Tonight was my last night at Barnes and Noble. I don't know if you know why, so I'll summarise my reason for leaving. Like many websites, Barnes and Noble has adopted the policy of their membership program renewing automatically (for your convienence, yeah right) unless you instruct them not to.
OK, all well and good, I can advise people as such.
Except that we can't anymore. We were explicitly told not to bring it up anymore. Were not allowed to tell them that their credit cards will, in a years time, have a $25 charge on them for a renewal that they had no idea was coming.
So I quit. Anyway...
I was at the cash register, manning the front alone, as is the norm for the end of the night. Up walks a woman, she is perhaps fifty years old. She plops down on my counter top, not one, but
three copys of this months issue of Playboy. Now, having been a former conisuer of and hopeless user of porn, I have long since abandoned it and condemn it in the strongest possible terms. So I decide, I've got to screw with her. The dialog was as follows.
Me: (sarcastic, joking tone of voice) "Does your mom know you're buying this?"
Her: (slight pause) "Actually, I
am the mom. My daughter is in this.
Me: (stunned silence)... .... ... (and then before I realize exactly what I am saying) "Jeez, if it were my kid I think I'd have had an anurisim"
she is clearly not flattered by this comment.
Her: "Are you eighteen?"
Me: (clued in, but I cant lie so what am I going to say?) "Um, I'm twenty-three"
Her: "OK, I'll show you."
At this point, my brain short circuited like the electrical box that's been hit by lightning. I was sputtering, blinking, and otherwise staring straight ahead as though I were a confused catatonic. Close behind her is her equally fifty year old
female friend who
also has a copy of the Playboy.
Friend: "I'm getting one so she can autograph it!"
Me: (Incoherent sputtering)
the friend finishes her transaction. The mother is standing one register over, flipping through the playboy, looking for the picture of her daughter.
The guy behind them steps up in line, and he and I are staring at each other as with no clue
whatsoever what to say or think, and the only clue we have that we are on the same side, is that we are both too shocked to form coherent speech, or a definitive facial expression.
So I deal with him and the next customer and then the line is clear. The mother is still flipping through the playboy, so I casually say (hoping I'm right)
Me: "Couldn't find it huh?"
Her: "No it's right here" (opens the magazine).
To my discredit, I did in fact look, because I didn't know what the hell else to do. I had insulted her, twice, and now she was opening a magazine with a naked picture of her daughter.
Actually, thank God, it wasn't really naked.
It was just slinky as hell. The girl was
almost naked, wearing clothing that was not quite totally removed from her body, and the pose was a shot from the side, it showed nothing explicit. Thank God. I'd dodged a bullet.
At this point, I'm visably uncomfortable, and I say "Wow, she's absoloutly stunning", and I'm looking away, and she says.
Her: "Well, you were the one who asked if my mother kenw what I was buying"
OK, I'd ticked her off, I grasp that, but she used a pretty much naked picture of her grown up daughter to slap me back for it.
Damn...
Wierdest experience of my life...
