Yeah, so life at the Nana has been pretty exciting. Since I have been able to take more day hours a couple times they’ve made me…wait for it…lead cashier! This basically means I fold sweaters behind the cash register between the hours of 10 and 1 when there is NO ONE in the store. As soon as it gets busy I kicked off, don’t even worry about that. But being the only one at the cash register also means that I get to take the phone calls now. There have been some pretty awesome ones:
The Black Shirt:
“Banana Republic, how can I help you?”
“Hi, I’m looking for a shirt.”
“Okay, do you have a style number?”
“No.”
“Okay…can you describe the shirt?”
“It’s black with buttons.”
“…”
That is great. Because we only have one women’s shirt in the entire store that’s black with buttons. It’s right next to the shirt with a collar…
Cool Mom:
“Banana Republic, how can I help you?”
“Hi, I was wondering if you could put some of the BR Men’s Fragrance on hold for me?”
“Sure, what’s the name?”
“_________ I’ll be in to pick it up tomorrow.”
“Okay! Thanks for –”
“I’m getting it for my son. You know it’s Valentine’s Day and he loves this stuff. Loves it.”
“All right…”
“I bet you’re like, ‘Man, I wish my mom was cool and bought me this stuff for Valentine’s Day.’”
“Uhh…”
“He loves it. I spoil him. You wish your mom was that cool. Spending money on Valentine’s Day for you.”
“I uhhh…”
“My other son is getting something different. He’s not really into the cologne and fashion yet.”
“Okay, well…”
*At this point there were like 4 people in line for the register.
“Yeah, it’s pretty great. So I’ll pick it up tomorrow.”
“Okay, thanks for –”
“Yeah, I’m still trying to find something for my husband – Oh no! – I have to go!”
You can’t really hear the animosity in her voice in that last statement, but she turned really angry like I had been the one to keep yammering on the phone for 5 minutes. Like I had been dying to hear about her sons and husband and what a cool mom she was that I couldn’t get off the phone. Chu-yeah. Right, Lady. You. Wish.
Being at the main cash register has also made me more visible, so I see all the sales people and everything throughout the day and get to talk with them more because…well there’s NO ONE shopping.
Well, yesterday I was down there and one of the sales guys came up to me. I’m pretty goofy at work, especially if there is no one around and I’m folding sweaters behind a desk for four hours at a time. So, evidently I looked miserable and this brosef was like:
“Tedd, it’s going to be okay.”
I turned to him and was like:
“Maybe everything is okay and that’s what pisses me off so much.”
He was pretty speechless at this point. But after a while he was like: “You’re a basket case, Tedd.”
Which is true. But later in the day he came up to me and was like: “Tedd…how old are you?” My weirdness obviously marking me as someone who is a bit immature. I laughed and asked him how old he thought I was. To which he responded: “Nineteen.” I corrected him about how old I really am and then we talked for a while.
But I was thinking about it later and got really offended. I thought, “Nineteen might be the most bland age there is. Nothing happens at nineteen. It’s almost as bad as fifteen.” I began to get a little offended because saying someone looks like they’re nineteen is like talking about your friend who has “a good personality.”
“Yeah, that’s my friend, Tedd…he…uhh…he looks nineteen.”
I tried to find some silver lining but all I found was this bland wikipedia entry:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/19_%28numb
Really, 19? Really? What do you do other than hold the place between 18 and 20? Lame sauce…and by the transitive laws of age appearance you, in turn, make me lame. Shame on you Nineteen!
This actually started me thinking about causes and how to change the world for the better. Did you realize that there almost 1,000,000 Americans who are nineteen? They are suffering in boredom and lameness and can’t do anything about it. That’s not even to mention the number of people who look nineteen and can’t do anything about it. That’s why I’m proposing my Fun-teen campaign. It’s really quite simple:
I’ve started a website: www.funteenisthenewnineteen.com. You can sign in and join a Funteen interest group in your area. There you can raise awareness and campaign to change the number nineteen to funteen so that other teenagers don’t have suffer through the lameness of their nineteenth year.
If this campaign is successful I’m also going to propose changing fifteen to coolteen.
More details to follow.
…My apologies, this entry is lame as all get-out. I wish something exciting had happened to me in the last six weeks, but honestly I’ve just been working, going to school and going to the gym.
At the gym I have started taking spinning classes. It’s okay for you to hate me a little due to that revelation because I hate myself for being able to make that revelation. The whole thing wasn’t even my idea. My buddy who lives close to me said he wanted to give it a shot. The class is at 8 o’clock on Saturdays. We rolled in the first day and I was fully expecting it to be a room of 60 year old women. I figured the class would be pretty easy, just expecting to push myself a little bit and still be able to crush the rest of the geriatrics in the class in terms of spinning ability.
Well we get there and there is only one guy who is over the age of 30, the rest of the people are your typical Yuppie gym rats: girls in lycra suits and dudes wearing sweats, but they’re so built that you can still see every muscle defined under them. I looked at my buddy like, “Really?”
So we get on the bikes and the instructor (who is about 6’4” and weights 230) puts on some techno music. I started laughing on my bike, a little relieved, because how menacing can a class playing techno be?
The answer: Very Extremely Super Menacing.
What followed was one of the most brutal hour workouts of my life. The bikes operate by adding resistance when you spin this little wheel under the handlebars. The instructor regularly walks around the room cranking the wheels up and saying things like, “This sucks, doesn’t it. This suck doesn’t it. You hate this.” It got to the point where I could barely move my bike pedals and I was sweating so profusely a small fjord had formed under my bike.
The worst part, though, is that every twenty minutes the instructor tells you to get off your bike and you start doing workouts off the bike. These include one-legged squats, jumping deadlifts, and other exercises that are meant to maximize pain. By the second round of these I was basically laying on the floor in a heap and crying. This only goaded the Universal Soldier that is our instructor to cause more pain. So he would stand behind me and push on my back as I did the squats to make sure that they were as painful as possible.
…Spinning is no fun.
But it actually spurred memories of crew where I would punish myself for multiple hours, not just on Saturdays, but on almost every day of the week as well. Since the first time I have been back almost every week.
…And yes, I do hate myself for it.
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