There’s this story I’ve told maybe a dozen times, I mean I’ve written it out a dozen times, oddly enough it doesn’t change all that much. The story is about this apple cheeked sales manager, fresh out whatever place they make those things, he looked like a twelve year old and was about as nervous as a ten year old lying about being twelve. His second day on the job he’s tailing me and overhears my entire sale to this guy with Tourette’s. Yeah, I know, Tourette’s really doesn’t mean involuntary cussing, but it was 2000 ish, and it was a popular illness and I think the guy liked cussing. Me too.
I’m not telling that story. About a week later the kid had made the unfortunate mistake of choosing a side in the ongoing but petty battle of good and evil that is any sales floor, but especially the extraordinarily petty good and evil that was Circuit City, Clackamas County Oregon. It was unfortunate for his career but likely put him on the proper life path. How the fuck would I know, circuit city burned through managers quicker than a joint at a pink Floyd concert (yeah, I went with pink Floyd, concert venues have been no smoking for the last thousand years). So, the kid was already doomed when the following week he witnessed something much worse, customer service-wise, than me selling a motherfucking computer to a Tourette’s-addled cocksucker with four years of god damn useless warranty (circuit city didn’t have four years left to it).
The kid was the manager of the computer department, which meant that if he wasn’t going to stay neutral and wasn’t going evil, I was pretty much his only choice and he really did stay within arm’s length of me for weeks. Grant you, there are those with a contrary opinion, I mean as to who exactly represented the forces of good and the forces of evil; it was petty and the only church=going folks likely just wanted Sundays off, good and evil wasn’t a clear moral line. Any idiot who thinks morality has a place on a sales floor is either ripe for fleecing or in an unemployment line.
One bright afternoon (Ok, I don’t know whether it was bright or not, that damn place was like a strip club; no windows. Besides, the definition of bright gets kind of loose in Clackamas county) I was teaching the kid about how my lunch hour worked; I got to go when I good and damn well felt like it and when my buddy Rich was ready. Rich was on the phone in the TV department. So I stood next to him and fucked with the video cameras, the kid was right next to me. The phone call was dull, Rich kept saying “Uh-huh” and “Sir …” I showed the kid how to check if a remote works; video cameras pick up infra-red so the invisible signal shows up as a bright light fading out the image. Rich stopped with the uh-huhs and Sir’s dot dot dot.
“You dumb-ass peckerwood son of a whore, who dialed the phone for you? You’re too god damned stupid to figure it out on your own. To answer your next two questions; No, you can’t piss on a TV and you can’t take it in the tub. Matter of fact bring my fucking TV back home you cock sucking TV molester. Do you know who you’re talking to?”
He paused a minute, I was biting my lip and the kid was turning the shade of red I like to think I had taught him. The caller was obviously saying shit.
“Shut up you dumb fuck, I asked; Do you know who you’re talking too? No? Good” and he hung up the phone. “Lunchtime dawg?”
“Yip.”
“Oh,” Rich said to the kid, “I think I heard Sass-frass (His name was something like Sarafras, objectively pure evil) cussing out a customer on the phone. You might get a call about it. See ya in an hour or so.”
It took longer than that for Rich to tell me the other side of the story, and, because it had been a profitable morning for the good guys rich bought an extra three rounds of Keno and we had to watch the games play out. Whether he won or lost he always declared in his football stadium voice “I’m Rich!”
When we got back the kid was waiting for us.
“You fire Sass-frass yet?” Rich asked.
The kid looked at his shoes and followed me back to the computer department. All day long Sarafras kept shooting him dirty looks from the audio department. Like I said, the kid had chosen a side.
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