Department-Sized Table

A customer is lost, and I approach her and her daughter. “Are you looking for something?” She tells me she’s looking for the children section. I point in the direction where it is, only twelve-feet away. There is a huge doorway, where you can obviously see children mannequins and kid’s themed items. First, she goes toward a mirror, which I find odd. I tell her, “No, it’s straight, keep going.” So she walks, stopping one-foot away from the kid’s department and looks curiously at a cabinet of adult merchandise. She has a surprised, confused look as if, “What? This doesn’t look like kid’s clothes.” I’m standing there thinking, “Yes, the entire department fits in one fixture.” She looks back at me with a face saying, “This isn’t kid’s clothes.” Then her daughter proves to be the one with the brains, pointing at the kid’s department only a foot away. “Oh!” The mother exclaims, turning back to thank me. She waves as her daughter pulls her away. I roll my eyes without rolling my eyes and tell her, “You’re welcome.” Then I go back about my business.

Customer Service: The Blind, The Dumb

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Shoplifter: They Got Away

Yes, last night, they got away. It was one of the rare times I wasn’t patrolling the front, like a hawk scavenging for food. I rarely see these shoplifters come in. I’ve seen them in the mall, but I usually just stand there with my hands on my hips and they turn around.

This night, I was checking the cash register, since I was in the back, and I have often been relegated to back-up the register. Then, I see one of them. They have the entire look of a shoplifter, so I walk towards her. The moment she sees me, she clutches her large bag tightly under her arm, and I duck behind a pillar–noticing she tries to hide the fact she’s seen me. In the Fountainhead, Dominique says Roark, “When you first meet someone, you reveal everything about yourself by your reaction. In turn, the other reveals everything by their reaction to your reaction.” (Or something like that, I haven’t read the book for a decade.) Thus, I always use a shoplifter’s first reaction to give away if they are or aren’t one. It’s like of like being shocked by static, even if you try hard, most people give it away.

So I hide behind the pillar, and I watch her looking for me–I disappeared into thin air. She is obviously not trained in ‘the mirror’ arts. But, I know there is another somewhere, and as I’m looking, I see the other appear near the mirror–because our boxers are arranged there. I swear at myself knowing they already stole from us. Yet, I’m still unseen. I just know the first woman gave the signal that someone was coming, so the second left. Amusingly, the last one, a man, stuck around at our scents–probably interested in stealing some cologne.

As I walk by him, I make sure he can hear my walkie-talkie conversation, “One of them is right here, so if you can watch, I’ll take a look if there is another.” As I say that, a co-worker tells me, “No, he just left out the front door.” So I walk up to the door, and I see him looking around with the “where did they go?” face. Obviously, I know where they went, so I yell out to him, “They went towards the chocolate store!” Sadly, he did not thank me for my help. But, now he knows I know. I’ll have something interesting planned next time.

I still want to do the 3-point fade-away shot with a sensor in their bag, so they can beep everywhere.

The Mirror

I have read many different theories on mirrors. Some discuss how intelligent creatures can recognize themselves in a mirror, versus other less-cognizant creatures who see a reflection as a competitor, a friend, or a mate yet not recognizing it is them. There are theories which say we develop a sense of self, of being, when we first stare into a mirror–because we are no longer disembodied, but we actually see and know what we look like and in our minds we fully exist from this point on. We see, therefore we are. A mirror does much to tell us about ourselves.

The store I work at has a doorway which divides different sections of our store. I have so many people who walk by that door, look directly at it and then continue walking. They then approach me, asking, “Where is your other sections? I can’t find it.” I tell them they just walked past it, and they reply, “Oh, I thought that was a mirror.” Really? What does this say about you, oh customer?

Oh so curious that someone can look upon a doorway, mistaking it for a mirror, admitting this mistaken fact, and yet they themselves were not in their imaginary mirror–they saw no reflection. Either these people are vampire-lovers, which are in high demand these days, and they found total elation and self-completion in the idea they no longer have a reflection, or there is something significant about intelligence and the fact people can’t recognize they have no reflection in a mirror.

This would be like believing stairs only go down–so how do you get back up? Or asking how much wood can a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood? Does a falling tree make noise if no one is around to hear it? Money is power, time is money, yet humanity created both of these abstract concepts and allowed them to control us all. Humanity has forgotten what it has created and lost control over its creation. Ah, humanity, you make me cry. You make me weep.