The Old Man and the Bag

Chapter One.

He was an old man who wandered alone in his flip-flops through the mall I work and he had in his pocket eighty-four dollars and seventy-nine cents always without buying anything new. In the first forty days he bought and returned the same bag over and over again. But after forty days we were without his bag, and my managers had told me that the old man was now definitely and finally crazy, which he showed by yelling at me, yelling at himself, and I had called the managers to deal with him, because his bag was gone, and he was mad. I had seen the old man come in each day to buy a bag then return it, saying he’d come back and buy it later and I always had some naive coworkers help him, listen to him rambling about his son and daughter, who probably do not exist, while holding onto the bag he’d buy and return, then buy and return again. His clothes dirty, aged and wrinkled, it looked like the flag of permanent defeat.

The old man was thin and Asian with deep wrinkles on his forehead, which creased whenever he spoke. While yelling at himself, he once left his clothes and Walkman in our tables, and then went away, forgetting he even did so. We returned it to him when he came back again. He came today, asking for his bag, but it was not there. We had finally sold them all. He yelled at me, telling me to prove they were all gone, to show him there were no more. Is this an oxymoron? He would not stop yelling. I ruined his habit, his daily routine which made him feel safe, for he is a crazy man that I once pitied and humored for his loneliness. Yet, I despise being yelled at and threw him to a manager instead. From now on, I will not be helping him anymore.

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Magic Panties

I’m not involved in this, but I was just standing nearby–as usual–watching the story unfold. On the walkie-talkie, I hear a co-worker say a customer has some panties with no tags, she wants to return and find out how much they are worth.

The story, as I was told, is this:
The woman comes to the register and hands the cashier several pairs of underwear. She says she doesn’t want them.
The cashier checks the price of these unknown panties, and they are over two years old. The cashier tells her this, and says they’re worth a dollar.
The woman replies, “But I can’t keep these, I don’t want them. I didn’t wear them.”
The manager is also there asking why she waited so long, why she decided now that the doesn’t want them.
It turns out, she visited her psychic. Yes, her psychic. And her psychic told her those colors were bad luck for her, so she had to return them, she couldn’t keep them. Who could refuse an explanation like that, right?
But my manager is resolute, telling her the panties are worth one-dollar.
So the customer says, “But I’m Korean. I’m from Korea.”
And my manager told me, she wanted to reply, “Oh… Okay! In that cast, they’re worth fifty-cents.” We had to stop and laugh at that one. But my manager continues, “Really, who cares where you’re from or who you are? They’re two years old!” But she didn’t say any of this to the customer. She only told the woman there was nothing she could do.
The woman explained that she could only return her panties now, on her trip. In the end, the woman just takes her dollars, since she can’t keep the panties. They are bad-luck, you know. (I decide this will be my reason to return something, if I ever do have to return something, “My psychic said so.”)

Now, I’m just wondering, did she go to her psychic, pull out her panties and say, “Hey, I bought these. Do you like them?”