Retail Hell (33 page)

Oh God, now the lame sports metaphors. I wish I had a football to shove
up her ass.

“Yes, Suzy, I’m going to get those sales up!”

“Do you feel all the information I have given you today will help you not misfire in the future?”

I could feel the heat from Stephanator’s eyes searing into me as she prepared to write down my response for documentation.

I told them all yes and left.

I returned from Suzy’s scary powwow feeling like I might as well start packing my Big Fancy bags. Jules and Marci were nowhere in sight, and the General was still manning the registers.

“This day is going to kill me,” she said, as pissed off as I’d ever seen her. “Jules had to leave, one of her girls is sick. Marci’s car broke down when she was coming back from San Diego. I can’t get a hold of anyone else, so it’s just you tonight.”

I was already not liking the sound of that, but before I could protest too loudly, Judy handed a customer a shopping bag, turned to me and said, “I’m out of here, deal with it.”

Then she was gone.

And I was all by myself under a Big Fancy full moon.

Eccentricity filled the air.

What followed was a parade of Crazies, Psychos, Nasties, and Bloodsuckers.

A Nasty switched prices and tried to buy a Juicy Couture handbag with a wallet ticket for $65.
How stupid did she take me for?

Discount Rat Patty waddled in and drove me “Is deescount?” insane! She wanted more percentages on just about everything on the sale table.

A baby screamed for ten minutes while her big brother decided to lick all the cases and then play football with a $400 Cole Haan satchel.

Another Nasty-Ass Thief wanted to return a $1,000 Fendi with torn tickets and receipts.

A woman got angry and accused The Big Fancy of selling fake Coach bags because she thought the lining and stamp inside looked off.

A customer wanted a discount on a $75 sale bag because it had a tiny little scratch on the bottom. I’m like, “The bag was $200! You’re already getting a huge discount!”

A woman brought in four handbags she wanted fixed and refurbished, so I had to fill out repair tickets and write notes on each one because she wasn’t willing to spend past a certain amount to have them fixed.

Then this man wanted me to look up all 100 stores in the country and give him a register print-out. I told him I couldn’t and he argued that they do it in customer service all the time . . . then a lady butted in, wanting me to take her credit-card payment. When I told her I had someone on the phone and a customer waiting to return, she got pissed and started screaming about how horrible the customer service was. “THIS IS NOT THE BIG FANCY WAY!”

Returns rolled in by the minute. One after the other. I just started hurling them into a pile behind the counter. Judy would be pissed, but whatever. I might be getting terminated.

Let someone else put them all away!

One of the returning customers said, “Why did you just throw it like that?” after I violently hurled her used Dooney & Bourke hobo into the pile. I looked her dead in the eye, and said, “Because I can and that’s where it belongs — you used it and now we have to throw it away.”

The woman was pissed. She didn’t like it one bit that I wasn’t happy with her irresponsible behavior, so she went up and complained to the night manager, saying I was rude doing her return. The night manager then called and said I’d better not get any more complaints or she’d be telling Satan about me tomorrow.

Satan is already twenty seconds away from firing
me —
go ahead!

I hung up the phone and turned around, and a woman wanted to return a Kate Spade she had used for six months because it wasn’t wearing well. “I paid good money for this! Look at it?”

I gave her a huge fake-ass shit-eating retail grin and took it back.

Then, five minutes to closing, a plain-looking Asian woman appeared at the Corral.

As I approached her reluctantly, I managed to get out a civil, “Hello. . . .”

“Show me Coach,” she said.

And then I saw the hair.

She had a five-inch hair that had to be as thick as a blade of grass growing out of a mole in the center of her chin.

I stared at the hair like it was a rare, newly discovered species.

Long Hair turned out to be a total Bloodsucker. She kept saying, “Show me” over and over. Who was she? The Vampire Bavaro’s sister?

I finally stopped showing her anything. She clearly was not going to buy. I had to save myself.

So I went in the stockroom and called the department. Came back out of the stockroom with the phone ringing and Long Hair saying, “Your phone is ringing.”

I smiled at her nicely, answered the phone, and pretended to have a customer conversation.

She was lucky I didn’t reach for the scissors.

Long Hair finally wandered out the mall doors at 9:20.

By the time I finished cleaning duties and closing the registers, it was 10:00 and I was the last sales associate to leave The Big Fancy.

My trip down the stairs was unbearable. I was too tired to think about anything. My brain had melted. Nothing there. Blank. I could barely concentrate on not falling down the flights.

But as I opened the employee door leading out of Mount Fancy, I saw the big, bright, full moon, shining down on me in all its alluring brilliance.

How can something that beautiful cause so many people to go psycho
inside a store?

It was a bad idea to think I could come home after barely surviving a full-moon shift at The Big Fancy and then actually do some writing.

But the chaotic events of the day had fueled my passion. If Suzy Davis-Satan planned on firing me, let her! I’d have a screenplay to start shopping around in no time.

I had decided a while back that
Love in a Fitting Room
was too much of a hard sell. Even though
Brokeback Mountain
was a huge success, was the public really ready for A-list male stars doing one another in fitting rooms at a Big Fancy Department Store? Probably not.

Thus a new script idea was born:
Escape from The Big Fancy.

I’ll pitch it as
Die Hard
in a department store, starring Brad Pitt and his badass woman, Angelina Jolie! They were amazing in
Mr. and
Mrs. Smith
. I just knew that if they read my script (once it was written) they’d want to work together again — plus, they could even have their kids in it if they wanted! I’d write roles for everyone!

Before turning on the computer and diving into
Escape from The
Big Fancy
, I decided to wind down a bit. I popped open a beer and watched a
South Park
repeat — the one where all the old people in town are running everyone over. It reminded me of half the customers at The Big Fancy.

During a commercial my mind started wandering.

I
can’t
believe that woman tonight with that long hair dangling from her
chin. So gross. Suzy Satan is such a bitch. I work my ass off for that store.
I
don’t
want to go look for another job, but if I have to, maybe
I’ll
go apply
at a movie studio. Maybe they have a gift store I can work in. Wait a minute.
No! No more stores.
I’m
supposed to write screenplays.

My eyelids became droopy.

Before I knew it, everything went black.

Then white.

A blank white page.

Black Courier font words magically typed across it.

A script!

I screamed myself awake.

Another damn Big Fancy nightmare.

Zombies! Everyone always dies at the end of zombie movies.

At The Big Fancy
it’s
no different.

Coming out of the bad dream, I was still in front of the TV. The clock flashed 2:00 a.m. On the screen was an infomercial with some guying saying, “With my plan you can be a millionaire in two months and quit your job! Be your own boss!”

I turned it off and went to bed.