ReTale

The good thing about being a foreigner in a strange land is that you don't feel as bad for missing the foreign land's holidays, and working on a holiday means holiday pay, which is not bad.

The bad thing is the sad eye you get from everyone who is not working. For some reason, they seem to believe that reminding you that it's a holiday and everyone is spending it with their families is not only the best thing they can do but exactly what you want to hear between answering the same phone call every 10 minutes. The phone rings: "hello, how can I help you?" The worker says, tone of voice varying depending on the time of day. "Oh hey, I was checking to see if you were open. What time do you close?" They ask, leading the worker to believe these people will show up about five minutes before I can lock up and be free.

In case I haven't made it clear, I'm that worker who was working on Thanksgiving, and, this year, I had the weirdest interaction.

It was early afternoon, a couple of hours before dinner would typically be served, which means, everyone is doing their last-minute rush to the store. One of these people was a very tall and lanky baby-faced young man. He was 20 or so, but the patchy facial hair made him look younger. I had seen him exactly once before and made casual retail small talk. He mentioned being from somewhere in Eastern Europe (I don't remember where) and had been in Canada for a little while (I don't remember how long). Safe to say, it had been at least a few months since I had seen this guy whose name I never got.

When he comes into the store, that Thanksgiving afternoon, I ask him "how are you?", as any person standing behind a counter would.

"Better than you, because I'm not working", he answered and everyone else at the store collectively raised an eyebrow.

I had to take a second to digest that before forcing out a laugh and gently letting him know that there is a nicer way to answer that question, and he laughed as if I had told him a joke.

He bought something very small, all the while asking me if I'm allowed to smoke weed during work hours. I don't think any job officially allows their employees to be high on the job. I was certainly not about to tell this rando guy that some dispensary workers do get high on the job (kinda like bartenders or servers take a shot here and there). Instead, I told him that I could lose my job for being high on the job.

To that, he said, "I'll roll a joint, then we can go around the building and smoke in the back". I thought he was kidding, but just to be sure, I still told him not to do that. He left, and I, believing he got the message, moved on to the next customer.

As soon as the store was empty of customers - almost to the second that the last person left - lucky-not-working-today dude comes back in, walks right up to me, and goes "wanna go out after your shift is done?"

It was like whiplash, I barely had time to look at the person saying the words. And when I turned him down, he rushed out of the store before I could get the word out of my mouth, and the word was "no" so you can picture how quickly he left.

This was a good representation of one of my biggest pet peeves: people who firmly believe that the person behind the counter is flirting with them, not realizing that it is a Customer Service job. Being nice is seriously part of the job.

But after replaying that interaction in my mind many times, I realized what bothered me so much, and it was the disregard this guy had for every word I said. And I don't think he was about to start paying my bills once I lost my job for smoking a joint with a customer while I was on the clock.

I don't think I'll be seeing that guy again, which I don't mind.