Short Time in the Service Industry
by Michael Maiello
The fluorescent lights are making me crazy. The ceiling fans are circulating stale air over my head, and I can only catch a good breath when the front door opens. The customers smell. Even the young attractive girls smell. About hour six into today's shift I decide I hate people. All of them. I imagine non corporeal beings. Beings that have evolved passed the need for a physical body and don't smell.

I'm a manager. My name tag should read "Greg: Customer Service Manager" but I changed it to read "Customer Service Maoist." The barely evolved primates shopping and knocking CD's off the shelves are my responsibility. The two young cashiers are under my care. One's a cool guy named Seth. His eyes are calm, like he's always stoned. He's a bit of a pretty boy with short black hair and a charismatic smile. Kate is working next to him. She's uptight. Easily confused. She asks too many stupid questions for someone who's been here four months. I just got done explaining the proper procedure for refunding product to her. Again. I want to be nice, but her voice is starting to grate on my brain. If she speaks again, I might hit her.

I nod to Phil the Security guard, who is standing near the entrance. Phil's a heavy-set guy in his late twenties. He's got a beard and a boyish face. Told me that he took this job because he hated bouncing in bars. The customers hit back sometimes, he said. Once he had to punch a woman, and he's felt guilty ever since. "Why'd you hit her?" I asked him once. "Wasn't thinkin'" he said. I try to ignore that little tidbit of information and like Phil anyway.

I'm checking in videos that people have returned. I scan little barcodes with a light pen. Terror Cop V, and The Ultimate Combat Clash. There are some good movies in here. Art films. Foreign films. Some mainstream Oscar winners. Too many people rent Forrest Gump.

My head hurts. I contemplate madness--just breaking down in the corner and repeating "b... b... b... b..." over and over again until someone notices and calls an ambulance to cart me off to the land of No More Menial Labor. A woman leans over the counter, she's fortyish with big teased out hair, a red tank top and jeans. Her skin is tan and leathery. She smells like a customer. "I need to find a book," she says.

"Just a minute," I say even though I don't need a minute for anything. I waste a few seconds checking in videos, just to make her wait. "What do you need?"

"I'm looking for a book called The Verbally Abusive Relationship."

I think for a moment and explode. "Shut up you stupid cow! You probably couldn't read it anyway, so go home, stuff your face with beer and Cheetos, and watch Oprah or Maury Povich or whatever trash it is you fill your feeble mind with."

Okay, that doesn't happen.

I really smile all friendly like and lead her to the self-help aisle of the book section. I find the book for her and even pick it off the shelf and place it into her wrinkled hands. She's overjoyed to have the book and now I feel guilty for hating her. I don't want to look at her anymore. I walk away while she says "Thanks."

Then she calls after me.

"Do you guys have The Celestine Prophecy?"

I force another smile and lead her to the book, which is on the bottom shelf in the New Age section, along with its sequel, it's audio version, and the little pocket spin-offs which pack the timeless wisdom into a tiny hardback gift book.

"My friend says it's very good," she says. "I'm going through a divorce and my lawyer says this book will help me. You've read it?"

"Yeah," I lie. "Loved it. Changed my life."

"There are ten insights, you know," she says.

"Actually," I say. "There are twenty-three. But you should start with the ten."

She thinks about this for a minute. "Twenty-three? Are the rest in some other book?"

I notice the gray walls behind the shelves. I look down at the carpet and see a wad of chewing gum which I wish I hadn't seen because now I'll have to convince myself to ignore it rather than cleaning it up. I don't want to pick it up. It's been in some customer's mouth and they probably have the Ebola virus. Keeping the bottom of some customer's shoe free from gum is not worth risking a deadly African disease.

I look around at the customers. A grown man, like thirty years old, is looking through a girlie mag which he has snuck into the sports books section. His big belly sticks out underneath his generic blue t-shirt. His jeans hang too low in back, so he's got that plumber crack thing going for him. He has thick glasses which have been patched together with rubber cement holding the lenses into the frame. I can see his organs liquefying inside him.

"That other book?" the lady says again.

My God.

"Yeah," I say. "The Philistine Prophecy."

"Do you have it?"

"Not out yet."

She considers this. Pulls her lips against her teeth and rolls her tongue around in her mouth. "Well...I'll try back later. My lawyer will be really interested, I'll have to tell her about it."

Definitely," I say, trying to keep my voice level. "The Philistine Prophecy."

She actually writes it down on a little note page she keeps in her purse. She has a pen she took from some bank. She doesn't even ask me how to spell "Philistine," which she spells, get this, correctly.

So I correct her spelling. "It's a name," I say. "Phyllis Stein. Gertrude Stein's sister." I help her spell it all properly. She says it like a revelation. "The Phyllis Stein Prophecy." She thanks me and leaves the shelves, heading up the aisle of tile to the registers.

I stay in the shelves for a few moments and realize to my relief that there are no customers around. I wander into the sports aisle and pick up the copy of Barely Legal, which the fat pervert had crammed in between two copies of Dennis Rodman's biography. Barely Legal is a porn magazine that has pictures of young looking girls with little breasts and tight vaginas. There's a sixteen-year-old-looking girl on the cover who has one of her fingers in her mouth. Below it is a caption which reads, "My driver's license is a license to be horny." I don't want to deal with it, so I cram it back in between the biographies. I only put them away when they're left in the children's section. I mean, I have principles, you know.

People are screaming up front. A woman. A man. Screams. Someone yells "Shut up!" and there's an explosion. I head up front, people are lying on the ground. Kate and Seth look like they've just been through an alien abduction. They share a wide-eyed look of incredulous disbelief. There's plaster on the floor from where this crazy looking guy with a pistol has shot the roof. This crazy looking guy is, like, five foot seven, about 145 pounds. His hair is black and dirty, and he's got a cool goatee/mustache combination that I would never be able to grow on my own face. He's wearing a grease-stained t-shirt and torn jeans. He's shaking. He looks pretty mad.

"Empty the registers," he says. "And everyone shut the hell up."

I can't believe he's robbing a store at 8 p.m. on a Tuesday. This is the kind of thing you pull late night. Robbing a store at 8 p.m. makes it look like you have to go to bed early, or get home in time to catch M*A*S*H reruns on TV.

For some reason, the gun is pointed at me. I can't tell if this is an intentional or accidental predicament, but it is a poignant moment for me, because I realize that twenty years of haphazard development into the real live human being I am could be ended in a second by a sneeze. Then the gun isn't pointed at me anymore.

Phil, the security guard, is just staring at the guy. I'm having a great adrenaline reaction, so when I ask Phil what the hell he's going to do about this, I stutter like crazy. Phil's not stuttering. He just matter of factly says, "I have a flashlight and some pepper spray, what do you want me to do?"

Kate and Seth really aren't moving too well. "I'm in the middle of a transaction," Kate says. "I can't open the drawer until it's done."

"Finish the transaction then," I say. I tell the guy with a gun that I'm the manager, and can I go up and help her so he can get out of here quickly? He smiles to me with big white teeth. He tells me to hurry the hell up.

So I go over to Kate and tell her to finish the transaction. She's trying to validate a check in the receipt printer. "The computer won't let me validate the check," she says. Then she points towards this overweight middle-aged woman who is lying on the floor, sobbing, with her face buried in her hands. "I need her driver's license to validate it."

The guy with the gun occupies himself by taking the money out of Seth's drawer. I push Kate out of the way and hit a bunch of buttons to get the drawer open. The computer freezes up and a little error box comes on the screen. It says: "System Crash."

"The system's crashed," I tell the gun guy. "I can't open the drawer."

"You don't have a key?" he says.

"It's the computer age," I say, shrugging my shoulders. I feel calmer now.

"What a crappy store," the guy says.

"Tell me about it."

In a helpful tone, Kate offers the not-so-helpful option of calling the company computer help desk to help us out or something. Those are almost the exact words she used.

"Look," he says, "I gotta get out of here. I can't wait around for you to open the drawer."

Kate takes a free video coupon out of her apron and hands it to the guy. "Sorry about the wait," she says. "You can get a free soft drink on your way out, too."

We all laugh. Seth, Kate, me, Phil, the guy--we're all laughing. Some customers giggle. The woman is laughing through sobs. Then the guy pushes me and Kate out of the way and shoots the register. The drawer falls limply open. He grabs all the cash.

"Thanks ever so much for your help," he says. Then he takes one of the little comment cards, which are stacked up by the terminals. "I'm going to fill out positive comments for each of you. I'm going to recommend you all get raises." And he bolts out the door.

There's about fifteen seconds of silence. Total immobility except for the sobbing woman. Seth, in this mellow voice, says, "Lady, shut up" and she does.

I announce on the intercom that the store is closed. Phil is radioing for police. I direct the customers to leave quietly but quickly. Most of them think that the gunman is still in the store, because they're walking out in a crouch, as if they'd be harder to shoot that way. One of them stops to tell me that he'll never shop here again. The police are here as soon as the customers are about out the door.

There are about five squad cars. Three uniformed cops come into the store to start in on questions. How much did he get? What did he look like? Was anyone hurt? I let them question Seth and Kate. I wander back into the book section, find a corner, and sit on the floor repeating "b... b... b..." just to see how it feels.

The cops ask me questions.

Lots of time passes.

***

The Loss Prevention Manager is in the store. People are watching the news in back. I haven't actually left the book section yet. I've been leafing through books. Catcher In The Rye mostly. It's the book to read if you've had a gun pointed at you. The LPM, his name is Randy, comes to find me. Randy is a short little guy wearing slacks and a store t-shirt. He's actually smiling, and he looks kind of like a little boy blown up to half-man size.

"Hey, guess what?" he asks.

"What?" I say, still looking at Catcher.

Randy, in this enthusiastic voice, like he just got the fire truck he wanted for Christmas, says "The cops cornered that guy down at his house in the valley. There was a shoot-out, and he's dead. Jerk opened fire on, like, ten cops, and they just put him down."

I'm stunned. I mean, he was a funny guy. He shot a roof and took some money from some faceless guy in Texas that owns a chain of entertainment stores. He didn't hurt anyone. That sobbing woman probably needed a taste of real danger in her boring life.

"All for six hundred bucks," Randy says. "Just shows people get what they deserve."

I put the book on the shelf and ask him what he said.

"I said people get what they deserve," he says. "Crime doesn't pay."

So, I do something that I know will have no real consequences. Something I can blame on shock later. Something no one will forget, but everyone will excuse. I actually have time to think about all of this while I send my fist flying toward his face. If I could have landed just one shot on his nose, I would have been happy.

But the jerk ducks and my fists glances off the top of his head. His skull even hurts my hand a bit. It's not what I wanted at all. One quick blow is what I wanted. I kick him hard in the stomach, and he doubles over and makes some wheezing sound as he tries to draw back his lost breath. Now I get to hit him in the nose, and he can't do anything about it. Wham! His nose actually crumbles, and he draws both hands up to clutch it and there's blood dripping out of his hands.

He falls on the ground and starts crying. Crying. Now I hate him. So kick him twice in the back. "Guy doesn't deserve to get shot over your stupid store," I say.

I start to calm down. Randy is sobbing and clutching his ribs. There's blood on the carpet from his nose. There is also blood on my fist and blood on the shirt which I just bought at Structure because the exotic woman behind the counter told me it looked great on me.

I adjust Catcher In The Rye so the cover faces out. I tell Randy he's lucky I wasn't reading Crime and Punishment. He's stopped crying, but he hasn't gotten to his feet yet.

The place is still ugly. But now I feel a part of it. My stomach hurts. I sit down on the floor and tell Randy I'm sorry. But I don't think he can hear me. Randy stands up and walks past me, without looking he tells me to get the hell out of the store.

So, I'm in the parking lot with the flashing police lights and cold, fresh air. I like the outside. I force myself to like the outside. The cops are talking loudly about the shooting. They're enthusiasm makes it sound like they're talking about a soccer game.

I force myself to ignore them and to like the outside. I force myself to like the world, and to give up my connection to the hate which oozes out of the brightly lit chain record store. I start walking east, past the store and towards the mountains, where neon lights don't drown away the stars.

return to the LIES #14 page page.
return to the LIES home page.
return to the A&A home page.