BipolarLawyerCook

Some­times, she feels like an air traf­fic con­troller, and wishes that instead of the Head Cashier phone she most times does not carry (too heavy, too clunky, and most days, well, eh, she just doesn’t need it and the ring­ing of the lines she does not have to answer is just plain annoy­ing) she had a lit­tle head­set and radio, because she sure does a lot of wav­ing and point­ing and hey, she could make it look cute.

Either that, or she’s an aer­o­bics instruc­tor with a group of par­tic­u­larly recal­ci­trant stu­dents, because they just kind of stare before wan­der­ing off.

Up, way off to the left, for Bibles, New Age and biogra­phies.  (Yes, sir, mem­oirs are there, too.  Yes, they’re like auto­bi­ogra­phies.  Really.  I promise.)  Over the cafe.  Way over there?  See– where the man in the cap’s pour­ing cof­fee?  It’s right above that.  You just need to go upstairs and then head over the cafe.  How?  Well– (move arms back toward the mid­dle, point more) the stairs and esca­la­tor are here, in the mid­dle.  (Like, RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE, because it’s the first thing the unat­tended tod­dlers run for.)

Bath­room?  One arm ele­gantly (well, she thinks so, she did paint her nails) points– “between the stairs and the esca­la­tor, all the way back through the kids, to the left of the elephant.”

Percy Jack­son?  Harry Pot­ter?  War­riors?  Twi­light?  Those would be in Favorite Series or Teen, all in the kids’ sec­tion in back, straight back on the right behind the bar­gain bays– and her arm points straightly for­ward, jut­ting com­mand­ingly that way.  The inter­roga­tors look con­fused.  “Bar­gain?” ask they.

“Yes.  Those signs, there, where it says ‘Bar­gain’?  Favorite series and Teen are right behind that.”

“Ah.”  They head off, ignor­ing the giant dis­play areas she’s just pointed toward.  Read­ers.  Deaf, dumb and blind.

“Study aids?”  Words indi­cate the use of the esca­la­tor, fol­lowed by an arm hook to the right, a hand flap walk mid­way through the free­stand­ing aisles of the store, and then stop.

“Art and col­lectibles?”  The well-manicured hand points merely up.  Same thing for coins, home-improvement, photography.

“Travel?”

“Over the door?”  This one is funny.  Peo­ple always look up, like they’re expect­ing the whole sec­tion to come crash­ing down on them, right then and right there.  They also say “Oh, you moved it.”  Well, yes, they did– but before I came to the store, and that was last Sep­tem­ber, you see.  Appar­ently change is never allowed.  Ever, you see.

Then there’s the bus­tle of bring­ing up boxes of reg­is­ter tape, bring­ing down tills at the end of the day, the lift-one-two-three of bas­kets of books over the counter from shop­pers buy­ing lots of books and do-you-have-a-membership-sir (It’s our exer­cise mantra, repeat it in time with your breath­ing) and the wrestling of boxes of bags onto the shelves so that each register’s got enough sup­plies to suf­fo­cate a small army.

“Don’t you have paper?”

God, no, we don’t have paper bags.  Do you know how much that shit would weigh to carry up the damned stairs?

Sure, we’ve got hand trucks and v-carts and other car­ry­ing carts, but one or two at a time when we need them, it’s quick­est to carry, fastest to bust her butt down to the base­ment and get that reg­is­ter paper because of course Cafe and three and five are all out at the same time so she’s got to can­ni­bal­ize six and four for paper for them to use in the mean­time and then while she’s gone, there are three peo­ple want­ing returns all stacked up in the line, so that twenty pound box she lugged up the stairs is just going to wait while she, now lightly sweaty, turns smil­ing to say– “How can I help you?”

No reciepts, sure.  No prob­lem. (Hah, hah.)

And then there’s the older fel­lows and ladies, the ones who want that one book and stop off at her cashier sta­tion rather than go on upstairs because– well– they’re frail and old and maybe they know her and then, too, there’s the fact that per­haps the per­son work­ing cus­tomer ser­vice that day is not the best one of the lot.  So the elderly-frail asks for a book and she knows just where it is and there’s no one in line.  If she calls up to the desk, there’s a 50–50 chance the assigned person’s not going to be there, regard­less, and if she does call, they’ll take a longer time than it will if she–

… she’s up the stairs and back down with the book from the New in Hard­cover Bay faster than it takes her brain to decide.  It’s a pretty small store for a chain, after all.  The desk per­son didn’t even look up from their task.

That done, it’s time to re-do the gift cards, the ones brought up in a small series of boxes because the cart they’re all on is a beast and push­ing it up on the ele­va­tor, nav­i­gat­ing it through the gaunt­let of kids (“Do you work here?” has got to be the world’s dumb­est ques­tion.  No, she’s just ran­domly push­ing a cart full of ill-balanced col­or­ful boxes of gift cards for kicks through nar­row aisles full of peo­ple who won’t get out of her way no mat­ter how many times she says excuse me, because this is what she means when she calls it the gaunt­let of kids), and those are all bal­anced on arms like jug­gling balls and other accou­trements.  The gift card dis­plays, see, they’ve got to be up to stan­dard, and that means cer­tain pat­terns and that means LOTS of selec­tions of cards which means PLEASE SIR DO NOT TOUCH HER ON THE SHOULDER WHILE SHE IS HOLDING THESE BOXES BECAUSE NOW THEY WILL SPILL ALL OVER THE FLOOR AND THEN, ESPECIALLY THEN, DO NOT LOOK AT HER LIKE THE DUMBFUCK THAT YOU ARE.

And then, please don’t ask her your ques­tion while she’s clean­ing up.  Puh-leaze.

“The infor­ma­tion desk is at the top of the stairs.”

“But I want to ask you,” says the unhelp­ful, gift-card spilling jerkface.

“Sir, I am busy.”  Turns her back, squats, and the cal­is­then­ics begin all over again.  “The infor­ma­tion desk is at the top of the stairs.”  For good mea­sure, with good flex­i­bil­ity, and while scoop­ing some of the cards back into their boxes, she throws one arm over her shoul­der, thumb toward the esca­la­tor, point­ing in the per­fect direction.

Don’t even get her started on the bend-twist-flap-insert three-hundred-thirty-five times on aver­age of each bag insert for each book trans­ac­tion when she bends down to go get a bag and a leaflet insert, or the ten­nis– NO– cashier’s elbow she’s going to have from all the seri­ous mus­cles in her right hand from all that hand-keying and card swip­ing.  The cans she can crush with her right hand, peo­ple.  This shit is (not) seri­ous, yo.

By all rights, she should be built like Linda Hamil­ton in T2.  She’s not, but a cus­tomer did com­pli­ment her hair just the other day, so hey– she’ll take what she can get.  And in the mean­time?  Her calves are SOLID.