Goodwill Studies, Part 1

Part 1, because I'm sure there will be many other intriguing characters and events to write about.

Yoshi
Yes, Yoshi, like the trademarked-to-hell-and-back Nintendo lizard I always play in MarioKart64 OR ELSE.
Yoshi, in real life, is still Japanese, but he's either in his late thirties or early forties, always wears a shirt and tie, and has a very serious, intense expression instead of, say, a maw gaping wide to unleash an absurdly long, fruit-seeking tongue.

Or at least I hope that's the case.

Yoshi is one of our regulars. But unlike the other regulars, Yoshi doesn't just walk into Goodwill every day. He RUNS in. Tie flapping in the breeze, Yoshi bursts in through the doors, and then proceeds to run to every proceeding location in the store. He pauses in front of a display, considers, grabs or does not grab, and runs to his next, evidently highly-planned stop.
When he's finished grabbing or not grabbing, Yoshi takes his haul to my register. He always has a grouping of objects. The first day I worked, for instance, he skidded up and dumped an entire armful of tennis rackets in front of me.
The second day it was ties.
The third day it was belts.
The fourth day it was shoes.

And so on, until the Tuesday before Valentine's Day. This day, Yoshi did not run. Yoshi walked in, wandered around, and then walked calmly up to the cash register with one, single, lonely Norah Jones CD.

Happy Valentine's Day, Yoshi.


EPA Man
EPA Man does not actually work for the EPA. Such a suggestion would probably be considered slander in his family, and he would be forced to call you out on a matter of honor and slap you across the face with his DDT-soaked work glove or something.

You see, this week we had to pull an absurd number of items off our shelves to comply with the incredibly vague regulations on items from China that may contain dangerous levels of lead. EPA Man cornered me as I was hanging clothes to complain about the situation. After I'd explained the basics to him, he attempted to explain the basics to ME. I gathered:
1) The EPA is going to destroy everything.
2) The EPA is in Obama's back pocket.
3) Lead never hurt anyone.
4) He and his siblings apparently chewed on lead ALL THE TIME when they were growing up, and they turned out JUST FINE.
5) He and his siblings also made their own lead weights for fishing lines. I'm assuming they also forged their own wagon wheels.

I can gather, from the first couple of points, the following logical assumptions:
1) According to this man, the EPA intends to destroy America by taking away our children's toys out of sheer cold-hearted malice.
2) The EPA is acting on Obama's orders.
3) President Obama is THE GRINCH.

Silence Is Golden
A woman today, exuding a certain upper middle class je ne sais quoi (in this case French for "my biggest worry is upgrading my personal training program"), came up to my cash register with a full cart. I rang up 25 or so items for her, folding them, doing my best to be polite and interactive. Since some of her items had to be wrapped to prevent breaking, it was a fairly lengthy check-out, as these things go.
The only words she could be convinced to issue during the entire process were to command me to put the receipt in the bag. Walked away without so much as a nod.

It's slightly self-vindicating to know that my I.Q. could probably sit on hers and not notice until its next trip to the loo.