Bouncy

Saturday is the worst possible day of the week to start a retail job. Well, there are worse days – Black Friday, for instance, or the week before or after Christmas – but in terms of average everyday choices, you would be wise to avoid a Saturday start. It’s typically incredibly busy, and the last thing you want is to be thrown into the fire right from the start. Anyone with half a brain knows this, which immediately made me suspicious of the new girl who started this Saturday. A quick look around at the reactions of others told me that she was immediately written off as an imbecile.

I hadn’t known that there would be a new employee starting today. It seems that they fired our most unreliable college guy, and instead picked up what would probably be an unreliable college girl. But whatever I may have expected was completely wrong.

Bookstores tend to draw the dark, depressive and brooding type. We’re the kind who went through goth phases in high school, wore black eyeliner and black clothes. We dyed our hair black (obviously) or Kool-Aid colors, just to rebel. We were not the cool kids. We had a mysterious attraction to Edgar Allan Poe and depressing poems. We may look different today, but the bulk of us still harbor memories of that teenage depression. Some of us have yet to outgrow it.

This is why I was surprised when Missy walked – no, bounded – through the door. Her khakis were pressed. Her brick-red polo seemed brighter than anyone else’s. She had pigtails, for god’s sake, and a smile that had serious potential for blinding customers who weren’t wearing proper eyewear. She was like Buffy the Bookstore Slayer. Most of us stood and stared at her, shocked. She wasn’t one of us. She was a cheerleader, a sorority girl, an outsider in our midst. I slumped over and pretended to beat my head against the desk. One of the older employees, a recently-divorced aging hippie, laughed at my actions. “My god, I was thinking the exact same thing,” she whispered in passing. Two of the guys at cash wrap stared at her, dumbfounded. I wondered if she realized that she was working in a bookstore and not giving campus tours. I half-expected to see her walking backwards through the store with a group of tourists behind her: “And to my left, we have our extensive collection on world religions,” she would say, and they would snap pictures and talk excitedly amongst themselves.

Our manager, the bitch woman, was taking her around to “meet the team”, as she liked to say, as though we worked together in a cohesive unit, not a loosely-defined group of individual misfits. Missy was shaking hands, pumping vigorously at limp arms connected to baffled long-time employees. It was hilarious to watch. But now they were coming towards me, and it became somewhat less funny with each approaching step.

“Angela, I’d like you to meet Missy,” my manager said.

“Hi, Missy.” I held out my hand.

“Oh my GOD!” she said, way too loudly. “What HAPPENED to your ARM?” Before I knew what hit me she was touching my left arm, still held in its sling. “Does it hurt?”

“Uhh, no. No, it doesn’t hurt anymore. It’s been a few weeks.” She was in my personal space, and I was completely freaked out. I found myself backing up until I had literally backed myself into a corner of the info desk. Employees gathered at a distance to witness me squirming and laugh.

“So what HAPPENED?” she asked again.

“I, uh,” I just wanted her to back away. “I broke it.”

“Oh my GOD! How?”

“I, uh… I fell.”

“Wow? That’s, like, so terrible?” When she stopped asking questions, I realized she was an up-talker. Every sentence ended as though it were a question. It was a nightmare of perkiness unfolding before me.

“Yeah, thanks. Hey, listen, I really need to get back to work.” I pointed to the customer waiting to ask a question.

“Ok, sure? That’s great? I’ll see you around?” She bounded off at the hip of my manager, who was looking increasingly uncertain about her choice of employees. I reached below the desk for three quick pumps of antibacterial lotion. I could tell that I was going to need to budget for several new bottles of the stuff if she stuck around.

I managed to make it through the first half of the day without any direct contact, but at 3:00 it was my turn to teach her about the info desk. You know that old saying from Westerns: there isn’t room in this town for both of us? Try sharing a confined space with Miss Perky America. I started with the basics.

“Ok, so this is the computer. It’s got a basic web-style interface where you can type in the author’s name, the title of the book or just general keyword information to find what the customer is looking for.”

“Oh my god?” she said in her perky little up-talker voice. “This is so cool? It’s just like searching through the card catalog at the library?”

I was trying to listen closely to make sure I didn’t miss a question, if there was one in there. I was pretty sure that there wasn’t this time.

“Yeah, like the card catalog. So you just type in what you need and hit ‘Enter’ to get the results. It will tell you what section it’s in, and how many we have in stock, assuming that they’re actually shelved where they should be.”

“That is, like, so cool?” she said, practically bursting at the seams with excitement.

“Ok, great. Look, you have your first customer.”

She squealed – literally squealed with glee – then tried to compose herself. “Good afternoon? How can I help you today?” Her foot was tapping wildly as she tried to contain her energy. I glanced around the room and looked for a sympathetic face. Matt, up at cash wrap, gave me a knowing glance. I shook my head.

The customer was fumbling in her purse. “I’m looking for this book,” she said, handing Missy a rumpled newspaper clipping.

“The Best Sex I’ve Ever Had?” said Missy quite loudly as she typed. The woman looked around, hoping that no one else heard her. “Oh, yay! We have two copies? Come with me?” She hopped down out of her info desk seat and made her way through the aisles like an old pro. I stood in stunned silence, not able to tell her that she wasn’t actually supposed to leave the desk. I heard her voice in the distance. “Found it? YAY!” The woman reappeared from behind the shelves and slunk quietly towards the register.

“How was I?” she asked as she bounced back into the box. It was like working with Tigger. All she needed was an orange tiger suit and a bouncy tail. It seemed sad that Halloween had already passed.

“Good. But, uh… we don’t actually walk the customers to the books. That would leave the info desk unattended. We write down the information and point them in the right direction.” I tried to speak slowly, out of some primal need to try to control her pace with my own verbal cues.

“Oh my GOD? I should have known that? I am so, so sorry?” She looked deflated.

“Hey, no problem, it’s your first time. Good instincts.” A passing employee snickered. I shot her a look that screamed “Help me!”

Another customer approached, and Missy tried again. “Good afternoon, sir? Lovely sweater you’re wearing? How can I help you today?” He mumbled something that I couldn’t understand. “You would like a history of the Crusades? Cool!” She typed in a few words and hit return. She wrote an author’s name in big bubble letters on a piece of paper. “I think you would like this one best? It’s in our world history section? Over to the left? See the sign?” He thanked her and walked away. She jumped up and down.

“I did it, right?”

“Yes, you did just fine.”

”AWESOME!” She tried to give me a high-five, but I realized too late and left her hand hanging in mid-air. I felt a little bad for her.

“Are you comfortable here alone?” I asked. “If you are, I’d like to run off and use the ladies room.”

“Oh my god, that’s so great? I can totally handle it?”

“Good. I’ll be back in a minute or two.”

“Wow! The responsibility is huge, but I'm up to the task?”

“Uh, yeah. Ok, be right back.” I went to the ladies room and spent five minutes hiding in the stall, absorbing all the peace and quiet that I could manage. I heard someone enter and realized that I couldn’t hide in there forever. I went out to the sink and washed my hands carefully, trying not to get my cast wet, but a quick move in the wrong direction left me with something that felt like a wet sponge, with moisture slowly creeping up my left arm. Ewww.

I returned to the desk, and found perky little Missy engaged in a deep and seemingly thought-provoking conversation with an attractive guy in his early 20s. She was bent over, elbows on the desk, staring dreamily at him while he discussed the virtues of Dungeons & Dragons. I stepped into the box and claimed the only seat for myself. I answered questions for two customers while Missy remained engrossed in her conversation.

“That is just SO unbelievable? Isn’t that unbelievable?” She turned to look at me. “Isn’t it?”

I hadn’t been paying any attention, but I agreed. “Yeah, definitely,” I said with little conviction. “Wow.”

I answered the phone, helped another customer, and still she talked with the cute guy. Finally he said his goodbyes and headed for the door. She stared after him, sighing. “Isn’t he a doll?” she said. I wasn’t sure if that was a statement or a question, but I added my “Uh-huh” in the hopes that it would prevent the conversation from being prolonged.

“He’s an English major? Can you believe it?”

I didn’t know what about that statement was hard to believe, but I didn’t want to dive any deeper into this conversational abyss. I waved to catch the attention of my manager, who approached cautiously.

“I think that Missy should really spend some time getting to know the store, so she can help with reshelving. Would you like to show her the Children’s department?” Children’s was a nightmare. It required attention twice a day to deal with the tornadoes that passed through. It was the only job that even competed with the info desk for title of Worst Assignment.

“Angela, that’s a great idea,” my manager said. “Missy, I think you would love the exposure to the kids.”

“Oh my god? I totally love kids?” She was beaming. As she bounced off to Pooh corner, we all grinned silently. If she hated it, she would end up quitting. No loss to us. If she loved it, then none of us would ever have to work the Children’s section again. It was a win-win situation for all of us.

For hours afterward, until it was time for my shift to end, I could hear her back there. “That is SUCH a great book? I just LOVED that when I was a kid?” At one point, I heard her reading part of Charlotte’s Web aloud.

A night-shifter came by to relieve me of box duty. “I hear we don’t ever have to do Kiddie Hell ever again.”

I smiled. “This just might be our lucky day.”

He grinned. “Only if you can find noise-isolating ear plugs; do you think they make versions specifically to block the sound of her voice? I can hear her from here.”

I patted him on the back. “Good luck.” I punched my time card and practically ran for the door. The sounds of traffic were soothing. I relaxed on the bus stop bench and planned my activities for the evening. Laundry, dishes, change sheets, clean litter box.

“Hey!” There she was, beside me. I jumped a bit, startled.

“Uh… hey.”

“Do you want to come to a party tonight? Near campus? It’s, like, totally cool?”

“Oh, wow,” I said. “Thanks for the offer. I really appreciate it. But I have a date tonight.”

“Oh my god, how awesome is that? Have fun and I’ll totally see you tomorrow?” And she bounced away again. Yep, she was definitely the human incarnation of Tigger. I watched her walk away with a sense of wonder. How could anyone be so happy about everything? I wondered if she was on too much medication. More than likely, the culprit was too much caffeine. I’ll buy her a decaf latte tomorrow.