The Adventures of Darien, the cynical bagger
Chapter 3: The Third Man and the Monkey in the Middle
PG-13
Adults in general seem to lose their sense of cynicism. I don't know the
particulars, but only that it happens. Case in point: speaking with
Humperdinck.
"Darien, your white shirt is untucked."
"Yes sir, I realize that."
"White shirts aren't supposed to be untucked, you know the rules."
"Have you walked past those checkstands? Every last one of those female
baggers and checkers have their shirts untucked!"
"Yes, but with girls its alright. Part of their fashion..."
"So basically you are telling me that if I had a good butt, wore a short
shirt, and showed off my panties everytime I bent over it would be fine?"
The manager smirked at me, rolled his eyes, and stifled a chuckle. "Of
course it would... you have an awful lot to learn about life."
Apparently I did have an awful lot to learn about life. It wasn't a week
later that our third manager, herein after referred to as the Third Man,
decided to quit in favor of a higher-paid job as a custodian at McDonalds.
What exactly is a Third Man, you may ask. Well, a Third Man is what I would
like to refer to as a "wannabe Humperdinck." Basically, the Third Man is
one step above grunt work. One more person on the corporate ladder to have
orders given through. This meant that I would not be hearing from
Humperdinck anytime soon. As far as I was concerned, that sounded perfectly
alright with me.
But now that the only decent person I worked with had quit, what was I to
do? The store had a massive search to fill the position as quickly as
possible, which brought all sorts of freaks into the store to vie for the
sought-after position. After all was said and done, the final decision came
down to the Freight Crew Manager, the Frozen Manager, and the Accountant.
The freight crew manager, one Drake Butikofer, had a significant amount of
experience under his belt. By far, he was the most prepared and worthy for
the job.
Trevor Marquis, the frozen manager, was fun to be around. The man, however,
was a literal blackhole of laziness. He sat in a chair in the backroom,
consumed in a cess-pool of his own spit and drool, accumulated from several
months of looking through Faith Hill calendars. Still, Trevor possessed
more will-power to actually get the job done than did Janet, the accountant.
Number-crunching and mathematic know-how aside, Janet knew less about
running a grocery store than Kevin Costner did acting. However, she had
nice assets in all the right places, so to speak. And, as Humperdinck made
mention before, that's all that she needed apparently. She started two
weeks later...
The first words to escape the lips of the Third Man as she walked into the
backroom were "This place can use a woman's touch..." Those words meant
ultimate death to a man. When words such as those were spoken, a man might
as well cut off his own privates and hand them to the woman that spoke them.
The week marking the Third Man's arrival also happened to coincide with the
week of my vacation. A coincidence, I must admit, not wholly without a bit
of intrusion on my end.
But back to the point, I entered the backroom the following Monday.
Normally, I'm not one for fashion fads or anything, but I think my jaw
literally fell to my knees. I looked just like every kid I ever hated in
high school, with their pants hanging so low part of their knees were
exposed. The backroom had been painted from wall to corner and yes, even
the ceiling, in an array of pastels. Streamer found itself wrapped along
the wall, pinned perfectly every three feet.
Needless to say, I inquired as to the origin of such frivolities. I was
pointed in the direction of Janet, who I had met only once before. You see,
as an accountant, she worked a shift that allowed her to leave in the
mornings before I came in to work in the afternoons.
"Good morning Janet, did you forget to go home on time?"
"No, I work back here now," she said, directing some of the members of the
freight crew in hanging streamer.
"Oh really? When did this happen."
"When I was put in as the third manager."
"You? As Third Man?"
Now, by no means am I sexist... I'll say two words bad for my own sex before
one about any of the opposite, but golly... a woman on freight? Wouldn't
she break a nail or something? Alright, you're going to call me on that...
um -- men drink a lot and are slobs. So anyway, I don't understand how the
situation passed through headquarters. Apparently, Humperdinck's earlier
words rang more true now than ever. What I wouldn't give for a good butt so
that I could get a high-paying job...
And thus my experience with the first female third manager began. I don't
know exactly how to describe the situation other than we were "at odds."
The largest problem I found when working with the Third Man was the fact
that I was working with not a man, but the complete opposite. In order to
make myself feel better, I began referring to her as the "Third Persun," the
u in 'persun' to remove any denotation of 'son.' However, upon finding her
not too upset about the name, I began simply referring to her as "Janet."
Now that agitated her.
The fact that Janet had never worked on the store floor before also had me
slightly worried. In the years she had worked for the store as an
accountant, she had been holed up in the scanning office. Thus, she was
blissfully unaware of the politics involved in dealing with stupid people.
A trait as old and enjoyable as the Greek origin of rhetoric, if I do say so
myself. Few people can truly pull off an insult in such an amiable,
friendly way and yet smother it in bitter sarcasm and cynicism. I am one of
those few.
So, despite the fact she knew nothing about her job, Janet posed as a very
attractive Third Man. I did have to give her one good comment, however...
at least she tried to understand what was going on about her.
"Hey boys, what are we doing?" she asked one time, upon finding myself and
my two henchmen throwing boxes around the back room.
"WE," as I so carefully pointed out, "are condensing the ad wall."
The ad wall is what I like to refer to as the "dumping grounds" of the back
room. While it technically serves as a temporary storage area for all of
the backstock we carry on sale items, it often turns into a storage for
everything the freight crew doesn't want to carry in their own backstock.
"What do you mean?" inquired Janet.
"I mean that we combine partial-pallets and try to just get rid of as much
of this stuff as we can, in order to make room for tomorrow's shipment."
"Would you like to show me how it's done?"
I sighed. Pointing to my two partners in effort, I said "Rigg and Shawn,
show Janet how to condense a pallet. And while you are at it, why don't you
show her what we are actually payed to do, as it is obvious she doesn't
know."
Since that day, the Third Man and I had a certain understanding, a bond if
you will. I didn't bother the Third Man, and the Third Man didn't bother
me. And that was exactly how things would remain, as far as either of us
were concerned...
I approached the front doors to the grocery store yet again. Another day at
work. Another day to live the constant battle against the management and
baka customers. Can you believe that customers actually get upset and take
it personally when you don't carry something they want? I had clocked in
and was on my way to the backroom when a customer stopped me. The elderly,
I'm-your-guest-and-therefore-am-entitled-to-be-anything-I-so-feel-inclined-to-be\
attitude led me to believe that this customer was indeed one of the infamous
sunbirds.
A sunbird is an elderly person from a warm-climate area, such as Arizona or
Florida. For some inexplainable reason, sunbirds tend to gather in packs
and hog up free-ways with their trailers and mobile homes. They flock to
the milder areas for summers, and to make general nuisances of themselves.
For yet another inexplainable reason, they liked to haunt the small
community in which I lived. I don't know exactly how it worked, whether
they brought the warm air with them or just filled the atmosphere readily
with hot air, but for some odd reason, the sunbirds brought hell to my small
community, heat and all.
Sunbirds are like any other group of people though. Many of them are
awesome individuals who will go the extra mile just to be polite. On the
other hand, it is the remaining population that makes things difficult for
all the rest of us.
I walked into the store, only to have Noon, the Head Checker, call me over
the PA system. "Darien, customer service on checkstand 2."
What did she think I was, some sort of courtesy clerk? A common bagger? I
don't have the time to bag groceries. And so I walked to the drinking
fountain in search of some clear nourishment for my parched throat. Not two
steps later, I heard the crazed sunbird's coarse voice hiss "Don't you walk
away kid!" Phshaw! Like I was supposed to come back and help after THAT
comment! Hah! I haughtily adjusted my feather duster and continued my pace
to the drinking fountain.
Another customer stopped me and asked for the wine section.
"I'm sorry sir, we don't carry wine. The store owner does not believe in
it."
"Believe in it my ***! I want my ****in wine!" screamed the elderly man.
"Sir, I believe you may have had enough already... perhaps you should take a
nap and let it wear off?"
"I'll tell you when I've had enough!"
I had had enough and scurried into the backroom before the customer raised
his cane at me.
Upon entering the backroom, I found Janet sitting atop a stack of creamed
corn. She wiped her eyes quickly, sniffled, and looked up at me.
"What are you filling?" she asked.
"Don't give me any of that crap Janet, you know darn tootin' well that I
know how to do my job." Looking back on those words, it probably wasn't the
nicest thing I could have said.
Janet blinked twice at me before the tears began to flow once more. I
looked at her inquisitively and climbed atop the stack of whole kernel corn
beside her. The two of us sat in silence for several minutes. I knew
something had to be wrong, not from the fact that she was crying, but from
the fact that she wasn't telling me to get off my lazy butt and do
something.
Finally, she broke the silence. "My husband and I got in an argument
yesterday. He told me that he hated me and that he had to leave. He said
he didn't know when he'd get back. I screamed at him that I hated him and
that he should never come back..."
I blinked. Was the Third Man actually confiding in me? Granted, it is
better for people to get their feelings out in the open in order to let
wounds heal, but still. The Third Man was speaking to me! Woman-hater
extraordinaire. The cynical bagger and stock clerk. Nobody wanted to
confide in a schmo like myself. And then I realized something important.
If she was confiding in me, there must be something truly wrong.
"Janet? Sometimes people need to have some time alone..." I began, feeling
incredibly foolish. "We men are idiots, to put it quite blatantly. We try
to hide our own emotions by getting upset or hunting or whatever. You can't
blame it on yourself. On the other hand, you can't blame it on him either.
You'll just have to --"
"Darien, come to aisle six please, Darien to aisle six."
Humperdinck had worse timing than Madonna had taste in clothing. I glanced
over at Janet, who had pulled a kleenex from her pocket and was wiping her
eyes. I eased myself from the pallet of corn and walked out onto the store
front, my thoughts swimming and colliding with one another in my head like a
set of pool balls that had just been broken.
I closed in on the offending aisle and met Humperdinck. "Darien, we have a
slight animal control problem. Could you go grab a broom."
I blinked twice, but hurried to retrieve a broom before I was asked again.
I returned to aisle six, the aisle of Fritos, Doritos, Popcorn, and
Condiments, and glanced around for Humperdinck. The man could quite simply
not stay put.
I muttered under my breath and turned to look down the aisle just as I was
beaned in the forehead by a bag of Lay's Salt and Vinegar Potato Chips. I
blinked twice and looked at the bag at my feet. My gaze then shifted to the
aisle. A monkey hung to the chip racks, clutching another bag of chips in
its right hand. It looked sheepishly at me and grinned widely, baring its
teeth. The bag of KFC Barbeque chips hit me in the chest. My eyes
narrowed. I didn't care where this animal came from, but it was time to do
a bit of controlling. I shouldered the broom and strode onto the aisle.
To make a long story short, and to save myself a particular amount of
embarrassment, I waved goodbye to the monkey as the zoo truck drove away.
How the creature had ever escaped in the first place, no one ever knew. In
my opinion, I think we locked away a grizzled, hairy old sunbird that just
went a bit loopy when he found out that we didn't carry his favorite brand
of mayonnaise in the 32 oz plastic bottle.
As for Janet? Her husband came back that night after work. She apologized
to him and exclaimed that perhaps the two of them needed some time to do
what they would like. They made up that night, and I got quite the graphic
detail of the events from Janet the next day. For some odd reason, she got
some twisted pleasure from the expressions on my face.
I'll never understand women.