When I graduated college in 2008 the job market was tough. My liberal arts degree wasn’t making things any easier, and so I had to swallow what pride I had and take whatever job I could. It could have been worse, my parents were fine with me living at home until I got on my feet, but some of those jobs were pretty awful. The worst by far was when I sold appliances.
I had applied to work at one of the more popular consumer electronics chains in America. I won’t mention which. I’d originally indicated on my application that I’d prefer to work in the video game or home theater departments. These were areas I knew a fair bit about, since video games and television were my biggest hobbies. I went in for the interview and absolutely nailed it. The manager offered me a job on the spot, but with one caveat. I would be in the home appliances department. I’d be selling refrigerators, dishwashers, things I had no experience with and no real interest in. Up until that point a fridge was a fridge, you know? I was kind of disappointed, but I needed the money. I took the job.
My first week was pretty standard. Basic retail training, filling out paperwork, meeting my coworkers, that sort of thing. It was tedious, but I looked at it as free money. It was probably the closest thing to a good week I had at that job. It didn’t last, of course, and was soon replaced by on-the-job training. I spent the rest of my first month shadowing coworkers and watching them do their jobs. When that month was over, I was expected to know enough to be on my own.
The next few months were pretty normal over all. I would show up to work, try to convince a young couple that they needed a much larger refrigerator than they actually did, do some research on new products that were coming out, then go home. Occasionally someone would come in all angry because a unit they’d purchased didn’t fit in their home. After a while I made it a point to ask every single customer if they’d measured their space. This way any problems weren’t my fault. The days started to blur into each other as the monotony of the job set in. After 5 months, I was well on my way to an unfulfilling career in retail sales.
Everyone who’s ever worked retail can recall that one nightmare customer that finally got them to quit. It’s different for everyone, but it’s pretty much universal. Everything from snotty kids to a dude with horrible body odor to an old man literally shitting his pants in the aisle, we all have our worst of the worst horror stories. When people ask me about my worst customer, I usually tell them about the guy who threatened to stab me when I wouldn’t sell him a brand-new dryer for half-off. That’s a lie. Most people wouldn’t believe my actual worst customer story.
It was a rainy Tuesday afternoon in September and the store was completely dead. We’d had exactly zero customers come into the appliances department, and the rest of the store wasn’t much different. I half expected a tumbleweed to blow through. This one dick manager, Ted, was on my case about not making any sales. Managers never seem to notice when there’s nobody to sell anything to. Worse than that, I was closing that night by myself. I’d be stuck with douchebag Ted and his pushy attitude with nobody to bitch to right up until 11 P.M. when the store closed.
After nearly 8 hours and just as many hourly visits from Ted, it was almost time to close. I’d cleaned and vacuumed my department - twice - and was getting ready to coast those last 15 minutes until I could clock out. Freedom was within my grasp. Then the automatic doors at the front of the store slid open. The sense of tension in the entire place was palpable, as every last sales associate prayed that they wouldn’t be stuck with a shitty customer so close to closing time. It got even worse when a very old, very slow old couple shuffled into the store. They shuffled past the mobile phones, past the televisions, past the laptops and tablets. They didn’t even seem to notice the video games existed. In the end, they shuffled right into appliances, making a very slow beeline for the refrigerators. Great. I was the lucky winner, and I could feel Ted’s eyes on me, burning a hole in my company-mandated polo shirt. I sighed, resigning myself to whatever fate might befall me, and approached the old couple.
At first glance, there wasn’t anything particularly wrong with these people. Just old people, wearing old people clothes, out to buy a refrigerator for their old people home. Totally normal, right? Still, I couldn’t shake the sense that there was something off about these people. Maybe it was the fact that they came into the store so late, and that their movements were so stiff. Maybe it was the clicking noise their arthritic joints made with every movement. I couldn’t pinpoint it, but there was nothing I could do about it anyway, so I made my initial contact.
“Good evening guys, thanks for coming in tonight. Is there anything I can help you with?” I said, summoning every last bit of strength I had to sound chipper and welcoming when I was everything but. The old man looked up at me with his dark eyes as his wife opened a nearby fridge and stuck her head inside.
“We buy refrigerator,” he said, in a thick accent that I couldn’t place. His voice was raspy and unsettling, with a sort of wheeze to it, “Is for family.”
“No problem at all,” I said, “How big is your family?” I tried to take hold of the conversation to make this sale as quick and painless as possible. The man looked perplexed, as if he wasn’t sure what I meant. He turned to his wife, mumbling something that I couldn’t understand. Probably whatever his native language was. She took her head out of the refrigerator she’d been expected and replied quietly. He turned back to me.
“Eh, is big,” he said, “Is big family. Many family.”
“Okay, cool. If your family is really big, you probably want to come over this way,” I said, trying to lead them towards the larger units. I was being both sneaky and helpful. A big family does need a big fridge, but the bigger units cost a whole lot more. Either the price would scare them off or I’d make a hell of a sale and could tell Ted to shove it. They followed me as I walked toward the opposite end of the aisle. “Do you have a brand you prefer? I’m a big fan of the Samsung and LG units, myself. I find they have a lot of really great features that keep your food fresh and your refrigerator smelling nice.”
“We no need fancy,” the wife spoke up, “Only big enough for family.”
“Well,” I said, worried that the wife might make this complicated, “The bigger ones pretty much all come with the fancy features. But I can totally help you find a unit that’s the right fit for your home and family.”
“Refrigerator is for home,” the husband said.
“Right, haha,” I said, completely unsure of how to respond. This was going nowhere fast. I quickly grabbed one of the product placards off a nearby unit. It was on the bigger side, but didn’t have any of the cool stuff like LED lighting or a water spout in the door. Just a big, relatively simple refrigerator. “How does this one look? Not too fancy, but not too small.”
The couple took a moment to look the fridge over. They ran their hands up and down the stainless steel surface of it, leaving long oily streaks all over it. I cringed, knowing I’d have to clean that up before going home. They opened the doors, checked the drawers and looked in the freezer. The old man even got on his hands and knees to try and look underneath the damn thing. They spoke to each other in that strange, almost guttural language. They seemed to be arguing, from what I could tell.
“I can see you guys have a lot to discuss, and I totally understand. This sort of thing is a major purchase. Tell you what, you guys talk it out, and I’ll be right over there,” I said, pointing to the department’s cash register, “If you have any questions or if you come to a decision, just give me a shout.”
I walked away, and they continued to argue. I wasn’t even sure if they’d heard me. Still, letting the argument play out without a total stranger standing right there was probably the best call. I checked the clock as I got to the cash register. It was already past 11. I could see other employees headin home. I could see Ted giving me the douchebag eyes from across the store. He probably didn’t approve of me disengaging from the customers, but I didn’t care. I was happy to just to be away from them for a minute. I hadn’t realized just how unsettling they were until that moment. Old people, man.
After a few minutes the old man stepped out of the aisle and beckoned me back over. He looked almost excited, a big smile on his face. It looked strange on him, with his heavily sagging skin and droopy eyes. Almost like something was pulling the corners of his mouth up into what was supposed to be a smile, but wasn’t quite right. I tried to ignore it as I approached.
“What can I help you with?” I asked, “Do you have any questions?”
“Yes, yes, you help,” he said, opening the refrigerator I’d shown them. “We take this home.”
“Great, come on over to the register and I’ll get you all set up for delivery. When do you need it by?”
He looked at me, the confusion clear on his face. His head tilted slightly to the side, accompanied by a series of awful clicking noises. It sounded like he’d broken his neck. He turned to his wife, looking for guidance. She was clearly the brains of the operation, and even she was stumped.
“We, ah,” he said, “We take this home.”
“Is good enough for family home,” his wife added, as if to clarify what they meant.
“Do you mean you want this specific unit? The floor model? I can talk to my manager, but we usually don’t sell the floor models until they’re no longer in production,” I was screaming internally. I couldn’t believe this was happening. This could have been a slam dunk and now these people wanted to make it complicated. “Either way I’m going to need your address for the delivery, and we have to process the payment.”
“Payment!” the old man shouted as if this solved everything, “Yes, yes, payment.”
The two of them laughed, and the man reached into his coat pocket. The pocket was deep, and he rifled around in it for almost a full minute. I scratched the back of my head uncomfortably. What was wrong with these people? Finally, he pulled his hand from his pocket and produced a large, dirty wad of crumpled hundred dollar bills. He held them out to me as if they were the answer to all of life’s problems. I tentatively took the money from him and started to straighten out the bills so I could count them properly.
“Yes, good,” he said, “We take this home now.”
I looked back up at them, really starting to get annoyed. I didn’t know how to make it any clearer that they couldn’t just take the display fridge home with them right that second. But when I saw that they had started to take off their coats and shoes, I was too shocked to speak. They tossed their coats up on top of the refrigerator and opened the doors. The old man started to unbutton his shirt, and the woman unzipped her skirt.
“Whoa, guys, um,” I stammered, “You, uh, can’t do that here…”
They either didn’t hear me or didn’t care. They kept undressing right down to their underpants. I didn’t even bother to avert my eyes. It was like watching a train crash. You know you should look away, but you can’t. I wish I’d looked away. If I’d looked away, I never would have seen the zippers. Long, gleaming zippers that started just under their collarbones and ran all the way down to their groins. My mouth dropped open into a silent scream as they reached for those zippers and began to pull. That awful clicking sound grew louder as dozens - no, hundreds - of black and brown cockroaches spilled out from the zippers as the two old people pulled them further and further down. The roaches didn’t scatter. No, they all went right into that damn refrigerator. They nestled into the drawers, into the freezer, and covered the shelves and walls. When the inside was too full, the rest scurried underneath. I’d dropped the money onto the floor. I’m pretty sure I’d started crying.
I don’t really remember how the rest of that evening went. I know I never clocked out, and I know I lost my job. I didn’t care. As far as I was concerned, I was never going back into that store ever again. I could get anything I needed off of Amazon or from another store. There was no way I was going back into that building, and it’s not just because of what I saw. The reason I’ll never go back is that to this day, as far as I or anyone else knows, they never called anyone to take care of their roach problem.
Submitted April 05, 2016 at 05:16AM by CypressJoker http://ift.tt/1Sx3rpX nosleep
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