The Self-Esteem of Babies

I never liked having other people take care of me. I learned to cook as soon as I could. I learned to do my own laundry. I learned to keep order in my own life. I grew up as an individual, in the sense that I had a certain pride for myself and my own well being. I liked knowing I could rely on myself for my own needs. I don’t need someone else washing my dishes or putting away my clothes, I’ll do it if I want and when I want. There is the saying, we are taken care of as babies, then before we die, we are taken care of again–because at the start and ending of our lives, we just can’t do it, we can’t take care of ourselves.

As a person working in retail, there are certain levels, limits to which I can understand customers, and then areas where it’s like they’re babies and I’m wiping their buttock after they take a poop. I can think of the mother and daughter who came out of their fitting room, looked at me, then looked at each other, and then started to laugh. As they walked away, I looked into the fitting room and they left all their clothes on the floor, and all the hangers in disarray. Obviously, they had some intent in their actions, perhaps thinking, “Well he’s paid to clean it up, isn’t he?” There are the endless customers who leave destruction in their wake, not even knowing how to lift a stack of clothes to grab the size they need–far easier to just yank that extra-large out of the bottom of the pile, right? Someone here is going to clean it up, right? Someone has to. Do we have the same ideas when we litter or pollute? Someone else will clean up this mess. It would seem many people do believe this ideal.

I possess something which seems utterly rare, it’s called self-esteem, it’s called self-pride. I have a sense of well-being about myself. I don’t see myself as a slob, although I admit I can be lazy, but I see no reason to be a slob in public. I don’t litter and throw my rubbish around idly. I don’t even throw away my recyclables if I know I can take it elsewhere. I especially have no need littering in retail establishments, destroying their folded piles and leaving waste in my wake. I always take my own clothes back, fold my shirts as nicely as I found it, and to the surprise of salespeople, I refuse to let them put anything away.

I don’t need slaves. Even if I were rich, I’d be working alongside people doing work. I see no purpose in making people do things I can do. It would hurt my own self-esteem feeling that someone else has to clean up after me. I would feel like I were some big baby if I couldn’t even do something as simple as keeping order and balance. It would be comparable to soiling my underwear and having someone clean my butt. Of course, I alluded to that metaphor already, didn’t I?

Somewhere in the mind and mentality of humans there is a need or want to be treated as a child, or have someone slave over them. Some people call it pampering, which often comes with a certain price-tag. There are other poorer people who seem to believe the cost of money is beyond the cost of being human. The point where you start acting like a child–whining to get what you want, consciously leaving a trail of disaster behind you, and believing, truly believing the customer is always right–you have issues which really need to be addressed, especially if we want to have an evolved society one day. For other people who dream of having someone slave for them, I probably have no words to express my feelings. Desperate, ridiculous, and humiliating come to mind, and this is me comparing you to the word ‘human being’.

I could pray and wish for a world where people are raised with a sense of awareness. Where people are proud to do their own work, to bring as much balance and peace to the world as possible, people who would strive to find equality between human beings. Until then, I’ll be content cleaning up your mess, because obviously you lack the self-esteem, awareness, and respect to do it yourself. I assume you’ll return to diapers as soon as possible, too.

Advertisement

I See It’s On Sale

I’m standing near a table folding, and a woman comes up to me asking, “Everything here, it’s on sale, right?”

Usually such a question is rhetorical, but here she points at a sign on a bench, then waves at a table near it. (Just so you can understand, there is a larger table where the main product is placed, and then there are lower benches near or around the table–like satellites, or moons around a planet.) One bench has a sale sign, and it’s half-hidden by the higher, larger table–so all you can see is the top of the sign, which says, “Sale”. You can see 3/4ths of the word.

I try to tell her the bench is on sale, but the table is not, otherwise a sign would be on the bench and the table. I show her what I mean by placing the sign on the table (which also says, “Sale, Select items”), saying, “This would mean the table is on sale.” Then I put it back down on the bench and say, “This means the bench is on sale. And it says select items anyway.” She keeps arguing with me, saying, “But I can see the sale sign from here! I can see the sale sign from here, that means everything is on sale.”

First, while her jaw is going ‘blah-blah-blah’, I’m thinking, “Okay, the sign is a little big, but it isn’t even on the same table. Well, actually, it’s been there for a while now, and she’s the first person to get confused in over a week, making problems, and getting weird about it. You know, some people live their lives causing this kind of trouble for themselves. They just create stupidity.”

Then, I’m thinking, “If a wall nearby says sale, it doesn’t mean everything in the area is on sale. You can’t point and say, ‘Well I can see the sale sign, that means everything is on sale.’ Who says that, other than this woman? Even when a window says sale, it doesn’t mean everything in the store is on sale.” We’re just arguing semantics, and a customer’s ability to demand stupidity. I tell her everything on top of the table is going to ring up full-price, because it is full-price, but the sale items on the bench, they’ll ring up on sale. It’s not like I can change that fact.

Yet, she goes on about being able to see the sale sign; that it’s misleading marketing; that I was trying to trick her into buying something that’s not even on sale; that now she doesn’t want to buy anything at all. I’m sorry, you caught me in my dirty tricks; I wanted you to take something to the register and think its on sale, as if you would not whine and cry when you get there saying, “I can see the sign!” I am left to assume such threats and insults work to scare someone into changing their mind, saying everything is on sale? I just shrug and say, “Okay, but if you change your mind all this stuff on the back bench is REALLY cheap.”

I remember telling my boss about the dumb, fat woman, saying she’s a size-12 and she wanted a new pair of denim on sale, because she could see the top of a sign nearby. My manager replies, “She’s not that fat!”
“Well, because she’s so dumb,” I tell her, “That makes her fat-ter.”

Customer Types: Big Baby, The Blind, Capitalist, Don’t Kill the Messenger, The Dumb

The Benefit of the Doubt

A customer comes in with a return, it seems her pants tore on the butt the first time she wore it. It was beyond the return period, and kind of old. She didn’t have a receipt and the item was worthless in price, but after a discussion with a manager, he told her, “We’ll give you the benefit of the doubt, and let you exchange it for another pair.” So she goes off on her merry way to find a new pair of jeans. After her search, she returns to the register, and the same manager returns to help her. She now says that she had it altered and hemmed, which really does stretch our return policy. Yet, again, the manager said, “Alright, I said we’d give you the benefit of the doubt, and we will. Just this one time, you can exchange your jeans.” The story I was told, since I was nearby, but not included in this story, she exchanged her pair of hemmed, torn, used pants and got a pair of brand new pants.

Half-an-hour later she returns, and says she doesn’t want the pants anymore. She asks for specific managers by their name, none of which were working. Instead another manager comes out, since she doesn’t want the first manager helping her. She starts crying saying she doesn’t want the pants and wants her original pants back. The manager asks why. The woman tells my manager, “He called me fat.”
“What do you mean?”
“When he said he was giving me the benefit of the doubt, he was calling me fat.”
“I’m sorry, mam, but I’m quite sure he wasn’t calling you fat.”
“He was!” And the woman sobs more heavily, crying more. “He was calling me fat, and saying he’d give me the benefit of the doubt, because I’m fat!” Of course, she was about 34-inches and about five-foot two-inches in height. Yet, my manager was right, he wouldn’t call her fat, since that’s not his style. After a lot of crying, sobbing, and fat-over-usage, the second manager comes into the back to tell me and the first manager the story. A third manager comes along, one of the people she kept asking for when she was crying. We described her, and he didn’t know her at all, but went to look at the security cameras just in cast.

Because, you know, the whole world thinks she’s fat, which is why the pants tore, right? I know you’re thinking that, stop giving her the benefit of the doubt, people! Shame, shame.

Customer Types: Big Baby