“I ain’t got that,” the woman says, loud enough for me to hear her from where I’m standing. She’s likely my age, looks like she’s lived hard and there’s no mirth about her body language or her words. The cashier at the store has been around for a while and has heard it all before.
“Do you want to put some of the items back?” the cashier asks mildly.
“I got what I got and I ain’t got that much money,” the woman is speaking louder now. She looks at me. I look back.
“Ma’am, would you like us to restock this?” the cashier says sweetly.
“I need this. I ain’t leaving. You got to give it to me,” she demands, and now she’s trying to get the bagged groceries back in her cart.
“Ma’am, if you cannot pay we’ll have to take something off or restock,” the cashier is like oil on ice. She’s cool and slick.
“Gimme ten dollars,” the woman advances on me with her palm out. Behind her, the cashier is taking a few items out and taking them off the total.
“Tell me something interesting,” I reply, vamping for the cashier, who grins at me.
“What?” the woman snarls. “I ain’t got to tell you nothing.” She’s getting animated now, talking louder and looking around for help. There’s a reason I shop early, and that reason is to avoid people. It’s failed this time, certainly.
And this makes me wonder. The woman isn’t going to get much help with her con at this time of the morning. Paralyzing the only open line is a great idea if you want someone to buy your stuff for you or give you money, but this early there’s no pressure to get her out of the store in a hurry.
She either isn’t smart or she’s nuts. Maybe both.
“You ain’t got no ten dollars?” she demands of me.
“Didn’t say I did or didn’t. But tell me something interesting first,” I reply and I’ve gotten some incredible stories. A woman yelled at me to let her and her husband into traffic and I yelled back, “Tell me something interesting.”
“What?”
“Where did you meet your husband?” I asked. She was with a guy, I just made a stab they were married.
“At a car wreck. We both stopped to help.” The woman is hanging out of the window but the light changes. I wave them on and wave goodbye.
See! I tell you, ask for interesting stories.
The woman in the store wheels around and realizes the cashier has not only taken items out but put the taken items in a bag for the guy who stocks shelves to put them back. He arrives and leaves while the woman rants about starvation.
She pays up then pushes her cart towards the door fussing and cussing, but doing no harm and no good.
“She’s always like that,” the cashier tells me before I can ask. “She’s always ten bucks short, never eleven and never nine. She’s not allowed to come in during rush hour.
“Aha!” I say and the cashier laughs.
“She also tries to return open items that she’s eaten half of, and she claims parts were missing,”
“Really?”
“And get this, she’s owns a million dollar house on five hundred acres of land.”
And suddenly, I have my interesting story. And now, you do, too.
Take Care,
Mike
This is not a new story, but rather a variation of an old one. Reagan used his dog whistle of the welfare queen who drove a Cadillac. That story was proven to not be true, but having worked retail for a number of years I’ve seen similar stories. Thousands of them. The instances specific to this one tends to have our main character as slightly entitled and rude, but not deliberately rude. By that I mean, they just act non-conventionally where the interpretation is easily read as rude. These types crossed our paths in the store everyday and there was plenty of chatter afterwards by the employees. Sometimes, another customer would speak out to the point where a manager had to come between them to defuse the situation. There were judgments being bandied about–maybe wrongly or rightly– but until we know the details of the backstory judgment should be withheld. But yeah, it did create for good stories.
CAI, I think the woman is just lonely and wants someone to talk to. She might be (like me) one of those people who socialize poorly, and this is her way of trying to get around it.
Or she might just be crazy. Counting that out this soon is a mistake.
The more I hear stuff like this, the more I love my dog.
Yvonne, I did not move into the woods by accident. I came here to get away from people. I cause no harm, mind my business, and the people who live near me, in a manner of speaking, look after me and mom from a distance.
One guy who lives ten miles away but farms a field nearby showed up after the last hurricane to see if we needed anything. We had our lights on by that time, and he was surprised. I told him to take our generator if he knew anyone who needed one, and I left it out in the yard in case in came back for it.
I can deal with this sort of person. He and his family are all good people.
Is she crazy or entitled? Maybe “both” is the answer.
She seems a bit like a shyster if she is always $10.00 short and returning stuff when it is too late to return them.
I do like your way, Mike, of changing what happens–maybe a diversion. But I think it would have been worth ten bucks to hear an interesting thing. People of character would expect no handouts.
Tim, one of the strangest things I’ve ever heard was from a guy living in a culvert that ran under the interstate. The culvert was for overflow, and dry during the summer, so he camped out there. I was working on an interstate project when he appears out of the dark and scares the hell out of me. He started telling me about how he was short on money for gas, but I stopped him and told him I would give him five bucks if he could come up with a story I had never heard before. He didn’t hesitate.
“Teddy Bears,” he said.
“What?”
“Teddy bears is why everything is so messed up. We teach kids at an early age to love objects but not people.”
I gave him ten bucks.
Mike, that story was worth ten bucks.
Tim, caught me unawares. Working on the road you hear the same, car trouble, wife needs an operation, kids are hungry, wife left with my best friend, and just most of the time it’s drugs and alcohol. Sometimes not. Sometimes it’s really someone in need. I had a ratty look guy ask me for a ride one day because his car ran out of gas, and I offered to take him to store to buy some fuel. On the way there, he didn’t hit me up for money or tell me a sad story, and once we got there, he bought a gas can, and bought me a Mountain Dew, when I drank the things. I took him to his car and that was it. But the people who are out there because they are out there ruin it for the people who really need help.
Moreover, those people who are addicted or crazy, or just don’t fit into the way the world runs can’t get help because there’s no help to have. Once you’re on the road you can count on people looking down on you and it’s hard to find a place to live that’s affordable.
I re-pasted this from your email on the laptop in order to fix whatever the hell made those paragraphs so screwed up.
not sure what happened
It does look much better and is easier to read, so thank you.
Mike, I didn’t do anything differently this time. Maybe it was the dialog that did it.