Day Nine

            It’s starts raining. Then John asks me to take out the trash. I try to let him know that this bothers me by being short and rough with my answers. He seems like he doesn’t care.

            This morning there is an irate customer in the store. John had sold this woman a phone sometime before and it had been stolen. At first he tries to refer her to a V-------- store, but failing to get her to leave, he dials V------- customer service putting himself on the phone navigating their automated system, waiting twenty minutes till he connect with representative.

“Hello, Yes this is John S., Store number 4334, I have a customer here who purchased a warranty on a M----- R------ phone and it was lost…”

“STOLEN” screams the woman from the top of her lungs. The rest of the staff fail to let on that they’ve noticed.

“Right, her customer number is 7722999343. I have her agreement right here. Yes it was lost…..”

“STOLEN!, the phone was STOLEN!”

Again, more out of spite for John than fear of the customer none of the other staff even came close. He had sold this lady the warranty and it was now his problem. And as the most-senior salesman in the store he was on his own as far as the rest of the staff was concerned.

John covered the mouthpiece and glared at the customer, “Maam, please let me handle this, OK, I’m trying to contact your warranty company. He uncovered the mouthpiece. “Hello, yes I’m back….that’s right the phone was lost last week….”

“It was STOLEN, STOLEN I told you STOLEN!?”

The corner of the store where this exchange is occurring is now vacant, the customers having taken the hint to leave these two alone.  I watch as John turns away from the woman and stares at the wall probably listening to muzac piped in from Mumbai. Eventually the woman leaves, exhausted, and without a phone.

After lunch we are hit with a serious Christmas rush. I teach three customers our kiosks, ring up six customers and deliver twelve sets of prints in twenty minutes. I am reminded of my days as a waiter, where one trip around the store has me interacting with six customers. I try to triage my work, putting quick questions and ring ups first and leaving the slow and incapable customers to suffer through the kiosk until I can clear out the store.

One of the customers is definitely hitting on me. Today she asks about my past. I tell her that I worked in “movies”. But, because of my current factotum status, she mis-understood and thinks that I had worked at a movie theater. She asks me if I’m in school, if I graduated with a degree in law. I tell her no, and “that’s why I work at a camera store”. After that I try to avoid her because I can’t stop staring at her hairlip. But she’s a regular, twice already in the last five days, so I’ll have to continue the small talk until I can quit the store.

At the end of the shift John wants me to learn how to input inventory into the store’s database. I tell him I’ll only be around for ten more days, and he decides it’s not worth it to teach me. He seems put off by this, but I try not to let on that I notice. I cannot bear the thought of being here, late into the evening, watching the fluorescents burn out.

Before I go I notice two large trash bags behind the counter. I leave them for John to take himself and clock out.