Insanity Abounds: Story of my life.

He'd be all over me.

I don't know what is is about me, but I seem to be a magnet for the crazies. Maybe it's that they can all sense my own inner craziness and feel like they've found some kindred spirit. Whatever the case may be, I'm getting a little tired of it (even if it does supply me with some great blog fodder). Here's just a little taste of the crazy things people say to me:

Exhibit A -
One of the places I work is a local cafe/bakery where I am a cashier/server. One of our regulars is a forty year old mama's boy who has not changed his haircut since the 3rd grade. I don't know how he came to be wealthy, but he eats two meals a day (sometimes three) at our restaurant. And we are not cheap. Sometimes he comes in with his mother, she is a witch with a capital B, and he is no peach either. Anyway, he's a favorite among our staff to make fun of. So when I was nearly hit by a car speeding backwards in the Target parking lot the other day, I was delighted to see it was none other.

Exhibit B -
One of my good friends, we'll call her "Skinny Legs," also works at this cafe/bakery with me. She and I just have a dandy old time together...we make it interesting. So, the other day, while Skinny Legs was stocking cups next to me, a customer came in to pick up a phone in order. Her total was $9.01. She handed me a credit card, but before I could ring it up, she said, "Wait, I think I have a penny."
.....
I asked Skinny Legs to help me split the payment, but she was confused because there was only one customer, so I held out my hand and showed her the penny. She, so rudely, began laughing at me and wouldn't knock it off. So I had to laugh too. But I had to walk away to be discreet and then pull it back together to finish helping the customer, who was obviously drunk. Or just an idiot.

Exhibit C (this is a long one)-

Now accepting applications. Must be a condescending tool.

There's this new store in the mall called Teavana. (I know there are many other branches that have been around forever, but it's new to us, because we're a podunk, poor-excuse-for-a-city). I was having a pretty bad day, was unable to find what I was looking for at every store I went to, and was pretty down. So the flirty, friendly clerk at Teavana, offering me samples as I was walking past, was easily able to convince me to buy something. But not before first asking me about the kinds of tea I like and then condescendingly exclaiming that I'm "not interested in the health benefits of tea at all." He also told me I needed to buy a tin to store the tea in and that it would be cheaper to just fill it up. What he should have sad was that it is a "better deal" to fill it up, not cheaper. Because my total ended up being $36 and change for a lb of Earl Grey.

As soon as I left the store I regretted it, and the more I thought about it the angrier I got. I figured that the tea must have magical properties.

Three days later, I was still fuming. I decided that he took advantage of the fact that I didn't know how their system works. I had also talked to a friend who'd had a similar experience and learned that you do NOT have to buy the tin. But instead of telling me that, or even just simply saying that I needed A tin and not necessarily THEIR tin, he told me I needed to buy one. This was after I asked, "So how does this work?" He failed to mention that they had bags (for FREE) to transport the tea home in. It seemed pretty bizarre to me at the time, but like I said, I was feeling pretty weak.

Warning: There are no magical properties in this tea.

My friend talked me into going back and asking for a refund. I'm not an extremely assertive person, so I'm really proud of myself for following through. I went back and asked to speak to a manager. I explained calmly that I was upset with the clerk who had "helped" me three days earlier and that I felt manipulated. The manager FOUGHT with me for fifteen minutes (and this is awful. You would never hear of a manager fighting with a customer at the cafe that I work at) until I was pretty much yelling at him. Finally, he relented, and only after I threatened to tell all my friends about my awful experience and to trash the store on my blog (oops). He compromised by removing the charge for the tin and returning "half" of the tea, and I got $22 put back on my credit card.

But the best part of the story was when, before returning the tea, he tried to calm me down by soothingly asking me if he could make me a cup of tea, on him, while I waited. I said, "I don't want a cup of tea, I just want to get my money back and get out of here." The rest of the visit went as follows:

Manager - I promise, it won't take any longer.
Me - Fine.
Manager - You like the Earl Grey right? Do you know why Earl Grey is so good for you?
Me - No.
Manager - It has Bergamot in it. Do you know what the benefits of Bergamot are?
Me - No. I just like the taste.
Manager - It's an anti-depressant. It makes people happier.