Friday, March 21, 2008

Appears to enjoy paint chips with his beer

Early on in a recent shift, I was presented with a middle aged guy attempting to mask rising confusion with looking thoughtful. He was just passing from "moderately constipated" into "was that just a moist fart or did I just crap myself" when he decided take a gamble that a staff member, me, would be in a position to assist him.
"Do you have any lube?"
Ah ha, so that look of intense concentration writ large across your face was because you forgot how to breath and wanted to make sure you built up a bit of momentum before the next bout of hypoxia. We have a lot.
He narrows slightly bloodshot, porcine eyes at me. "Where?"
You mean the roughly three hundred square feet of bottles, tubs, and tubes in festive colors and supposedly eye-catching labels twelve inches from where you are standing? You mean all those items you have to look past to address me? You're standing in front of it.

He again narrows his eyes and flexes what remains of his neck over his expansive shoulders, doubtless convinced I have somehow played a trick on him hiding gallons of groin slick literally right under his nose. I suppress the sudden impulse to brandish a red cape to see if he'll launch into a full-out roid rage. Eventually his low grunts give way to words complete with false comradely laugh.
"What would you recommend?"
A strong eyeglass prescription, an assistant to do the heavy mental lifting for you, and spotter armed with a cattle-prod so you don't try to put your angry inch where it doesn't belong. Depends on what you're looking to do. Normally I would leave it at that until the patron either coughed up the brand they were actually looking for or decided to ask why that mattered, however with Ugg demonstrating sharpness most often associated with river rocks, I felt the best course was to point him at something middle of the road, ring him up, and send him on his meaty way. This is a good general brand...
He cut me off. "I wanna plug her in the ass."
Oh yes, this guy was a real Casanova. The charm and charisma fairly dripped off him. I'd have to have the janitor mop that up before it started corroding the flooring. Then I'd say your best choices would be a silicone-based like this...
"Gonna plug her in the ass."
Thank you, I had forgotten since the first time you mentioned it. ... or a very thick water-based like this one.

His cell phone goes off and he spends several minutes telling his ostensible girlfriend to buy him a beer. After ending the call with a muttered "stupid bitch" while tucking the device back in his pocket, he frowns over the price stickers like I knew he would. (Which is why I had been aiming him at one of the cheaper brands up to this point, but since he'd specified, what the hell. It was worth a shot.)
"Ah don't need a whole bottle just fer tonight."
The hell you don't, knuckle-dragger. You'd need a whole fifth on top of a couple pitchers minimum before some hard up bar-fly would let you touch them. I put the lube away and point out the sample packs.

Wonders never cease, I manage to talk him out of five bucks before he lumbers off to rupture some poor bastard's colon.

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