The Trouble Way Read online

  “I’m sorry sir, I’ll do the best I can,” Gladys looked for the price tag on the big box. She rang in two hundred thirty-nine dollars and fingered down the tax chart and keyed in nine dollars and fifty-six cents tax. “Will there be anything else?”

  “No, that’s it.”

  “That will be two hundred forty-eight dollars and fifty-six cents. Will that be cash, check, or charge, Sir?”

  “Whoa. Hold your damn horses, Missy. Are you trying to pull one over on me?” Jesse spoke loud enough for the supervisor to look their direction and scurry toward them. “That TV is on sale for one ninety-nine.”

  “I walk in here and don’t get a damn bit of help in the appliance department and have to load this thing on a cart and haul it up here, by myself, wait in line for a half-hour, and now I’m getting shafted. I don’t have to put up with this kind of bull-shit, there are plenty of places who will take my two-hundred bucks.” Jesse switched his focus to the supervisor and stood, silent, hands on his hips, and just waited.

  “Gladys, didn’t you check your ad?” the supervisor picked up the ad hanging by the register and rifled through it. “I’m sorry sir, you are absolutely right; the price is one hundred ninety-nine dollars. I’ll void out the transaction and Gladys can re-ring it for you.”

  Both of Gladys’ hands were shaking when Jesse handed her the cash and looked at the customer next in line. “Do you believe that?” he said and looked back at Gladys. “I’ve got better things to do tonight than stand in line at Big Dick’s. In case you didn’t know it, the Seahawks are playing tonight. It’d be nice to be able to get home in time for the kick off. Maybe you should read the ad like the supervisor says before you start ringing more people up wrong.” He snatched the receipt from Gladys’ hand. “By the way, Gladys, you should ask your manager to give you another shirt, your pen has been leaking through your pocket.” He pushed the shopping cart with the TV down the line of registers, catching notice of each checker there.

  “Thank you for shopping at Big ... ,” Gladys trailed off, looking down at her soiled smock, covering the stain with her hand. Jesse balanced the TV on the shopping cart as he strode toward the exit. He glanced back at Gladys; she rubbed the ink-stained pocket of her smock. Her face flushed as she looked at the next customer. Her concentration wandered and she did seemed confused.

  “Pay no attention to him, honey,” the lady in line said as she patted Gladys on her trembling hand. “He’s a total jack-ass.”

  Don held the door for Jesse as he pushed the cart, nearly losing the TV as the cart bounced over the metal threshold, into the drizzle greeting him in the parking lot.

  “I’m sorry for any problems you – ,” Don said, holding the door for Jesse.

  “I have a mind to just return the goddamn TV and buy it someplace else.”

  “Enjoy the game,” Don shouted.

  Jesse ignored Don’s pleasantries as he pushed the cart into the dismal night.

  His truck was at the far end of the parking lot. He had purposely parked it there to keep it out of eyesight of any employee that may be close to the entrance. He stopped at the tailgate of his truck, lowered it, and loaded the TV.

  When Jesse walked to the driver’s door, he reached into his pocket to get the receipt and the wind caught it and it blew in front of his truck. He quickly ran toward the blowing receipt and the wind caught his cap. A girl with an aqua smock slapped her foot on the blowing receipt, bent, and picked it up. Seeing that the girl had saved his receipt, he went after his hat. She stood until he had retrieved his cap and handed the receipt to him.

  “Nice catch. Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome” she said looking at his cap. “It’s a little damp. Go Seahawks.”

  “They lost their first game, maybe they’ll do better tonight. It’s early in the season and they’re a new team,” he said and walked toward his truck. When he was behind the wheel, he watched the girl as she walk nearly the entire distance to the entrance of Big Richard’s.

  I’ll be a goddamned sonofabitch, that’s Miss Cleavage from The Triangle. Ann.

  He started the engine and drove out of the parking lot and down the street. When he got to the first light, he hung a U-turn and headed back to the Big Richards parking lot. This time he lucked out and parked a few spaces from the entrance.

  Jesse grabbed a shopping cart from the cart stall and loaded the TV onto it. He pushed the cart to the entrance where the Don saw him and limped toward the door and held it open.

  “Are you having a problem, sir?” Don said.

  “Damn straight, I’m having a problem. You know, I came in here because you had a good price on a TV. When I get in here, I don’t get any help in the appliance department, I wait a half hour in line and then have an incompetent rude checker try to overcharge me on the goddamn TV. Nobody offered to help me to my truck so I loaded it by myself. I started driving home and then thought to myself, I don’t have to put up with this kind of bullshit. There are other places that will give good service and give a customer a hand loading what they just spent two-hundred bucks on. So, you’re damn right, I am having a problem. One hell-of-a problem.”

  “I’m very sorry sir,” Don said. “What can I do for you?”

  “I’m pissed; I want my money back.” Jesse said, “I can spend it where it will be appreciated.”

  “Of course, sir, let me get that for you,” Don limped behind Jesse and grabbed the cart and pushed it to the desk and looked at the service desk employee, Martha. Both Don and Martha had witnessed the commotion that took place at the register earlier.

  “It will be no problem giving you a refund, sir. Could I have your receipt sir?” Martha said.

  “Well, that’s where we have another problem. The goddamned receipt got blown halfway across the parking lot. I couldn’t find it, but I paid cash for it right down on that register near the end,” Jesse pointed to Gladys. “If you don’t believe me, ask what’s-her-name, that slow, chunky, checker … uh … Gladys, down there at the end. She knows I paid cash. I want my goddamn money back.”

  “There’s no need for that kind of talk,” Don said. “I’m sure you will be taken care of.”

  “Just one moment, Sir,” Martha said, “I’ll have to call a manager to get approval.” She picked up the mike and held the button. “Rainier-3 to the service desk for a code NR please, Rainier-3 to the service desk.”

  Jesse stood aside, Don returned to his greeter stand, and Martha stood, avoiding Jesse’s eyes, seemingly praying for another customer.

  A lady walked in the front door burdened with a small child and shopping bag and placed it on the counter. “I’d like to return these,” she said, pulling several pair of jeans out of the Big Richards shopping bag. “They are for my husband. They’re the wrong size. George has put on a couple pounds since the last time I bought him jeans.” The lady placed her purse on the counter and pulled out a wallet and found the receipt, placing her wallet on the counter. Several bills slipped unnoticed to the floor.

  Martha looked at the jeans and found the price tags still attached and asked for the receipt. With the exchange completed the lady picked up her purse and wallet and turned to leave.

  “You dropped some cash,” Jesse said, bent and picked up two twenties and handed them to her.

  “Thank you ever so much,” the lady said, “I don’t know what I would have done if I had lost forty dollars. George would have been furious with me.”

  “My pleasure, ma’am.”

  Several uncomfortable minutes passed before a young man with a white badge with little sticky alphabet letters saying Assistant Manager walked up to the service desk.

  “This gentleman wants to return this TV and he lost his receipt in the parking lot. He went through Gladys’ register. He said he paid cash,” Martha said. “I did see him go through the register.”

  “One moment sir,” the assistant manager said and walked to Gladys’ station and had a brief conversation. Gladys looked over at the service
desk and nodded and touched her head as if to indicate the customer was wearing a cap.

  The assistant strolled back to the service desk. “I will okay it this one time, Sir, but you’ll need your receipt the next time.”

  “If I didn’t have such shitty service, I wouldn’t be returning it in the first place,” Jesse ignored the Assistant Manager’s sermon. “You ought to give your employees a little training in customer service.” Jesse looked at the nametag with no name on it. “Mr. Assistant Manager.”

  Martha counted out one hundred ninety-nine dollars plus tax to Jesse and he pocketed the money.

  “Thank you for shopping at Big Richards,” Martha said.

  “Yeah, right.” Jesse beat feet for the front door.

  Ann slid her timecard into the machine and listened to it bang as it registered her time on the card. She looked to see seven minutes early registered and slid the card into the rack. She headed to the Deli department. She had been razzed several times for her habit of being early, a rare trait for any time-card punching employee at Big Richards. It was a habit her father, an ex-Army man instilled in her. “If you’re on time, you’re late; if you’re fifteen minutes early, you’re on time,” rung in her head every day she was scheduled for work. She was habitually at her workstation before anyone else in her area.

  She was filling the popcorn machine with popcorn and the foul smelling liquid that was supposed to taste like butter into the dispenser above the machine. She watched as a man pushed a TV into the store and talked in a loud voice to the customer greeter. She recognized him as the guy she picked up the receipt for in the parking lot, cute “Go Seahawks” guy from The Triangle.

  Velly interesting. What’s your game?

  She watched as he pushed the TV to the service desk. After a bit of a confrontation with the service desk employee and the assistant manager, he finagled his way into finally getting a refund of a hundred plus bucks without a receipt, showed his ID, signed the refund slip, and strode out the door.

  The thing is, now he doesn’t have the TV, so exactly what did he gain? Why did he lie about having a receipt? What that all about? That does not make a lot of sense. Did he lose his receipt again?

  “Hey, how’s it been going, Martha?” Jane, the evening service desk girl, said as she walked behind the counter. Several checkers and the supervisor came on duty. The evening-shift greeter relieved Don and the department heads had left.

  “I’m glad the day’s over,” Martha said. “I’m outa here.” She had her smock off before she was five feet from the service desk, a practice nearly all the employees did to discourage those nettlesome customers from asking those time consuming, idiotic questions that could take countless minutes when they were headed to the time clock, off duty, and on their way out of the store. Ann learned, like all the experienced employees, to survey her route to avoid bothersome customers. Even Don, who had a serious disability, avoided making eye contact with customers and picked up his pace as he limped briskly to avoid customers when his shift ended. With the male employees, it was a red vest that they removed and wadded into as small a bundle as possible to avoid detection.

  “Watch old Don hump it back to the time clock,” Ann had said to Linda on one occasion when they watched him flee the searching eyes of some ladies looking for assistance. The two had a good chuckle about that over screwdrivers at the Triangle.

  There were countless unwritten rules many younger employees adopted. Rules certainly not embraced by management or even some of the older employees who were of a different mindset. There were serendipitous rules the younger generation follow but not openly discuss at work. The main one involved ensuring they received what they perceived their worth. That amount, coincidently, was significantly more than what management thought of their worth.

  It did not take Linda and Ann long to learn they had to look out for their own interests. Management certainly did not have their best interest at heart, regardless of the propaganda they espoused at employee meetings and in interviews, and on those countless posters placed around the employee lounge about productivity, customer service, and the like. Rules like that ridiculous poster with the letters TYFSABR (Thank You for Shopping at Big Richards) in small letters below, employees were required to repeat after every single customer encountered. Big Dick must have come up with that ridiculous rule. The corny acronym didn’t even make sense … “TYFFS-A-BAR.” Management used it in their training meetings. Some of the employees had taken up the Arab gesture of some cartoon they had seen, doing an exaggerated fingers touching their head and in a swirling downward motion accompanying a bow. Of course, never in the presence of management.

  “Nobody looks out for numero uno but numero uno,” Linda told Ann early on after a situation where Ann was unfairly rebuked by an assistant manager in public.

  The customer had claimed Ann shortchanged her and the assistant ordered Ann to give the customer eleven cents from her register. As it turned out, when the office balanced her register in the morning, she was marked eleven cents short on her balance sheet; a note was included in her personnel record. When she confronted the assistant, he put his hand on her shoulder and said, “Well, Honey, shit happens, you know. The customer is always right.” He gave her shoulder a squeeze and gave her a smile and a wink. Management refused to remove the note from her record.

  Ann’s view of management stalled and was in an accelerating downward spiral starting from the moment the assistant refused to acknowledge his error and apologize to her.

  “The prick made me look like an idiot in front of that customer,” Ann had told Linda. It may be good management practice to act as though the customer is always right, but, in reality, the customer is definitely not always right. It would be in their best interest for management to realize that and treat employees accordingly.” She sat with Linda in a corner table in the smoky Triangle over a couple of screwdrivers. “The Man is definitely not scoring points with me, especially that sexist assistant … ‘Honey,’ my shiny butt.”

  Gladys leaned her umbrella against the counter and handed Ann the exact change and picked up a sub sandwich and a large bag of popcorn she intended for dinner. Ann put the money on the register.

  “You either get the terrible customer the first thing in the morning to ruin your day or the last customer at the end of your shift to ruin your evening,” Gladys said. “This time it was the latter. Thanks. You are always such a dear, Ann. It’s been a rough day,” Gladys said as she turned to waddle off. “I have to catch the bus, forget the receipt. I see you’re busy.”

  “I’m sorry, honey, tomorrow will be better, I’m sure. Good night, Gladys,” Ann said. “Don’t forget your umbrella.”

  Ann scanned the area and walked to the register and scooped up the cash and moved briskly to the resupply shelf and bent to grab a bundle of sandwich bags and slid the bill and change into her smock pocket. Her profit was one sixty-nine and her shift wouldn’t start for another few minutes.

  He didn’t want to have to walk a block in the rain so Jesse pulled his pickup into a space as close as he could get to the garden shop entrance to Big Richards. He grabbed a cart near the register and continued into the main part of the store. There were only a few customers wandering the aisles on that end of the store and even fewer as he walked to the rear of the store to the appliance department. He waited until the clerk was helping a customer at the far end of his department and Jesse pushed his cart to the dock of TVs that had the sale sign on them. He hoisted one of the TVs onto his cart and quickly pushed it toward the front of the store.

  “Go Seahawks,” he heard a girl’s voice. He looked off to the side and saw Ann walking the opposite direction, toward the store offices.

  “Hi, how ya doin’?” Jesse said, slowing his pace.

  “I can’t complain,” Ann said and paused for a second. I see you must have given up on the Seahawks and traded your cap for a cowboy hat.”

  “I took it off when I got disgusted with them. They
lost tonight.”

  “You’re getting another TV? She stopped and smiled at him.

  “Yeah, this is for my dad. He wanted me to pick one up. I’m just the delivery guy. Can’t argue about the price,” Jesse said, starting to shove the cart again. He watched her as she disappeared around the end of the counter and picked up his pace.

  That was too close.

  “I see the guy decided to buy another TV,” Ann said to Jane at the Service Desk.

  “I don’t know anything about that. But, he wasn’t buying a TV, he was returning one. I thought it was funny when he came up from the back of the store but he said he came in the garden shop because there were no parking spaces near the front door and it was just starting to rain. It was okay, he had his receipt,” Jane said.

  “What is his name?” Ann said. I think I remember him from someplace.”

  “Just a sec, I have it right here on the return slip.” Jane said as she fingered through the few receipt slips on the spindle. “His name is Jesse Martin. Don’t say anything, I am not supposed to give out names.”

  “Don’t worry, Honey,” Ann said. “I don’t know him anyway. It’s not the name I remember.”

  “Too bad, Ann, he’s a cute guy,” Jane said. “I like the cowboy types. If I weren’t married – “

  “Yeah, but you are married, sweetie. You’re right though, he is definitely a cutie-pie,” Ann said.

  Your gig is up, Mr. Cowboy Jesse Martin; I know exactly what you’re doing. Buy a TV, “lose” the receipt, get a refund, get an identical TV off the counter, take it to the service desk, present your “lost” receipt, and voilà, a nifty profit of two-hundred bucks for about an hour’s trouble.

  Chapter 7 Ann Sandal I’ll get some cowboy at the White Shutters to bump fuzzies with me. Dealing with employees who have the IQ of a geoduck. Cut the volume on the make-up. Do cowboys smoke pot?