The sun is a mass of incandescent gas
The creepier of the two creepiest guys at work got fired on Monday, which was a combination of relief and gossipy excitement. Over the course of his relatively brief tenure as an employee, Marcus managed to horrify Yasmin and Sadiya into making complaints, cause general discomfort among the men, eye up all of the women, hug Ben and ask him out to dinner, weird Kiara and I out so much we would each walk well out of our way to avoid having to pass him in the close quarters of an aisle, and make bizarre comments to Tyler (T: "Here, can you hold the tape for me?" M: "Would you like me to hold it...firmly?" T: "...what?"), all before making a grab for Darrel's butt, which was the breaking point. He basically managed to sexually offend every employee, regardless of age or gender or orientation, and that to me speaks of dedication. Somewhere there is a checklist with our names on it, an agenda with a careful timeline kept for reasons unknown. I can only imagine that sometime in the recent past, he rose to his feet, raised a fist to the sky, and boldly announced his intentions to any such gods as were listening. Then he tripped over a pile of empty bottles of mouthwash and fell asleep.
Dedication, or some combination of dementia and late-stage syphilis. Who knows.
Marcus is gone, but Wayne remains. Where Marcus was actively weird, Wayne is simply bizarre, an ungainly amalgam of lurking presence and aborted attempts at conversation. If Laffy Taffy started marketing pick-up lines on their candy wrappers I'd understand where he gets his material, but as it is, I can only assume he is a cesspit of unfortunate originality. Where Marcus would pop up out of nowhere, tell you a mostly unrelated story, and then introduce himself with a different name so he could try to shake your hand, Wayne just shuffles up and down the aisles with an eerie grin. After an employee potluck, he once chased Ashley around the store, asking her if she'd eaten any of his salad. When she finally snapped and said no, she hadn't had any salad, and she didn't want any salad, and she wouldn't eat any of his salad if it was the last salad on earth and she was starving, his response was a blithe, "everyone who tried my salad said it was really good. They said it was the bomb. You should have some of my salad."
On the upside of that encounter, I now get to remind Ashley, any time she complains she's hungry, that she can always have some of Wayne's Salad. "Just go ask him for some," I coo, "I hear it's the bomb. Everyone says."
Wayne also managed to figure out that I live in uptown, which I didn't know he knew until one day his undefinably accented voice startled me from the other side of a rack of bras. "Gonna be in your neighborhood tonight," he called, his voice slightly muffled by the secondhand undergarments. "Gonna check out your part of town."
Because that's not creepy as all get out.
"...huh," I said back a bit belatedly, my mind racing to remember a time when I'd ever mentioned I lived in uptown and recalling a brief conversation sometime back in December or something, "...why are you going to be in uptown, exactly?" His response ("gonna find me a woman fo da night!") was almost lost amid the flurry if plans my brain was already considering and tossing out. I was almost positive he couldn't possibly know where I lived any more specifically than simply somewhere in uptown, but if he somehow showed up on my porch I was going to have no choice but to kill him. "Uh, great, Wayne," I replied absently, my mind weighing and dismissing a variety of possible weapons, "I'm just going to go ahead and sit up all night with a shotgun aimed at the door." I was debating the merits of blunt vs. piercing when he nodded and walked away, as though this response was well within his range of expectations.
I never saw hide nor hair of him, of course, which was extremely fortunate because my two favorite options had serious flaws. Plan A was to bludgeon him with my frying pan, which is heavy, yet pleasingly aerodynamic. And there's nothing like attacking with a frying pan to cement your carefully constructed image as a frightened but no-nonsense single girl, which would be key in the ensuing trial. But I've also been embarrassingly unkind to the frying pan in question, and the thought of that sadly scarred Calphalon as exhibit A was almost too shameful to consider. "Who is she," the jurors would mutter to each other, aghast, "that she cannot decently maintain a piece of quality cookware?"
Plan B, of course, was to run him through with a sword, which would simultaneously be the culmination of every pulp fantasy novel I've ever read, and also ensure that I would never go on another date as long as I lived. It also probably wouldn't work. Wayne is a scrawny little guy who would present a challenging target, and my swordplay experience centers mostly around a battered plastic lightsaber, circa 1997. He'd likely dodge my clumsy attack and then run shrieking into the night, leaving me looking like just another nerd girl defending hearth and home with the power of steel. In uptown.
Dedication, or some combination of dementia and late-stage syphilis. Who knows.
Marcus is gone, but Wayne remains. Where Marcus was actively weird, Wayne is simply bizarre, an ungainly amalgam of lurking presence and aborted attempts at conversation. If Laffy Taffy started marketing pick-up lines on their candy wrappers I'd understand where he gets his material, but as it is, I can only assume he is a cesspit of unfortunate originality. Where Marcus would pop up out of nowhere, tell you a mostly unrelated story, and then introduce himself with a different name so he could try to shake your hand, Wayne just shuffles up and down the aisles with an eerie grin. After an employee potluck, he once chased Ashley around the store, asking her if she'd eaten any of his salad. When she finally snapped and said no, she hadn't had any salad, and she didn't want any salad, and she wouldn't eat any of his salad if it was the last salad on earth and she was starving, his response was a blithe, "everyone who tried my salad said it was really good. They said it was the bomb. You should have some of my salad."
On the upside of that encounter, I now get to remind Ashley, any time she complains she's hungry, that she can always have some of Wayne's Salad. "Just go ask him for some," I coo, "I hear it's the bomb. Everyone says."
Wayne also managed to figure out that I live in uptown, which I didn't know he knew until one day his undefinably accented voice startled me from the other side of a rack of bras. "Gonna be in your neighborhood tonight," he called, his voice slightly muffled by the secondhand undergarments. "Gonna check out your part of town."
Because that's not creepy as all get out.
"...huh," I said back a bit belatedly, my mind racing to remember a time when I'd ever mentioned I lived in uptown and recalling a brief conversation sometime back in December or something, "...why are you going to be in uptown, exactly?" His response ("gonna find me a woman fo da night!") was almost lost amid the flurry if plans my brain was already considering and tossing out. I was almost positive he couldn't possibly know where I lived any more specifically than simply somewhere in uptown, but if he somehow showed up on my porch I was going to have no choice but to kill him. "Uh, great, Wayne," I replied absently, my mind weighing and dismissing a variety of possible weapons, "I'm just going to go ahead and sit up all night with a shotgun aimed at the door." I was debating the merits of blunt vs. piercing when he nodded and walked away, as though this response was well within his range of expectations.
I never saw hide nor hair of him, of course, which was extremely fortunate because my two favorite options had serious flaws. Plan A was to bludgeon him with my frying pan, which is heavy, yet pleasingly aerodynamic. And there's nothing like attacking with a frying pan to cement your carefully constructed image as a frightened but no-nonsense single girl, which would be key in the ensuing trial. But I've also been embarrassingly unkind to the frying pan in question, and the thought of that sadly scarred Calphalon as exhibit A was almost too shameful to consider. "Who is she," the jurors would mutter to each other, aghast, "that she cannot decently maintain a piece of quality cookware?"
Plan B, of course, was to run him through with a sword, which would simultaneously be the culmination of every pulp fantasy novel I've ever read, and also ensure that I would never go on another date as long as I lived. It also probably wouldn't work. Wayne is a scrawny little guy who would present a challenging target, and my swordplay experience centers mostly around a battered plastic lightsaber, circa 1997. He'd likely dodge my clumsy attack and then run shrieking into the night, leaving me looking like just another nerd girl defending hearth and home with the power of steel. In uptown.
posted by Betsi at 4:48 PM
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