Who knew that going back through Face Book Status’ would be such a pain in the arse? Well I guess it doesn’t help I am trying to re-find these stories via my phone which is proving to be harder than it should be. If I touch the screen wrong it sends me back to most recent which causes me to want to scream out loud! I had gotten all the way to February 14th and touched the wrong thing and it jumped back to the newest thing I did on my profile! Oh Face Book why must you be difficult for the phone user? I just keep reminding myself one day I’ll have internet I can carry with me and internet at home so I don’t need to sequester myself in a corner of Barnes and Nobles to post and write things all the while getting curious looks at the vibrant pink Gateway computer that belongs to my girlfriend who chose to stick Scooby Doo and SpongeBob Square Pants stickers all over it. So to the on looker it looks like I stole a teenager’s computer that got attacked by a particularly vicious 3 year old with a sticker fetish. ANYWAY! I am here to continue to update you with some older stories. My posts may be scarce here and there because I am still unearthing good stories when I have free wifi at café’s to write about in between working and dealing with day-today life. I have a few in the works as I type this to you and I am remembering all the special things I have stored in an equally special corner of my mind. But never fear! I will be keeping my girlfriends lap top with me at the store so when something happens all I have to do is pull the lap top out and write the most recent story for you. Oh if every other day was a good story day, that would make this job that more awesome!
So as I went through some of my old entries on Face Book I noticed that for a while there I had one good (good as in crazy) phone call at least every two weeks in a month I thought I’d try to make this Friday’s post and possibly other Friday’s in the future…. Crazy Phone Call Friday!! I had almost forgotten just how crazy some of these phone conversations really are. I’m glad that my girlfriend was with me at Barnes and Nobles as I found them one by one (there are still more trust me!) because I was giggling to myself in a corner….If she wasn’t there I’d probably get stranger looks than I’m already getting for the lap top. But anyway! Since how a few of these conversations are short I’ll be sharing with you 3 conversations I found for the month of February and part of December….Let’s go back in time….
This story is about a woman who actually walked into the store, but it was such a short funny story I decided to add it to the Crazy Phone Call Friday segment just because it was entertaining. It was a quiet afternoon right after a particularly busy morning rush on various items despite our credit card machine being down for quite some time. This unfortunate headache was due to a combination of the weather and someone moving the cords around that connected to the phone line (I later found this out). It had been a crazy ordeal between me getting approval for tech work from the warehouse and Verizon but the worst part about this ordeal was getting both parties to understand how frustrating it was becoming for me, my employees, and customers. But despite the headache that month we had a giant flux of good sales regardless being only allowed to accept cash. I was pleased with how well we were doing that day for it only being the early afternoon so I was enjoying the quiet by reading a book when the Love Lips chime jingled and in strode a very confidant looking middle aged African American woman. I smiled at her in greeting and said “Hi how are you today? I just wanted to let you know our credit card machine is down so we can only take cash. I apologize.” I really hated to tell people this.
She froze mid step and looked at me with slightly wide eyes. I was a little taken aback by her dramatic reaction to my words. I was thinking “Great! I’m about to lose a customer due to not having a credit card machine…again!” Some people didn’t want to go next door to the liquor store to get cash; I didn’t blame them because it was downright inconvenient. But it was just always a little discouraging watching people turn right back out the door because we had no credit card machine. But her comment continued to throw me off.
“How did you know?” She said now with a big anxious smile on her face as she placed her hand on her hip. She looked like she had been caught red handed with her hand in the cookie jar. I blinked and smiled guessing she meant she only had a credit card on her and that meant she couldn’t buy anything, which sucked but was becoming a theme of the month.
“I’m just letting everyone know just in case they didn’t see the sign on the door” I smiled. It amazed me how many people neglected to see a bright orange neon sign that said our credit card machines were down so that meant we could only take cash. So I found it easier to tell them at the door so they didn’t pick out a bunch of things to buy only to find they have to put all the items back because they only had a credit card on them.
She considered my words and said flamboyantly as she swatted at what looked like an invisible gnat, “Oh well! I shouldn’t be in here anyway…..” She looked around the store at this point more wide eyed and curious than a cat considering a Christmas tree. She took a few steps forward from the door mat and with her eyes scanning everything she could possibly look at all at once she said half to herself and half to me as she moved through the lingerie, “I don’t know why I…came in here…I shouldn’t be in here…..I really shouldn’t be….in….here” She moved more into the store like a mystified snake to a snake handler flute song. I was curious to see what would happen when she reached the other side of our store. Just as I thought this she had reached the that point of getting close to passing the cage “wall” of lingerie and head straight into the part of the store with the toys and DVD’s. When her eyes fell on what laid beyond that little space she threw her hands up and exclaimed, “Ohhh no no no no no!!! God won’t forgive me if I go any further!!!” and with that she turned away from it and walk out the door as fast as possible saying over and over, “Oh God forgive me!” She managed to turn to me for a half a second before flying out the door to wish me a good day then proceeded to rush from the store saying some sort of prayer as she went. I am sorry to say I laughed at this afterwards not to mock her belief but because she was like a cat being told not to climb the Christmas tree but she tried to anyway and got caught by her owner and squirted with the corrective water bottle. Meow!
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This next story is an actual phone conversation I had with a young man that I still can’t fathom. We’ve had all sorts of wrong phone calls. I’ve found no matter how long a pause after answering our phone before saying “Hello, Love Lips, Can I help you?” People still jump right into ordering a pizza, asking if we have baby/children’s clothes, or if we wanted their urine samples brought to the lab in the morning. When I have to politely explain to them who they actually reached they can hardly believe they reached Love Lips and stutter apologizes or just hang up after laughing. This can’t be helped, it happens at most businesses but this day was different and a very unnecessary long half-conversation because all he had to do was ask who he was speaking to. Let me elaborate…..
The phone rings and I turn the radio a bit lower just in case they person on the other end is a quiet talker. I pick up the phone and after pressing the “Talk” button I wait for half a heart beat before saying “Hello, Love Lips….Can I help you?”
The person on the other side is breathing kind of uneven. My face screws up in disgust because we HAVE had the “I’m going to call and jerk off to your voice” people so I say again, only this time a little more monotone and a sprinkle of annoyance, “Hello you’ve reached Love Lips?”
A young man answered finally through his weird breathing, “Hey...Can you talk?”
Now I haven’t posted the story about the “usual” we had for a while where he’d start the conversation off like this and it would just end badly so I said, “Did you have a question?” my voice no longer leaving the annoyance as a side effect.
“Yeah…Can you talk?”
My nose flared like an angry dragon and I continued to work on the payroll sheet I needed to as I ignored him. I hadn’t hung up the phone at this point because he kind of sounded familiar and I always worry about being tested by friends or even the warehouse to see what I’ll do in certain situations….Yeah I’m kinda paranoid sometimes…but it could happen!
“Hello, are you there?”
“Yes, who is this?!” I said angrily.
“It’s Jack, you OK?” He said kind of confused.
Now let me say this. I know two Jack’s, one being my brother and one being a co-worker. The person on the other line sounded like the Jack I work with so I sighed in relief. “Oh, hey Jack! I thought you were one of those creepy guys who call while jerking off, you scared me there for a minute” I laughed and then said, “What’s up?”
“Can you talk….or are you busy?” He said in a flat voice still breathing like he had just went for a jog.
My heart sank as I started to question this being the Jack I really knew. Thinking maybe Jack had gotten drunk the previous night and wanted to call out was crossing my mind but the intuition in me was saying this wasn’t my co-worker. But trying to play it safe just in case I said, “I’m workin’ Jack....is something wrong?”
“No, I just wanted to talk….Are you OK?”
Blinking I let the silence get awkward as I texted both Jack’s, my brother and my co-worker, now wondering if Jack might be drunk as we spoke and was pulling my leg.
“Hello? Are you there? Are you angry??”
I let another silence drag out before saying “Listen Jack I’m working, so I can’t talk right now.”
“Oh alright I’ll call back later then” After hanging up with him I got two texts from my brother Jack saying it wasn’t him who called. Well that was one possibility down.
Thankfully that awkward conversation ended and yes, he called back…….like 5 minutes later!
The phone rang and I answered, “Hello, Love Lips…Can I help you?”
“Can you talk….?”
My shoulders sagged in defeat as I said, “Jack I’m at work, and I can’t really talk!”
“Are you ok….you sound angry?”
Dude really wasn’t getting the whole “I’m working thing” so after a few more “Are you there? Hello’s? “Are you mad’s” I finally got so sick of trying to tell him I was busy or ignoring him I finally got a text from Jack the co-worker and he claimed the caller was definitely not him because he was working at his other job. Relieved it wasn’t anyone I knew I said in a voice that was filled with angry annoyance, “Who do you think you’re talking to?”
He stuttered and said in a tiny voice, “Excuse me?”
“Who-do-you-think-you-are-speaking-with?” I said it as clearly as I could.
“Melanie……..?” He squeaked.
PROBLEM SOLVED! You won the biggest idiot award!
“Dude, you got the wrong number I am not Melanie and this is a business called LOVE LIPS, not cell phone”
“Ohhhhhhh! ” He mumbled something else I didn’t catch before hanging up.
I really wanted to bang my head against the wall after that overly long conversation. I must’ve known unconsciously that I only kept that conversation going as long as I did because I’d be writing about it later on and it becoming part of the epic blog I am now writing.
*~*~*
This last story is another special phone call that I definitely can’t forget despite REALLY wanting to. This conversation also comes with a slight disclaimer; the conversation was sexual in nature but isn’t quite as bad as Numbing by #1 but I just wanted to throw that out there. So let me explain what I mean……..
It was probably around Christmas time this happened. We had been doing *awesome* sales and selling everything in the store like candy. I enjoyed when it got busy like this because there wasn’t ever a dull moment. I love being on my toes and talking with people. I never realized how many men want to do romantic things for their wives on Christmas, it warms the heart to know that there are still men out there that look to please their women after some of the clowns I talk to most of the time. But this was on a day that hadn’t quite kicked into high gear yet. I want to say it was pretty early in the morning because I was rearranging things, taking down empty pegs and moving the stock around so the store didn’t look as naked as it was becoming. I was lamenting about how wonderful it will be that our shipment was coming in only a day or two when the phone rang. I clicked on the green “Talk” button and said, “Hello, Love Lips….Can I help you?”
A gruff man’s voice answered, “Hi…yes you can, I have a kind of strange question”
As I’ve said many times, not much surprises me…I mean it’s a porn store so I said, “Don’t worry, I get all sorts of questions, what did ya need?”
“Do you sell ball gags?”
Really? That wasn’t weird; it’s a staple at every porn store! “Yes we do!” I said cheerfully.
“What kind do you have and how much?” He said in a more leveled tone seeing I didn’t think his question was obscene.
So I went over the various types we have. Everywhere from the “beginners” ball gag that isn’t as big as some I’ve seen to the one that is all leather and has a piece that covers the entire mouth. The prices ranged from $11.95 to $45.95. After I was finished I said, “If you want I can hold any you’re interested in if you want to come look at them for yourself”
“Which one would you use on someone?”
If there was music playing in the background it would have come to a ripping stop. My tolerance for the conversation lost all its pleasantness in the blink of an eye. All I could think was; Oh why….
“I’ve never used one so you’d have to come in and choose” I said in a dead monotone sounding voice, not wanting to sound upset or moved in anyway by his question.
“I’m not trying to be smart! I’m sorry, I just wanted to know”
“Ok, do you have any other questions today?” Thinking now I really wanted to get off the phone.
“One more question…Would you ever use one on someone and enjoy it….I’m not trying to be smart!”
Thinking; you’re failing miserably at that I said “No, do you have any professional questions left for me?”
“…Are you married?”
Now to the point of growling I said, “Not yet, but I am in a monogamous relationship, is there anything I can help you with, sir?”
“Well do you think you could pretend to not be in a monogamous relationship….I’m looking for someone to hire…..BUT I’m not trying to be smart!!”
If glaring could burn holes in souls I was accomplishing that task with flying colors. I’m glad no one was in the line of my laser eyes at this point. My voice was as crisp as lettuce as I said, “No I am NOT interested nor am I willing to consider anything else you’re going to ask or say”
Then he spoke like we had just had a normal civilized conversation and said, “Oh…alright, well thanks…” Click.
Have ya ever been so mad after a conversation you were shaking and teeth ere chattering? Yeah, that was one of those conversations. But thankfully they only happen now and then and they are not a daily occurrence.
Thanks all for bearing with my late update. I will try to update more often from now on and if I go missing for a day or two it’s because I have been having technical difficulties with the computer.
I love the part about the stealing teenager's computer that was hilarious!! And what a creepy weird man.
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