Entry 18: Old.
It's kind of depressing watching the elderly customers that come in, using the purchase of a battery, or sometimes no purchase at all, as an excuse to talk to someone. Matlock goes off, they hop in their Lincoln, run a few red lights, and come into Radio Shack for the exclusive purpose of conversing with an ill-tempered, part-time employee. I have to think there'd be someone better to talk to than me around, you'd probably find one at random off the street. Maybe they choose me because I'm a captive audience. I'm getting paid to stand there, and I can't do a damn thing about the little geezer following me around mumbling. I hope I never get to the point where I decide to have a conversation with someone like me.

One of the boss's elderly "friends" came in today. I say "friends," because just about anyone with a mouth comes in and says they're friends of the boss. I guess they think that they'll get special treatment, or a discount, or sexual favors or something. Who knows? Everyone says it though, including this old guy. He got out of the passenger side of a vehicle showing some age, (You know it's going to be bad when they're so old that they have to call up one of their old friends to drive them around. The driver fell asleep while his friend went inside.) and hobbled very slowly into the store. My coworker and I literally had half a dozen minutes to pause our Tetris game and decide who would handle him, provided by the long trip he had to make from the car to the door six feet away. He was nice enough to wait to let out the gas bubble in his stomach until he was indoors, however, producing a rumble one would think impossible judging by his size.

He had made the journey to our humble shoppe to have his cordless phone fixed. I don't even remember the brand, or exactly what was wrong with it, but I do know that my coworker really wanted to get back to Tetris so he told the guy to return the phone to WalMart. That triggered something in the old guy right there. His brow furrowed, and with a voice so old that it seemed to have lost any semblance of power and volume, he started ranting about the evils of WalMart. I leaned against the counter and watched his expressions, as his words were almost too low to make out. He had the look of a man screaming at the top of his lungs--red face, straining veins, and passionate bug eyes. He was saying that WalMart is evil because it moves into small towns and puts other businesses... out of business. "It should be sueable! It should be sueable! It's just not right! WalMart ruins livings with its big old store!"

I threw some fuel on the fire, just for the hell of it. I get bored. "They sure do! And you know how they do it? They do it with crappy phones! It just ain't right." He didn't even care what I said, as far as I know, it was just the fact that I said something to him that really got him going. He got more intense, still at the same volume.

"That's right! It should be suable! Ever since Clinton got in office everything got worse. You know what's a shame? All those young ladies he's been with. No... that's not a good word for it."

"Is that not the right word for it?"

"Sluts." He said the word like it was "plate" or "elbow."

"Sluts?"

"They're sluts."

"So they're sluts." My coworker hid behind the phone accesories, laughing loudly.

"They are! I told someone that I would rather have Hillary as President than that scoundrel."

"Really?"

"No! I meant that I would rather have Clinton than Hillary unless they hadn't got wrapped up in all that Whitewater scandals and the press wouldn't have touched it if it wasn't for that."

I paused at the incoherent rant. "You mean the sluts?"

"Yeah."

It was only an impatient customer that finally made the old guy find his way back to his car. He stumbled around, looking for the phone that he had forgotten about a quarter of an hour ago, and eventually drove away. I would've paid to have seen the scene at WalMart.

Entry 17: DILBERT DAY!!!!!
Two entries ago I casually mentioned Dilbert, my portly coworker, and he didn't take kindly to it for some reason. I didn't really say anything that's harmful, or at least I didn't in my opinion. I called him Dilbert, just like he does, and I gave a few facts involving toothpaste and duct tape. Big deal right? Anyway, to make it up to the guy, I'm devoting this entire entry to Dilbert. This one's for you buddy! ...I was planning on starting off all mushy, explaining how Dilbert really isn't a bad guy, and that he does know a lot of stuff, and he even invited me to a free Sagebrush(tm)(R)(c) dinner one time. That stuff isn't much fun to talk about though, so just trust me on those facts, and I'll spend my time on a wonderful story about the video store next door.

Well, there's a video store directly next to our little store, as we're in a strip mall sort of building, whose workers are predominantly female. A lot of the guys who work with me make grunting sounds when they see those girls, and sometimes go over there to buy a soda, oftentimes just for a chance to glare. One night Dilbert went over there to buy some of that infamous soda, and disappeared for around an hour. He came back with a huge grin. It's fun to watch Dilbertish guys after encounters with girls, because they always do the typical "I've just been laid" strut. I remember one of my friends bragging to me about a peck on the lips. He was cock of the walk. Anyway, Dilbert said something along the lines of, "I was pimping it with the ladies," although I'm sure those weren't his exact words. No one really believed him. Someone went over to ask what Dilbert had been doing for all that time, and the girl at the register told us he was sitting in the kid's section, in the "KIDDIE KASTLE" nonetheless, watching Toy Story 2. I had a pretty good laugh when someone called him "Woody" after that. Hooray for double entendres.

Dilbert is a freakin' millionare two fridays a month. I swear, you have ever seen anyone spend dough like this guy when we get our pay checks. He's rang up a multiple thousand dollar debt to my boss through his impulsive spending. He bought these extra headlights to put on his car that have illegal brightness, so you can only use it on back roads. It says so on the package. Why does he need that? I don't know, but he bought my friend a $50 drill to run the wire through his car for it. He even gave me money the other day to put something on the shelf for him, so that he didn't have to get off his stool.

That reminds me of another quick story: He's always sitting on something. Stools, chairs, wooden boxes... One night some of my coworkers got tired of him sitting on his butt all the time, so they loosened the lid on a hollow wooden box he used to use. He plopped the entirety of his weight on that booby-trapped top, and he fell straight in. His back was on the bottom, his arms and legs flailing out the top like a hog-tied steer. Funny stuff.

Anyway, it only takes him a day to spend his paycheck, and then he's broke for two weeks until the next one. He does odd jobs to live from day to day, like installing people's surround sound systems, and pushing the "on" button on answering machines. What's really odd is the fact that when he tried to hook up a surround sound system in the store he hooked up four speakers to the right channel, one to the left, and none to the center. If you can get paid for doing that, I need to start doing some of these odd jobs myself. Anyway, I've teased Dilbert enough. See you on Tuesday bud!

Entry16: LEAVE THE DAMN STORE!
We had an army guy come in around 6:40, asking about infrared LED's and asking about some numbers he'd scribbled on a piece of paper. I didn't know what the numbers meant, but since I asked if I could help him, I was obligated to follow him around until he gave up on searching for the answer. You ask if you can help them, you find out you can't, and then they're supposed to let you go, but no one ever does. They keep asking you questions even though you admitted ignorance. I did find out what he was trying to do though. He pulled out a little device no bigger than a lighter and explained it to me. Apparently the ARMY uses these little things to communicate in the field. They emit infared pulses that can, of course, only be seen with infared goggles. This device has the following parts:
1 Infared LED 1 Diode 1 9volt battery connector
That's it. You want to know what the Army pays for each one of these things? $80. That's where your tax money is going folks. You can buy those parts for a couple of bucks, and get the 9volt battery that isn't included in the Army model. After about 20 minutes of dragging me around to help him look, he realised he had no idea what he was looking for, so he said that he'd wait until his buddy got there.

When his old, fat buddy in camoflauge pants got there the two talked for almost an hour. They stood in a corner of the store and discussed random things. The clock ticked closer and closer to closing time. At about 7:50 the original army guy left, and his "buddy" remained behind, commenting to my coworker, "Ya' close soon doncha?" He was answered with a nod, and set about his work browsing aimlessly arond the store. We asked him several times if he needed help. He apprently didn't, until the talking clock we have spoke a monotoned, "8:00 Pee Emm." It was then that he decided to start asking us for help and collecting what he wanted to buy. We locked the door, and he paced around for ten minutes picking out LED's and diodes, quizzing us on what we could order for him. Ordering things takes time. For some reason we couldn't order anything he asked for. Finally he approached the counter with his arms full of tiny items, and decided to pay with a credit card. If there's anything that drives a retail employee stark mad, it's when you won't let him go home. My coworker and I tried our usual routine, but it didn't work. The dialogue went something like this:

"Did you lock the door?"
(Doesn't this guy know it's closing time?)
"Yeah, I locked it. It's eight o' clock isn't it?"
(If he doesn't he's a freakin moron)
The guy asks us if we can order some different 9volt battery connectors because ours are too flimsy.
*Repeat with different hints until I slam counter with fist*

The toliet overflowed today. I guess it's my fault, but I personally think it was already clogged and someone just left it that way so someone else would take the fall. It's not clogged anymore, but there's filthy water all over the floor. I'm thinking it should evaporate by tomorrow. We don't have a good mop for me to do anything about it.

My last update bragged about my time off. There won't be an update like that for a while. The manager suddenly decided to make up the schedule for the next three weeks, and ignore any requests to be off. Your grandma died? Tough. They can move the funeral. I'm not sure what caused this sudden change of policy, seeing as how we used to be able to set our schedule any way we want. Maybe he read the page.

Entry 15: Hello? Is anybody there?
I haven't worked since my last entry, half due to request, the other half due to some sort of spite due to that request. We're given off the days we ask, but my manager makes sure to give us off a lot more than we asked for, so that we'll suffer from a lack of hours, and think twice before asking off again. It doesn't work with me. In fact, I kind of like the extra free time.

Even on my days off I'm still amazed by the low competency level of our customers. When I went to rent a movie from the store next to the infamous Shack, I actually saw someone drive up into the nearly empty parking lot and try to get in. We're closed on Sundays. The man got out of his car, walked up to the door, and pulled. He paused slightly before pulling again, in order to give ample time for the situation to change enough to warrant a second try. He then cupped his hands over the sides of his face, so as to glance through the darkened window at a spot just above a sign displaying our store hours. I know that sign's there, not only because I put it there, but because I could read it from my seat in the car. When I drove off the man was still there, trying to confirm that someone wasn't playing some sort of a joke on him.

We have a lot of people do that actually, even though I usually only see them right after we've closed, and I'm starting up my car to go home. It's always the same. From 6:30pm-7:55pm no one comes in. We play tetris, we throw screwdrivers at eachother, we cuss for no reason. From 7:55pm until the closing time five minutes later, herds of customers just hoping to pointlessly graze, burst through the door and pretend they don't know when we close. They keep coming, I assume, until after I'm gone; none of them appreciate that I lock the door at 8pm sharp, whether or not there's anyone in the store. Sometimes I sit in the parking lot for a few minutes before driving away, laughing openly. One person comes up, tugs on the door, looks through the window. Another person comes up and goes through the same motions, even though he just saw the first guy try to get in and fail. Maybe it's just human nature, kind of like checking to see if someone left change in that pay phone. You try to walk by and not check, but something in you tells you to give it a quick try. Maybe you'll get that dime someone left behind; maybe the door won't be locked and you'll get a cordless phone.

I don't really feel up to writing much more, so I'm just going to write some short notes about what I would have discussed, had I felt like it:

-I have a coworker whom we call Dilbert. That's not his real name, but he looks like Dilbert, so we all just kind of forgot his real name. He answers to it, and everyone calls him Dilbert. Even the boss. Even the customers.

-He decided to rearrange the store for some reason and ended up getting grease on his shirt. He went to change, and vanished for over an hour. When he came back, he had a different shirt on. It had toothpaste on it.

--I was waiting for him to come back so I could go to lunch. I got mad. I taped his keys to the microwave. I taped them well. Those keys were tightly affixed to that microwave. If keys could breathe, those keys would have suffocated.

--Balls made out of Duct Tape hurt when they're thrown at you.