Guess what? I have a new job, that's what. I don't know if you've ever heard of it, just a little place called FABRIC DEPOT. That's right. The place where your grandma and gay friend go to buy their bra extenders and stretch metallic glitter mesh (respectively). It's just a job, I'm humble. It's not like I get my own desk and am in charge of all the faux fur orders-OH WAIT YEAH IT IS. Not only that, but if you place an order on line with us and get one. Just one. Single. Fucking. Digit. ONE wrong on the credit card number you give us, I will find your address and phone number, you son of a bitch. I will fucking call you. I call my phone Thunder, and my dialing finger Lightening. Let's just say you don't wanna get struck. In case you are a simpleton, and you're not impressed by the prestige my position holds, maybe you'll be impressed by a little thing called 40% off all store merchandise. Yeah. I got that. The animal print vinyl section is scared of my first paycheck. Now I know you guys are asking, "But Alex, what about all the designer savvy fashionistas you must work with? That's what we really want to know about!" I know you do, darlings. And I will tell you all about them. I will tell you tales of over-sized cardigans and beaded spectacle chains that your wildest dreams never dared depict.
FIRST is my manager. We'll call her Debbie. Because that's her name. If you saw Debbie walking down the street, I guarantee that your (and indeed, anyone's) first thought would be "Damn. That bitch look like she eats hot dog flavored potato chips." And you'd be correct. She offered me some one time. The salty greasy meaty after-taste is simply delectable. Debbie can usually be heard throughout the entire department flapping what is anatomically known as her huge-ass mouth hole to anyone who will listen on how she brought her snot-nosed son to a park and a dog barked at him, whereupon she courageously put herself between the dog and her son, and proceded to tell the dog owners that it's just wrong to bring a violent dog like that to a park where they KNOW children are going to be. The nerve of some assholes. I would have given those dog-owning-park-going sons of bitches a piece of my mind too. Debbie is a veritable wealth of moral information and wise food choices. MOVING ONWARD TO....Cindy, so far my favorite of the millions of people that work in that store/underground city. Cindy is an Asian of the Chinese sort (as I soon learned) and I am an Asian of the Cauc persuasion. But sometimes silently knowing isn't enough to clear perceived racial tension in the work place. Here's how it came to be that she's forced me to think of her solely as "Chinese Cindy": I'm sitting in the lunch room, just be-boppin' along, and a little Asian girl comes up to me and asks, with vaguely broken Engrish, what my name is. I tell her I'm Alex and wait for her to introduce herself, explain why she walked up on me in such an abrupt and awkward manner, or at the very least give me some info, tips, or suggestions for a newcomer to the workplace, none of which she did, so I looked at her name tag and said "...And you're Cindy?" and she says, "Yeah, you can read that on my name tag." Like she assumed I was psychic, but wanted me to know that there were much simpler ways of ascertaining that kind of information. So from here on out, I'm not really sure where the conversation is going, or what this chick wants from me. But being uncertain doesn't prepare you for whatever may happen, and I'm at a bit of a loss when the next thing she says is, "I'm the only Chinese here. Working here, I mean." I'm not sure if she was expecting me to be like, "WHAT THE FUCK?!" or what, but all I could think of to say was, "...Are you sure? I mean it's a big place. There's not even ONE other Chinese person working here?" And here is where it gets a little sad because I had to inform the poor girl (who is herself Chinese) that not all Asians are the same damn nationality, because her reply was an astonishing, "Well, there's one other girl, but she's Thai." to which I quickly got indignant about this girl's obvious lack of education on Asian cultures, and said, "Well, that's different...isn't it?" And I swear to you that was the end of the conversation. She said bye and left because her break was over. At the risk of surpassing your daily recommended intake of boring old lady descriptions, I'm just going to lump the rest of the people at my work in the "Grandma" category. Granted, there are many subdivisions in that category: The Fashionable Lipstick-Wearing Grandma, The Red-Dyed-Hair, Stripey-socked Funky Grandma, The Long-Haired, Ex-Hippy Cigarette-Smoking Grandma, and any other kind of grandma you can think of. But they's all grandmas. That's why one of my favorite games to play throughout the work day is "Who sucked the most dicks in her day?" If you are someday around this many old ladies, and it doesn't force you to wonder what weird freaky sexual shit these saddle bags got into when they were in their prime, then I guess you just don't think of grandmas as real people, and I just feel sorry for your narcissistic ass. But for the record, the one who usually wins these little mental contests of mine is a certain special grandma I like to call Pearl Necklace Grandma. She wears a different pearl necklace every day, usually accompanied by elaborate dangly pearl earrings, coral lipstick (Racy!) and an over-sized flower clip in her hair. She told me she has over three hundred pairs of those dangly earrings. Anywho, I gotta rest up. Some dead beat who had their card declined when I tried to ring their order for flannel and a rotary cutter is about to get their ASS handed to them tomorrow, and I gotta be nice and rested. May your scissors never dull, nor your arthritis interfere with your latch hooking, as we say in the biz.
-Alex
FIRST is my manager. We'll call her Debbie. Because that's her name. If you saw Debbie walking down the street, I guarantee that your (and indeed, anyone's) first thought would be "Damn. That bitch look like she eats hot dog flavored potato chips." And you'd be correct. She offered me some one time. The salty greasy meaty after-taste is simply delectable. Debbie can usually be heard throughout the entire department flapping what is anatomically known as her huge-ass mouth hole to anyone who will listen on how she brought her snot-nosed son to a park and a dog barked at him, whereupon she courageously put herself between the dog and her son, and proceded to tell the dog owners that it's just wrong to bring a violent dog like that to a park where they KNOW children are going to be. The nerve of some assholes. I would have given those dog-owning-park-going sons of bitches a piece of my mind too. Debbie is a veritable wealth of moral information and wise food choices. MOVING ONWARD TO....Cindy, so far my favorite of the millions of people that work in that store/underground city. Cindy is an Asian of the Chinese sort (as I soon learned) and I am an Asian of the Cauc persuasion. But sometimes silently knowing isn't enough to clear perceived racial tension in the work place. Here's how it came to be that she's forced me to think of her solely as "Chinese Cindy": I'm sitting in the lunch room, just be-boppin' along, and a little Asian girl comes up to me and asks, with vaguely broken Engrish, what my name is. I tell her I'm Alex and wait for her to introduce herself, explain why she walked up on me in such an abrupt and awkward manner, or at the very least give me some info, tips, or suggestions for a newcomer to the workplace, none of which she did, so I looked at her name tag and said "...And you're Cindy?" and she says, "Yeah, you can read that on my name tag." Like she assumed I was psychic, but wanted me to know that there were much simpler ways of ascertaining that kind of information. So from here on out, I'm not really sure where the conversation is going, or what this chick wants from me. But being uncertain doesn't prepare you for whatever may happen, and I'm at a bit of a loss when the next thing she says is, "I'm the only Chinese here. Working here, I mean." I'm not sure if she was expecting me to be like, "WHAT THE FUCK?!" or what, but all I could think of to say was, "...Are you sure? I mean it's a big place. There's not even ONE other Chinese person working here?" And here is where it gets a little sad because I had to inform the poor girl (who is herself Chinese) that not all Asians are the same damn nationality, because her reply was an astonishing, "Well, there's one other girl, but she's Thai." to which I quickly got indignant about this girl's obvious lack of education on Asian cultures, and said, "Well, that's different...isn't it?" And I swear to you that was the end of the conversation. She said bye and left because her break was over. At the risk of surpassing your daily recommended intake of boring old lady descriptions, I'm just going to lump the rest of the people at my work in the "Grandma" category. Granted, there are many subdivisions in that category: The Fashionable Lipstick-Wearing Grandma, The Red-Dyed-Hair, Stripey-socked Funky Grandma, The Long-Haired, Ex-Hippy Cigarette-Smoking Grandma, and any other kind of grandma you can think of. But they's all grandmas. That's why one of my favorite games to play throughout the work day is "Who sucked the most dicks in her day?" If you are someday around this many old ladies, and it doesn't force you to wonder what weird freaky sexual shit these saddle bags got into when they were in their prime, then I guess you just don't think of grandmas as real people, and I just feel sorry for your narcissistic ass. But for the record, the one who usually wins these little mental contests of mine is a certain special grandma I like to call Pearl Necklace Grandma. She wears a different pearl necklace every day, usually accompanied by elaborate dangly pearl earrings, coral lipstick (Racy!) and an over-sized flower clip in her hair. She told me she has over three hundred pairs of those dangly earrings. Anywho, I gotta rest up. Some dead beat who had their card declined when I tried to ring their order for flannel and a rotary cutter is about to get their ASS handed to them tomorrow, and I gotta be nice and rested. May your scissors never dull, nor your arthritis interfere with your latch hooking, as we say in the biz.
-Alex
This is the face I get when I clock in late after lunch. Then she makes me sit and listen to stories about what the war was like.