately or unfortunately, he talks enough for the both of us.

‘I just think it’s amazing, you know, that I had been thinking about you and then you appeared, you know, and that we share the same birthday.’

A weak laugh. Another glance at the clock.

This time, he notices where I’m looking. ‘Oh, do you have to work soon.’

‘Um, yeah, I’m supposed to be on now at the moment.’ I start sliding off in the direction of the service desk.

‘Ok, sure, and where was the olive oil again?’

‘Aisle 8.’ I point.

‘Good. Ok, I’ll see you at the checkout in a moment, alright?’

‘Uh-huh, see you.’

I flee.

At a few minutes past half past eleven I am finally on checkout. I serve two customers without too many hiccups and bid them goodbye. I am onto my third when I notice him in the line.

He offers a greeting then interrupts me as I’m about to scan his bottle of olive oil.

‘No, don’t scan it. I don’t want my items contaminated by radiation.’

Later, I remember that the first time I served him I had scanned his purchases. But for the time being, I’m too weirded out to think of much at all. I obediently type in the individual numbers below the barcode on the bottle of oil and then repeat this with his other items.

He asks more questions which I don’t give particularly mind-blowing answers to. Thankfully, he doesn’t ask for my number again.

I tell him that his purchases come to fourteen-odd dollars and he begins to count out his money on the conveyor belt. I rush a hand forward to stop him, but the conveyor belt is triggered and it moves, taking the money along with it. I manage to grab his ten dollar note but two coins are lost.

After a few minutes and several attempts to retrieve his money, I tell the Japanese guy that his coins are lost. Irritated, he asks what he’s supposed to do now. He only has fifteen dollars on him.

‘Well,’ I replied, ‘You can leave behind one or two of your items and come back for them…’ Giving the items to him for free is out of the question.

He refuses. ‘I don’t want to do that. My coins are just down there.’

‘Well, if you can get the coins then you can take all of your purchases.’

During the search and our almost heated argument, a frustrated customer takes their items off my conveyor belt and stalks off to another checkout.

The Japanese guy tries his luck, and after some groping around, his fingers manage to grasp the coins. Handing me the three dollars, along with some stringy item that looks like a dried shred of a spring onion, his face relaxes. He reassumes his mask of mellowed-outness.

‘That was interesting, wasn’t it? I mean, what are the chances, right?’ He stares at me while he chuckles.

At this point, I don’t want to say anything more to him than I have to. Thinking of all the other customers who have lost credit cards, change, and even a thin package of chocolate down the conveyor belt, I replied briefly, ‘Yeah, very strange,’ then give him his receipt.

He doesn’t want a bag, so he leaves holding his purchases in his hands. He tells me that he’ll return again very soon.
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The next day, I tell the customer services manager about the Japanese guy. She listens for a while then says that if he comes back I can call for her and she’ll serve him.

I wonder if he’ll tell her that she’s special too.

All these things that I’ve done

At nine am, work was fairly well dead. There were only two people manning the checkouts at this hour, myself and a checkout veteran, whose eyes today were ringed with white eyeshadow. (Don’t ask. I sure didn’t). The few customers that were in the store eventually made their way to the checkouts. Glancing from the other woman to myself, they made a decision and bounded towards either her or me.

Between customers, I stared off into the shop floor and tried to think up a new topic to write about. I watched the other checkout operator converse with one mother after another and make cooing sounds at their babies. She got the mothers and babies, I got the elderly couples and twenty and thirty-somethings shopping alone.

At another point, she exchanged some cordial words with someone several feet away who I assumed was a regular customer that she had become acquainted with. They called out to each other over the dead space separating them, and laughed at shared amusements. Then the customer returned to her shopping and disappeared into an aisle. It was during this encounter that a realization struck me. Being a checkout operator is more than the act of being friendly and processing customers’ shopping as efficiently as possible. It’s a battle for hearts and minds.

My company insider (herein to be called ‘Insider’) once told me a story about a checkout operator who was so well liked that on one occasion all of the customers who were ready to pay had lined up in front of her checkout. The few other checkouts were completely unattended. When a service assistant approached customers standing in the queue to suggest that they proceed to an unoccupied checkout, they refused. The customers were adament about being served by this one service cashier and were prepared to wait for the privilege.

The explanation for the behaviour of the customers was that the checkout operator had endeared herself to her customers. She had established significant rapport with the people she served, and had become a pleasant fixture of their shopping experience.

Now I don’t aim to model myself in this mythologised operator’s image. But I do try my hardest to make each transaction as painless as possible and to leave the people I serve thinking, ‘Ah, I liked that girl.’ If you’ve ever played Sims, then the graphical equivalent of what I try to achieve is to stimulate an image of a smiley face above the customer’s head.

Today I had a most unusual encounter with a customer who seemed to think that I was not only a competent checkout operator, but practically an enlightened human being.

‘Hi,’ I smiled, to the customer who had arrived in front of me. He looked Japanese, in his twenties, with a cap planted loosely atop their brown-tinted hair. And he was staring at me as though I was an incarnation of James Brown.

‘Hi,’ he said. ‘I was over at that other checkout’ – he turned and gestured to an express lane where a new sort-of work friend was standing – ‘but I saw you and decided to come over here instead. You just looked so… friendly.’

Amused, I asked, ‘Friendly? How so?’

‘You just have this glow about you. You’re so bright and… I don’t know, happy.’

I had to laugh. ‘Oh really?’

He continued, ‘You seem to be a very spiritually happy person, very content and in touch with who you truly are.’

With some irony, I thought to myself, Ah, if only he knew the truth!

Aloud, I said, ‘Well, thank you. That’s a… pretty flattering compliment,’ smiling broadly.

‘Mm. It was a compliment.’

‘Are you a spiritual person?’ I asked.

He nodded. ‘Yes, very much so. I believe in being in touch with myself and with the world around me.’ He grasped the grocery bag I had placed on the produce scale. ‘And you seem to be very… radiant.’

I counted out his change, laying the notes and coins on his open palm. I could feel his eyes on me, still staring solemnly.

‘Well, I hope that means that you’ll be coming back to this store, ‘I joked, looking up.

He responded with a serious expression on his face. ‘It doesn’t matter if I return here or not. I’ll keep with me your reflection.’

His eyes bore into mine. I blinked back, grinning stupidly. I was amused and flattered in equal parts, but was glad for the fact that the former of the two didn’t seem to show.

Giving a weak laugh, I broke the staring match. ‘Ok. Well, it was nice meeting you,’ I said.

The Japanese guy held out his hand and I shook it. ‘Nice meeting you also. Have a good day.’

‘I hope you have a good day too.’
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With each customer, the situation is always different. Facial expressions, body language, reactions need to be gauged to determine how I will interact with them, and win them over if possible. While a new challenge would be presented by the next customer to come, it seemed that this one battle at least, had been won.

Now hiring

The question I’m most commonly asked, after how I’m doing, is whether I’m studying at university. My reply is usually yes, I’m majoring in criminology, before advising them that if they freeze the leg of lamb they’re about to purchase, it would make a nifty murder weapon which they could later eat to hide the evidence.

No, actually, I give them an honest answer and observe their relief at the fact that I’m not eking out a living as a checkout operator. Not yet, anyway.

Interesting, only one person so far has asked me what I want to do as a career. I gave the vague answer ‘I want to work in the media’ then jokingly asked if they had any contacts. Well, jokingly to them, but with a half hope that they might actually have contacts. Stranger things have happened. I’ve seen customers buy mango and chives dip.

The customer musingly replied, ‘Well…’ but by then I had unfortunately specified that I want to work for the ABC and they said they didn’t have any contacts there, but did in other places. Before I could “jokingly” prompt him and pretend that I wasn’t too picky, the transaction was over and it would have looked too desperate on my part to cajole him into giving me references, so he got away without the conversation going any further.

Today I was offered a job. At least I think I was. The customer seemed to be talking in code and I played along.

They asked me if I was at uni, I said that I was, and in my final year, then when the transaction was over he asked if I had any friends who might be interested in working for him. I said perhaps, I may know some people, and asked him what sort of business he ran. He said that he works in a wholesale company and that he was looking for full-time sales persons. He couldn’t find his business card, so I had him scribble on a slip of paper the business name, phone number, and a contact’s name.

Before he left I asked if the business had a website. He said yes and was about to write it down, but being mindful of the impatient customers behind him I told him hastily that “my friends” could just Google the company name.

Tonight I did a search for the business and found a wholesale… lingere company. I thought to myself, ‘Ha, the plot thickens…’ and was gleeful at the discovery. It would make for a great story. I would write about an assuming customer who tried to pick up me a sales person for a lingere company. How greasy.

I was dead pleased.

Sadly, I decided to make sure that I had all the facts straight. In probing deeper, Googling the telephone number I was given, I discovered the real company the customer had been selling. Disappointingly, the actual business to be a more legitimate and boring one. The company deals in gifts and homeware, and not something more racy.

So, I guess the moral of the story is, if it’s an interesting story you’re after, don’t dig too deep and stop once you’ve got enough dirt. If it’s a serious job you’re after… well… any takers?

…Like it’s 1999

In my entry about conversation starters, I neglected to mention a nation-wide event that occurs between Christmas and Australia Day. This event is, of course, New Year’s Eve. While I forgot to write about it, I certainly did not neglect to take advantage of it as a topic for conversation. Whenever I felt it was appropriate, I would pipe up, ‘So, are you doing anything for New Year’s Eve?’

The customers who were buying multi-pack soft drinks and bags upon bags of potato chips would answer that they were having a party. I didn’t bother to question those who bought over a kilo of sausages and bottles of sauce.

One man I came into contact with on Friday who I prompted for his New Year’s Eve plans gave a very personal response, which led to a rather involved discussion…
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‘So, do you have any big plans for New Year’s Eve?’ I asked, with my usual, customer-friendly smile pasted across my face. The man in front of me was thin, with gnarled grey hair and a solemn expression.

‘Ah, I don’t believe in making a big deal out of New Year’s’, he said dismissively.

‘Oh?’ I asked innocently.

He leaned forward and held me in a steady gaze. ‘Nah. See, the way I look at it, every day should be a cause for celebration.’

I looked up while scanning his purchases. ‘That’s an interesting perspective. But isn’t it good that there’s this one day of the year when you can really let loose?’

The customer stood firm. He seemed intent on making his philosophical case. ‘Yeah, well, some people are just depressed all the time and they simply spend this one day feeling differently, but I think we should all treat every day as something special. We should be grateful for every day that we wake up and realize we’re still alive. Every day should be a celebration.’

In an even voice, I continued more insistently. ‘I agree. But not every day has a public holiday following it during which you can sleep off your hangover or whattnot,’ I laughed gamely.

He held fast to his opinion. ‘No, but we should treat every day as a gift and not just think of this on one day of the year.’

Our horns were locked and we were each pushing forward. I mentally searched for another counterpoint. Finally, I gestured to my right at the stack of multi-pack drinks pressed up against the wall and replied, ‘Well, it’s a good thing that we have occasions such as New Year’s Eve, or else we’d never get rid of all those Cokes!’

He looked to his left. ‘Yes, well, it’s a good day for retailers, but that’s about it.’

I smiled congenially. Debate over. He held out some notes and I returned to him some change. As he departed, I wryly wished him a good new year.

So the debate had ended in a stalemate. In a way, I think the argument was actually moot as it seemed that he and I were pushing two different things. I was talking about an occasion on which you can party hearty and participate in a public bonding session over the dawning of a new year and he was arguing about something more existential. Alas, I think we were both right. New Year’s Eve is just another day, depending on how you choose to spend it. It is simply the case that NYE offers a state-sanctioned freedom to piss the night away without the need to show up in a clean shirt at work the next day.

Or, in my case, a clean shirt and an ever-chipper attitude.

Puberty blues

Today I served a male who I guessed was one of those people who look like they’re still going through puberty but who are actually pushing 20. He bought an assortment of aluminum-packaged instant pastas, soft drinks, a bottle of milk, a frozen pizza, and some instant noodles.

I asked him if he was going to be home alone for a while. With a grudging smile he admitted that he was.