Intolerance, Inc.

Hey, Foreigner

I was rearranging a few items up at the front of the store when a woman nearby lifted up a shirt and, not looking at me, mumbled something rather quickly. I wasn't entirely sure she'd been speaking to me, and I certainly hadn't heard what she said, so I responded with a quick: "Pardon?"

She looked at me long and hard, then twitched a bit of her lip up into a sneer and spoke very slowly and clearly.

"Do you even speak ENGLISH?"


Hey, Musical Foreigner

I was filling in for a cashier and had a short line. The old woman I was helping had a very large box of CDs, mostly classical, but one or two classic jazz singers, such as Ella Fitzgerald. She grabbed the Ella CD and whipped around to the black woman in line behind her, thrusting it in her face.

"THIS IS YOUR HERITAGE!"

The woman simply nodded and smiled. "Yes. Yes it is."

Old lady whipped back around to me.

"What's YOUR heritage?"

"Er, personally? French, Italian, and Ukrainian."

Her face crinkled up in delight, though her tone was still definitely in the imperative.

"OH! You must LOVE Pah-tcho-bel's Canon!!"


Bible Man

For a delightfully long number of days, there was a DVD on our shelves titled only "Bible Man." Having carefully observed the cover, watched the online tralier, and studied the blurb on the back, I have deduced that Bible Man is roughly what would happen if Batman lost the pointy ears and declared himself Holy Roman Emperor. Clad in gleaming gold breastplate with purple accents and protected, amongst other items, by the "Shins of Peace," he battles the forces of anything not included in the Bible.

They never mention any actual superpowers. I presume they include "Being Really Strong" and "Not Being Scared of Shit," and possibly, in later incarnations, "Extreme Sense of Righteousness." In the Wikipedia article, it notes that some critics argue that Bible Man teaches intolerance towards those with different beliefs and opinions, notably showing such offenders as "graphically melted or blown up."

Pish tush. Harmless child's play.


The Secret Museum of What-the-Fuckery

Also discovered on our shelves was a large, dusty, distinctly old-smelling book entitled The Secret Museum of Man. I guess I should allow a bit of leeway for the fact that it was first published in 1942, but it seems remarkably backward, even for then.

For instance, a passage on Arabs:

"Dignity of presence and of manner the Arab possesses in good measure, but of the dignity of labour he has no idea. He deems it more consistent with his masculine importance to sit in stately indolence among his peers, enjoying the soothing influence of tobacco smoke cooled in the hookah set before him where he watches the activity of the rest of the human swarm."

And that's one of the milder ones. Generally speaking, the scientific method used by these early anthropologists seems to run as thus:

Hypothesis: You're ugly.
Procedure: 1) Take a good, hard look. 2) Apply my opinions.
Conclusion: You're ugly.


Love Jesus

or he will FUCKING KILL YOU.

Goodwill Physics

Much like the rest of our universe, the clothing items at Goodwill are apparently acted upon by a mysterious force that causes them to continuously expand outward, often at a violent pace.

I felt today's find deserved a picture, so I present you with this TO SCALE cartoon sketch, hastily scribbled out during the remnants of my lunch break.

This is very, very real. And very genuinely labeled as 7X. And very genuinely covered in triangles, plaid, and LIGHTNING BOLTS. The color, overall, would have to be described as "80s." And a single thigh big enough to fit in one of those leg holes could CRUSH ME INSTANTANEOUSLY AND LEAVE NOTHING BUT A GREASY SPOT ON THE INSTITUTIONAL TILE.

Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder: Now a Communicable Disease!

This story is proof that I am, in fact, a better person than many of the outlandishly hideous rednecks that crawl in from the boondocks bog.

We sell puzzles at our store. The standard puzzle price is 50 cents. A nicer puzzle might be $1. A whole dollar, people. We were understaffed today, since one of our regular cashiers is out sick, and we usually run on a skeleton crew on Sundays anyway, so I'd taken over a second register to help with the burgeoning line of restive shoppers. A woman cut through the line to stand beside my register, tapping me on the shoulder as I was in the middle of ringing up someone else's purchase. Her hair was an unfortunate dirty mop color, an effect not helped by its total lack of sheveled-ness, and her teeth looked like they hadn't seen the right side of a toothbrush since some time before the Carter administration. She began her spiel immediately.

"Now, I been jipped by Goodwill before. I bought puzzles than ain't had all their pieces in 'em. You bring these three puzzles down to fifty cents and I'll buy 'em."

I'm attempting to fold the other customer's clothing and tell them their total at the same time.

"I'm sorry ma'am. Unless a product is seriously defective and that defect wasn't taken into consideration during pricing--like a rocking chair with a rocker that shattered on the sales floor--we really can't price down once an item's been placed out here."

"Well that's ridiculous. I been cheated by you folks before--I done bought puzzles that had missin' pieces."

"I'm sorry, but as a non-profit operation whose supplies all come from donations, we really can't guarantee that all the puzzles will have their pieces. We take that into consideration when pricing them."

"Then you bring someone out here and count 'em right now."

"I beg your pardon?"

"I want you to count these pieces. If they have all the pieces, I'll buy the puzzles for a dollar each."
I should point out here that each puzzle had 2,000 pieces.  Right, sorry.  That's why we keep the obsessive-compulsive orphans in the back.  An extra sugar cube for Timmy today!

"We're running on a skeleton crew today. The only employee we might have free would be our hardgoods pricer, but he needs to be at the back door to take in donations."

Long story short, she became irate, demanded to speak with a manager, became nonplussed when she found out she WAS speaking to the manager. I called up Terry, our hardgoods pricer, just to reiterate what I was saying. He agreed with me, of course, though not without her claiming that times were too hard to spend that kind of money on something we're probably going to cheat her with.

That's where it really starts to get to me. We're talking a difference of 50 cents. Two quarters. I might be sympathetic were she buying clothing, particularly children's clothing, or perhaps even kitchen supplies or furniture. I have difficulty, however, believing that her need for the scattered pieces of some picture of a lighthouse, tiger cubs, or, heaven forbid, a Thomas Kinkade cottage, is so utmost, so fiery a scorching desire in her veins, that when her budget is tight enough to make two quarters a fighting issue she must forsake all other purchases and BATTLE TO THE DEATH.

Moreover, the belief that we here at Goodwill are so crafty, so insidious in our machinations, that we would open every single puzzle and remove 1-3 pieces, just so that you might experience the existential angst that comes with parting with one whole dollar for a puzzle in which the butterfly's left antennae is missing a jigsaw shape in the upper left hand corner, is hilarious in its paranoia.



Though true.

(Kidding.)

She and her taciturn husband eventually stalk off, and later return with only the one $0.50 puzzle, which they purchase. As they're heading out the door, I finish printing their receipt and ask them if they'd like it. The husband says yes and takes it, but almost instantly his wife reaches over and snatches it out of his hand with a withered claw.

"THIS IS USELESS!"

She wads it up in her fist and flings it at my face, where it bounces off my nose and hits the floor just as they exit.

Thank you for reminding me of how awesome I am compared to the rest of humanity.

The Book Eatin' Derby

Derby Boys!  Oh Noes!1!!

On Saturday, we experienced a full scale invasion.  I'm talking beaches of Normandy, waves of cannon-fodder, cashiers making frantic calls for backup and creating bulwarks of plastic t-shirt bags invasion.  The invaders appeared to be two entire fraternities and their younger brothers.

Their mission: to purchase as many scrubs and long coats as possible while causing as much destruction within the store as time allowed.  They succeeded.  And how.  I walked into our men's suits and blazers section, only to stop, aghast at the wholesale slaughter: at least twelve or so coats tossed about on the ground, hangers nowhere to be found, two of the perpetrators trying on further coats and laying others on top of the pants rack.  One of them saw me looking, glanced at the destruction, and said "Oh, yeah.  I guess that was us."

My favorite, however, was the guy who tried to convince me to let him return all of the twenty pairs of glasses he'd bought, even though he only had a receipt for ten.  When I finally refused, his response was priceless:
"Oh man!  Now the boys will NEVER win the derby!!"

Them Eatin' Books

An elderly lady (how often do my stories start this way?) approached me today as I was putting some books out on the shelves.  She held out a vaguely romance novel-looking hardback.

"Hey.  D'you have any of them readin' books?"
I blinked, and bit back a snarky "No, but have you tried our eatin' books?" with difficulty.
"I don't read books much, but my friend does, and I wanted to get her something.  D'you think she'd like this?"
"I'm not sure, ma'am.  What genres does she like?"
"Oh, you know.  Love.  Murder.  Killin'."

I opened the book and scanned the first paragraph, finding the words "billionaire Greek tycoon" before closing it.

"I think she'll like this one."

Jumping For Santa

Santa In The Off Season

Apparently Santa has no idea what to do with himself in the off season.  I saw a dead ringer for Saint Nick--albeit in a pair of dirty jean overalls and with skin more sunburnt than merrily rosy--walking through my store for several hours the other day.  This wouldn't have been of note were it not for the fact that he was pushing a shopping cart backwards through the aisles the whole time, handle curving out in front as if it fully expected to have animatronic reindeer lashed to it at any moment.

Or at least an animatronic singing buck.  (See: studies, part 3)

Following close behind him most of the time was a small, irritable woman who insisted on carrying her entire find--including furniture items--in her arms, then proceeded to complain about the weight when she dumped them on the cashier.

Holograms: The Latest Fashion Trend

We have some of our more expensive items locked in glass cases in front of the cash registers.  A woman with a barely interpretable accent asked me to open one of them one day so she could look at a fairly nondescript wristwatch.  She turned it this way and that, tapped on it in various places, then looked up at me.

"Is real?"

I looked at the watch.

"Er, well, the brand isn't a particularly well-known one, so I imagine it is an original of the--"

"Yeayea, no--is it REAL?"

"Is...is the watch real?"

Fervent nodding.

"Yes.  Yes, I imagine so."

Losing--And Finding--My Religion

Our at-work radio is not something I'm proud of.  It's a light rock station piped in from Greenville, SC, just when I thought I'd escaped everything from that soul-barren pit.  I have a song from it stuck in my head right now.  I don't know the title.  I don't know the artist.  I don't even really know the words.  I just have the tune echoing and re-echoing in the musical battleground that my mind has become, a minefield littered with Elton John, Christina Aguilera, and Taylor Swift.  Occasionally the Allies try to regroup, Tracy Chapman and Eric Clapton sending out desperate signals (mostly minor chords) to the massed encampment of the gypsy punk jazz blues folk rock resistance, but they rarely receive an answer.

So it's a sad day when that radio station going out is a cause for regret.  I have come to know that day.  I learned from one of the other leads that we have a list of four radio stations we're allowed to listen to.  I switched to the nearest one, and was rewarded with the following riveting dialogue:

Stupid Man Announcer: So, apparently a mathematician in Greenville, South Carolina says he's found a formula that will allow him to solve any sudoku puzzle.

Backup Female Announcer Who Never Says Anything Longer Than a Syllable: Oh?

Stupid Man Announcer: You know what I say?  GET A LIFE!

BFAWNSALTS: *hysterical laughter, approximating the sound of an elephant going into labor*

Stupid Man Announcer: Apparently Madonna has adopted ANOTHER baby!

BFAWNSALTS: Oh?

Stupid Man Announcer: Maybe she wanted a playmate for her boyfriend!

BFAWNSALTS: *high-frequency "awwwooooowoooooo!!!", sort of like if someone spilled their milk in the cafeteria in 8th grade*

Even better, Stupid Man Announcer came to the following conclusion on gender differences: "Now, if a woman is still a virgin when she's 27, you could say she's just been good.  But for a guy...man...something's wrong."
I don't even know where to start on that one.

As a brighter point to that day, I had a marvelous find: a t-shirt with a well-worn picture on it of a monk (in full habit) bouncing on a trampoline.  The only text, bold and huge: JUMPING FOR JESUS!

Goodwill Studies, Part 3

Further Finds:

A plastic toy Jeep. Contains two plastic rednecks in hunting gear, hats pulled so low they appear to have no eyes. Attached to hood: one plastic buck, tied down with plastic rope. When you flip a switch on the underside of the Jeep, the whole thing bounces on its wheels, plays "Dixie," and the buck lifts his head and begins to sing along, plastic automated jaw clacking up and down.

A book, entitled Created To Be His Help Meet: Discover How God Can Make Your Marriage Glorious. I encountered this at the cash register because someone--get this, a WOMAN--was actually buying it. Having committed it to paper, I now purge this event from my memory.

A plastic hula dancer with a music box hidden in her base. I'm guessing, from her fully jointed plastic hips, that she was once meant to dance seductively to the jarringly non-hula music emanating from her person, but now she just hangs limply at a very unhealthy 45 degrees, arms upraised, as if her torso was going to dive sideways into the tropical seas and her legs begged to differ. I only mention this because of the way her music is activated. You don't press a button that plays the song, then ends. You flip a switch. An on/off switch. So of course every child that goes by flips it to on, and her violently generic song plays on a constant loop until I stomp over, grab her willowy, broken waist, switch her off, and thump her back down on the shelf with a challenging look to any bystanders.


One Very Important Question

The first time this happened, I was going to call the offender Admiral Obvious and write a character study about them. But then it happened again, and again, and again, so now I must pin the blame on an incredibly varied and vast population.
Let me give you a picture of me at work. I'm hanging clothes, probably, or rearranging them, or pulling them off the racks with a clipboard in one hand. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume I'm not actually behind a cash register or helping a cashier do a refund. I have a lanyard of keys around my neck, and most importantly of all, I have the Vest. The Vest is that very primary, crayola shade of blue most associated with Goodwill. It is BLUE, people. It says GOODWILL in rather large lettering on the front, right over the GOODWILL logo, and on the back it says "Thank you for helping us create jobs, hope, and opportunities." So I'm a little baffled every time someone comes up to me and asks:
"Hey, do you work here?"

No. I'm just their biggest fan.


The Un-PC Hordes

I went in for my last formal regional training session today. Belated, yes, but required nonetheless. It was at the Patton Ave location, since they have a whole training center next door. A few other trainees and I arrived early, so we were seated in the break section of the work floor waiting. At 8:00, the back doors (two garage-sized monoliths) slowly creaked open to admit that day's work crew.
Now, the Patton Ave location is the center for much of our actual services, by which I mean career rehabilitation--or just habilitation, for that matter--for those with mental, physical, social, or financial disabilities. And for the elderly. ESPECIALLY for the elderly.
So when those giant pod bay doors opened this morning, they let in a creaking, shuffling, white-haired, bespectacled horde, approaching inexorably with canes, walkers, and wheelchairs, a veritable Army of the Almost Undead.
Every member of which saw us, paused in their synchronized shuffle, gave a huge, crinkly smile, and waved.

I have 200 grandmothers.

Goodwill Studies, Part 2

Fabulous Finds
1) A black women's shirt completely covered in pairs of googly eyes. The big ones you use for craft projects. They rattle when you shake them.
2) A motorcycle phone. It's a phone-sized motorcycle (red, Harley Davidson)...and a phone.
3) A handful of naked ceramic Santas.
4) A shirt that only says "Kazakhstan" in bold print.
5) A kangaroo suit.


Further Characters


QVCTV

QVCTV is not quite a little old lady. She's approaching little old ladydom, but I'd say she's more of a medium-sized middle-aged lady right now, on the outward cusp. At any rate, I was pricing down the electronics one day when she approached me and began asking me questions about the TV change over that I wasn't prepared to answer, not owning a TV myself. The conversation went about thusly:

QVCTV: So do you know if this *waving around an unidentifiable grayish box with a tuner that appeared to have once been a cutting-edge unidentifiable grayish piece of technology* will keep my TV coming?
Eva: I, um, I'm really not sure. I don't know if it's actually a TV par--
QVCTV: I mean, with the change and all.
Eva: I honestly couldn't say...what kind of TV do you have?
QVCTV: The kind with rabbit ears.
Eva: Aeuhhrr...
QVCTV: I just CANNOT LIVE without my QVC channel. Just can't do it. My house, we can't live without QVC.

Fortunately, at about this point a customer who worked for a cable company stepped in to answer her questions. Assuming our interactions were over, I went back to looking over the electronics, and, when one of the more tolerable songs came on our work radio, I sang along with it to maintain my sanity.

QVCTV: Ohhh!! Oh your VOICE!
Eva: ...euh?
QVCTV: Don't you hide that voice from ANYONE!!
Eva: *half-heartedly resumes singing*
QVCTV: OH, you would make such a wonderful nursemaid!!
Eva: *silence*
QVCTV: *referring to the singer* She's such a wonderful artist. I think she must be Christian. Since she sings about love and faith all the time.
Eva: *applies $0.25 tag to QVCTV's forehead and exits*

Okay, that last bit was just wishful thinking.


Slow Buggy

Slow Buggy is one of our community service workers. Slow Buggy doesn't speak. He also barely moves. I'm not entirely convinced Slow Buggy is not an extremely advanced member of the family Pinaceae. Perhaps a boxwood instead. Slow Buggy's only task, on most days, is to take the hardgoods buggies from the back and put the hardgoods items--anything that's not clothing--out on the sales floor. Slow Buggy somehow does this SO MIND-BENDINGLY SLOWLY that his path almost never intersects with that of someone traveling at normal speed in our dimension. Every now and then you'll see him grab one item from a buggy in the back and shuffle vaguely towards the sales floor, and you might see him again an hour later placing that item on a rack, but in between he's active on such a low frequency he's completely imperceptible to ordinary human vision.

At least that's my theory.


Mrs. Roboto

I was putting out auction items one day when someone tapped my shoulder. I heard a crinkly, quavering, achingly slow voice say: "Excuse me, young lady."
I turned around to see the ancient and venerable Mrs. Roboto peering up at me through what seemed to be two vintage magnifying glasses on sticks. She blinked and cleared her throat.
"Do you have any robots?"