Mr. Monk & The New Employee…

Okay… I seriously had forgotten how many weirdarses you run into when you work retail.

Let me ‘splain.
[pause]
No, there is too much. Let me sum up. Buttercup is marry’ Humperdinck in a little less than half an hour. So all we have to do is get in, break up the wedding, steal the princess, make our escape… after I kill Count Rugen.

errr… yeah. I don’t know where that came from at all. Honest.

Today I started my new job as a faceless drone in the crazy world of retail book sales. Today I learned what the secret codez0rs are to get into the staffroom. Today I signed my life away, giving my new corporate overlords the keys to my bank account with the sole stipulation that they only fill it with phat lewtz!!!!111eleventy-one. Today I also had the ever so glorious task of sitting through a “Powerpoint presentation” without the power or even the point. It was just words on pages in a binder. Kind of fitting for a bookstore if you think about it, but for crissake if you have a spade, then call it a spade. It’s a presentation in a binder not a frikkin’ Powerpoint presentation.

Anyways, back to the original subject. While I was being shown around the store tonight by my boss and we were discussing what goes where and why and all the rest of that mindless drivel that happens between new employees and the management as they try to gauge your competence level we were approached by a scruffily dressed, nervous looking young man in his mid twenties who asked us very shamefacedly between pregnant pauses, if we… uh… had any… Y’know… cleaning supplies so as he could clean the toilet in the bathroom before he used it. He was extremely worried about how unhygenic it was and was unconvinced that even though they were cleaned daily that it would be clean enough for him.

I’ll have to admit. My customer service reflexes aren’t what they used to be. All could do was stand there and act somewhat dumbstruck by his request. I’ll give my boss full marks for keeping a straight face and simply asking him to wait while she checked the staffroom to see if there was anything. Best she could come up with was window cleaner. Apparently that was “clean enough” for him and he ran off to do his “hygenic deed”. Obviously it was a serious psychological problem for him and when I went in to the bathroom 5 minutes later to check on him he was still in there scrubbing like mad.

There’s a first time for everything I guess. Hopefully I’ll not get asked that question again.

Of course now that I’m away from work, I’m going to laugh wholeheartedly at his Mr. Monk-ish ways because I’m cruel like that. The more that I think about though, I think the kid was on space crack rather than having a permanent psychological disorder (but I’m not a shrink so what the fuck do I know). I just know that his jeans were ripped and fairly grubby to begin with when he approached us so if he was as freaked out by dirt and germs as he appeared to be you’d think that he would be apoplectic (tangent: That’s just such a fun word) and more concerned about his clothing than he was about a toilet seat. Eh, who knows. Maybe he thought he could get pregnant from the seat.

Anyhow…. other than weirdass wally my first day went well. While I haven’t met all the staff yet, the ones I have seem pretty nice overall. No one immediately stands out as a weirdass fruitcake or someone I want to strangle with twine yet so that’s always a good sign. Tomorrow I get to learn all about the “business section” which includes all those “…for Dummies” computer books. Oh joy! </sarcasm>

I work early so I shpleep now. G’nite.