I must say, I'm loving my plunge back into the vaccuum of retail. I didn't realize what a difference it would make liking the products I'm helping people buy. I mean, yeah, clothes are great, but books...
Speaking of clothes, I had forgotten how easy it is to look fashionable in Erie. (Which means that I was an absolute fashion horror in high school.) I've had lavish compliments from fellow employees the last three work days in a row, and I've done nothing but don a couple of moderate, respectable sweaters hardly worth much notice, and most of them at least four years old; I bought my wardrobe to outlast fads, trends, the Apocalypse and cockroaches, hearing a penny saved ringing in my ears. And while I'd like to flush out my wardrobe with some really striking pieces -- my exhibitionist tendencies from my early childhood are returning with a flourish, and I want a change; I haven't bought clothes in so long -- I'm glad, at least, to look slightly better than presentable in my surroundings.
Or more than slightly better than presentable, depending on the beholder. Yesterday as I walked toward the back room on my break, a much-too-much-older man almost cracked his spine whirling to appreciate something when I passed. "Yes!" he said, sounding like he'd just walked into a restaurant and found his favorite sandwich on the menu. I turned my head toward the voice -- far too exuberant for a bookstore, where people mostly talk the way they do in libraries -- and saw that I was the favorite sandwich. I thought, What? and, in the interest of not being completely rude, I settled for a broad, amused, disbelieving grin instead of peals of hysterical laughter. It was ludicrous. His hair was the same color as my grandmother's doilies. "Yes"? Who does that?
Of course, later on, after I'd returned from my break and stood behind the information desk looking helpful, he came walking slowly up, his eyes locked on me like I'd stolen the last of his free will. Oblivious in Customer Mode, I said pleasantly, "How can I help you?" and he wordlessly handed me the books he held in his hands. "Oh," I said -- recognizing him at the same time -- "if you want to purchase these, the checkout line starts over there." I returned his books to him and he blinked and then managed to look both awed and incredibly creepy and said, "What's your name?" I told him, in my formal, professional, Don't Mess With Me tone, and he said, "Are you the girl...from before?" I smiled and said in my No Really Don't Mess With Me tone, "Yes, I am." "I'm Denny," he said, reaching his hand across the counter. I shook it at the same time that I took a slight step backward and thanked him for shopping. He told me what a pleasure it was to meet me. Yeah, I'll bet.
After he drifted away, I turned, coughed out my suppressed laughter, and, hot-faced, told the story to a couple of my coworkers who were staring curiously.
Ah, retail.
I also feel that I owe a general apology to my fellow Western PAers, as I have returned to the world of customer service in their midst. For the past four years, I have said, over and over, that the people of my native soil are unfriendly. It wasn't the proper classification. They're guarded. Hardly unfriendly, and, as I work among them, I keep finding myself struck by how very well bred we generally are. I do not come from a people who open up readily to others -- I'm no exception; my gift for openness doesn't eliminate the guardedness; while I don't hide much, the things I do keep, I keep close -- and who do not readily trust, but who do the decent thing, who utilize courtesy, and who, when they give of themselves, give of themselves completely and without reservation. This giving can occur in five minutes or fifty years; there are people at my church whom I will never know well, though I've known them fifteen years; at the same time, last week in the store, a middle-aged couple, perfect strangers, slightly gruff at first, told me all about how this is the three-year anniversary of having lost their son, and told me all about him, about the things he collected (major Trekkie), and cried.
Gruff, yes; guarded, yes; but above all, genuine. The people in this region aren't all nice, but they're up front about it. Most telling of all is how people respond to a greeting. When I ring people up at the register and ask, "How are you?" they always, nearly without fail, no matter what mood in which they appear to be, respond, "I'm fine; how are you?" I still haven't gotten over my delight at the reciprocation; it didn't happen often in Indiana or Michigan.
So my new conclusion is that people in the Midwest are nice; people in Western PA are kind, or, at least, well-bred. Hey, breeding still matters here; I suppose that only makes sense. And between "nice" and "kind" lie a vast universe of difference. "Nice" tends toward the superficial; "kind" goes down to the bone.
Teenagers, of course, present a raging exception. This past week a local choral group performed for awhile in the store, and I thought I would leave that night with Band-Aids on my palms from the cutting my fingernails gave them as I walked around pasting a smile on my face and mentally begging anything that might hear me to make the agony stop. I really, really don't like teenaged girls in groups in any event; then put a bunch of spoiled primadonnas together and make them sing as a "chorus" and you have a hideous cacophony of girls trying to outsing each other and sounding, as a result, like the screeching brakes of a steam engine, or a caroling group of Harpies. I spent a little time straightening the CDs on the wall farthest away from them in the store just so I could glare and make faces without giving bad PR.
But the spirit of sarcasm and cynicism finds allies everywhere. During the torture session, I went up to one of my coworkers, who warned me, just before I read it, that Eclipse was "a flaming pile of dogshit" (she wasn't exactly wrong, though I enjoyed it against every better literary judgment I possess), and muttered, "Make. It. Stop. Please, just make it stop."
"What?" she asked.
"The singing."
Instantly her eyes both cleared and lit with the black light that told me I'd found a kindred spirit. "I hate Christmas," she said. "I hate it all."
Had I had enough quiet to think, without nails flogging chalkboards as the girls went into a nauseating medley of meaningless Christmas pop, I would have started humming "You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch." Later Steph asked, "Did someone tell you I hate Christmas?"
"No," I answered; "I just saw a fellow cynic in your face."
She laughed.
So I'm thoroughly enjoying this job while I have it. Since there's no guarantee for how long, considering that my title reads "Seasonal," I dropped off my resume to the Erie County Bar Association a few weeks ago -- apparently PA does its legal workers a service: The Bar Association would pass on my resume and letter of recommendation to any firm looking for legal support staff. Last week (I really can't believe it was just last week; time goes by so much more quickly when I have things to do) I received an email asking for an interview. I interviewed last Thursday, and then again this past Monday, and walked away with another part-time job that starts in early January.
Still a lot going on -- but all of it good. I'm tired, still not sleeping well, still having odd half-remembered dreams; but on the whole, I can't complain. With my immediate surroundings, I'm largely peaceful, almost happy, if not quite satisfied. I still don't have everything I want; but I suppose all things come with time, and in the meantime, I'm glad to have tasks to which to put my long-useless hands. Not quite enough, sometimes. But sufficient.
(Oh, that reminds me, that word, sufficient: I was thinking of 2 Corinthians 12:9, My grace is sufficient for you, last week, and what that meant, because I have heard that verse so often used to try to guilt people out of wishing they weren't suffering, like sufferers should be happy about their sufferings. But "sufficient" is an interesting word choice. (And oh, how I wish I knew Greek! I can only ever talk about the translations and sometimes it drives me crazy.) "Sufficient" doesn't imply an overflowing abundance; it implies, "enough on which to get by," or, according to the dictionary, "adequate to the purpose." Obviously grace is more than merely adequate, but I think in this verse God is acknowledging how difficult we find our circumstances from time to time, and isn't telling us that we shouldn't hurt in the things we suffer, isn't trying to make us "grin and bear it"; God isn't that callous. He just says, "My grace is sufficient. It's enough to get you through it. It will be more than just enough when you've had a little time and have grown to trust Me more. But for now, even though you don't understand, even though this really hurts you, my grace is sufficient. It's enough, because I love you. It's enough." And I found that thought extremely comforting.)
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