[I used to enjoy telling stories. What is the difference between telling a story and spinning a yarn? Apparently a yarn is likely to be anecdotal, informal, neither entirely fact nor fiction. Maybe it's a tall-tale. Or maybe it's the truth as I recall it. Regardless it should be a good story.]
Photo by Brewbooks
When I was 16, I scored the best retail job I could have imagined. Just that statement tells you the depths of idealism and youth I was suffering from. Retail rocked! Getting paid to do nearly anything was this wondrous concept. I'd been begging my parents to allow me to get a job and then a Nature Company opened in the new mall extension. Yes, the mall had expanded by 1/3rd and it was all so glorious and food-courty, with a new mall smell, no busted light bulbs and the back corridors didn't yet smell of old urine. It was a dream. Although they never told me for certain, I believed I was their first hire for the new store - a bright and cheerful kid who still believed retail would be fun.
We all know that was not going to last...
As retail goes, the Nature Company was a great store. The book section was interesting, the gadgets entertaining, the fountain soothing, the sound track was ocean sounds dubbed over Pacabel's Canon. I was good at the job. When I was assigned to the front of the store (to prevent shop-lifting of course), I'd engage the kids and inevitably the parents would be suckered into $25 of tchotchke purchases just to escape again. At Christmas, I was the book lady, by my own choice. I knew the titles and could move books like few other sellers. Unlike other sections, books don't sell themselves and I would like to think my enthusiasm for Edward Abbey, John Muir, and John McPhee helped boost sales in our store.
The managers who opened the store were also superb. They worked well together, fostered a sense of team, and kept the drudgery out of even the drudge jobs. It was not your average retail experience.
That lasted about perhaps a year. Then the manager, an impressive and sincere neat lady who'd impressed me by having wolf hybrids as pets, was transferred. The new manager was a short stout curt man, a tall Danny Devito without the comic relief, who hated women. In particular, young women. I don't know if he hated me in particular of the young women he knew, but the fact that I was the most senior of the staff while also being the youngest employee was a sore spot for him. As punishment for being an affront to his expectations of teenage retail employees, he would relegate me to the most irritating jobs for days on end. He would schedule me for times he knew I could not work (like during class). And he was perfectly comfortable letting it be known that he didn't like young employees or chick employees.
The asst manager stayed on and some of us hoped he'd get promoted. Ben (not his real name) was openly gay, a fact that neither improved nor diminished his ability as a manager. He didn't think less of a retail management job and his professional attitude was part of why we'd liked the job. Some of the sellers on the floor though had other thoughts. Some of the sales staff would snicker if one of the guys got scheduled to close with Ben. Twittering about how that meant he might like you or put the moves on you, because nothing a gay man did was without motive apparently. With the new manager came a new team, a team reflecting his own biased views of the land. This being the South, we at one point hired a certified (and perhaps certifiable) Good Ol Boy on the staff. He snickered the loudest and made the most noise about not wanting to work with Ben. Other staffers who stood up for Ben or told him to back off were accused of the normal variety of suspicions: we were gay, we were fag-lovers, or we were just plain stupid. Good Ol Boy loved to look for queers in the shoppers as well. He'd come back to the registers boastful and claim that a vertain woman shopping for New Age Music was a lesbian. When asked how he was certain, he'd explain in small words, as though I were the stupid one, that you could tell by her manly hand-shake. Silent and struck-dumb by this iron-clad logic, I stared at him. Then I put my hand out to shake his and pumped it as fiercely as I imagined a lesbian might. Chew on that, Good Ol Boy.
It'll surprise no one that the advocacy of the youngest girl staffer did nothing to make Ben's case and before long, he too left. It was not without drama and he was not happy. I did not report the dark remarks or hateful comments because I was a young kid and I still didn't know what I could do to make a difference.
The sexist manager then hired a new asst manager in his own image. Short, blonde, and wiry, the new manager seemed quiet and harmless enough. The first thing we noticed, since gossip about personal lives had now become standard fare for the staffers, was his girlfriend. She was a MILF. Red-headed and at least 20 years older than him, she'd come into the store all tarted up in too-tight tops and too-short skirts. A conversation with her usually involved engaging her long enough to get a hollow little laugh before she wandered off to avoid any more talk. In short order, I found myself closing the store with the new asst manager most evenings. I'd clean up the stock, vacuum, fold the shirts, re-shelf and inventory the books, lock up the geodes, check the fountain... and then go in the office to clock out. Ten-thirty at night, our quiet asst manager would suddenly become chatty and try to engage me in conversation. I'm notoriously chatty, but this was not the type of conversation you wanted to encourage. He'd talk about his girlfriend, how he liked older women who were experienced, how easy she was, how she was a nympho, how he liked a chick who could get off on a tractor hitch. That last is a direct quote I won't forget because I turned to look at him and was completely exasperated. He was a fool, a fool to want those things, a fool to tell me about it, a fool to think I cared. Who on earth would be impressed? Was he flirting with me?! No one flirts with me - I'm the young chubby chick who outsmarts the manager and stands up for the gay staff.
Click. With epiphany came a sense of the threat. He thought I was gay as well. I was smart. I stood up for Ben. I was just dykish enough. And all lesbians are sex maniacs, right? He wasn't flirting with me. He was de facto announcing his intentions to sexualize me, in fact or in effect. He would keep on with the uncomfortable talk until I either had sex with him (fulfilling his sex maniac expectations) or refused him (proving I was a cold fish of a dyke). My boss didn't give a hoot about my job performance, about how much I adored my job, about how good I was for the store. My boss cared if I was gay and if I'd put out for him. My other boss just cared to prove that I was weak, stupid, and unreliable, like all women.
At this point in the story, you might expect the confrontation. I wisen up, call management, demand these two jokers get removed. Or perhaps you expect me to quit, storm out, tell the other sales clerks about the harassment in management. Both are forms of winning, of the young girl making good against the evil sexist phobic elements in society.
None of that happens. Instead I had a car accident and a lot of other interesting life-stuff happens. I had friends with false-pregnancies that ended up in dramatic false-miscarriages and friends who delivered pizza and drugs for their skeezy bosses. I got stalked by a grad student from the local law school after chatting online. We had a shooting at the new shiny food court. My nasty bosses seemed almost comforting in their old-timey predictably smarmy caricatures.
I'm not sure how long I stayed at the store. Longer than you'd expect. I was no hero. I was a retail clerk at the mall, working a crappy job that met all the lowest expectations of retail. My idealism had matured into a form of realism. I grew up. Eventually, when I did get fed up with dealing with their issues, I just moved across the hall to the bookstore. My new boss was a twitchy bookworm who had a hard time making conversation with people who were alive. I spent weeks on end working without talking to anyone I worked with. I started using a different and smellier staff entrance and never saw either of them again.
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