My coworker, Deep, walks up to me in the music DVD section, which I manage. I’m very comfortable there. Deep manages the Cult section, two rows away.
“How is it that we always see you helping gorgeous women in your section? How do you do that?”
I reply, “It’s simple. When I see an attractive customer flipping through the Bob Dylan discs, I take up a position nearby and organize the Duran Duran DVDs like I work here. It’s inevitable that once she suspects I might know how to find something she’ll sidle over and ask.”
Deep looks at me. “If I tried that,” he says, “If I came over here and shuffled DVDs around, someone over in Cult would hear me and walk around the end of the row and come all the way over here and say, ‘Do you have Female Trouble?’ and I’d be like, ‘Augh! Why, are you in it?’ and she’d probably throw me over her shoulder and say, ‘Let’s go look for it.’ and I’d be like, ‘Alright, alright, I guess I’ll help you find it.’ That’s what would happen to me.”
I mean to tell him that the real reason is because I help the strange ones, too. I help the odd ones, the neurotic ones, the purple ones, the blinking ones, the unintelligible ones, the smelly ones, the lonely ones…and especially the shy ones. It all balances out. I mean to tell him that it’s a sort of customer service karma.
But I don’t tell him. I’m laughing too hard.
