Winders! Part 2: Partners

Roughly every half hour, an announcement would come over the PA. Sometimes it would be a pre-recorded segment, but mostly it was one of the managers reading from a script. Regardless, the volume was up so loud that any message would be mangled into a warbly pidgin wherein you could make out words like "meat" or "sale" but were otherwise at a loss. Every announcement began "Attention Members and Guests" for sales or "Attention Members and Partners" for... I don't know, safety maybe? For neophytes:
Members: People who pay to shop at Sam's Club. And I do mean shop, because you can't get into the store without a membership (even if you're not buying anything).
Guests: People who mooch off of paying members. Cannot buy anything, but I presume can put things on their friend's ticket.
Partners: Underpaid troglodytes who trudge the floor looking for ways to irritate demo representatives.


Once I was asked if I would like to write an announcement to go over the PA. An excitable gentleman got me to write out a short script, which I did happily (you'll recall I was quite bored). I had seen him many times before, and he even humored me in getting an explanation of my job. He returned periodically to check on my progress, then rushed my finished copy to the higher-ups. Not only did I never hear the announcement, the gentleman disappeared along with it. I can only assume he went on to publish my copy as his own and is now living comfortably off the royalties.

Now the first Partner I met was not even human. I mistakenly assumed that Robot Rick would greet me every time entered the store that summer... but he was only there that first day. I guess he was on tour? It was this creepy-ass thing on tank treads that would scoot around scaring the shit out of little kids asking if they knew about the sale on 4 gallon tubs of ice cream. The dude that controlled RR wasn't even remotely hidden... you could see him next to the front staging at a control panel and mic. In fact, you could hear him better than the robot. I have to admit the little bastard gave me a hint of glee that first day, that one of my coworkers might wig out and start tearing the arms off of 8 year olds, but that dream was denied me.

With that exception, I typically only saw the Partners for two reasons: rounding up for a meeting in the back, no doubt rustling cattle for the big meat department sale, or shuffling about ignoring customers. I can say categorically that a Member would only be greeted by staff when they already knew what they were looking for. In other cases they would come to me and ask for assistance. The gall! 90% of my conversations with Members went as follows:
Me: Hello, how are you? Do you have any home improvements coming up? [note the lack of pause after the first question]
Hoser: Where the tools?
Me: Sorry, I wouldn't know, I don't work for Sam's Club.
Hoser: [putters off]
Okay my response was an obvious lie... I did, after all, catalog everything to stave off boredom. I knew better than the Partners where shit was in that store, but you see misanthropy has a cruel price. In some instances I would just look at the object in question, as it was inevitably in my immediate proximity. As when there was a 6'x6' display of Tide behind my booth,
Me: [my deal]
Hoser: Where the laundry soap?
Me: [steps aside to reveal enormous display]
Hoser: All you got's Tide?
Me: [shrugs]
No one ever called me out for misinformation, though a Partner would occasionally ask if I could help customers find things. I told them I couldn't leave my booth. That was a lie.

I engaged in a losing war with the Partners which haunts me to this day. They had this underground network of tunnels and trap doors so they could pop up and annoy me on a whim. Seriously these guys would come out of nowhere, and many times I couldn't put a face on my tormentor. I happened to be stationed near the electronics. Nearest was a television set to repeat a commercial for Lysol toilet cleaner. They were running this series with "facts," and I have to say their primary sources were dubious. At one point I had the whole segment memorized since I had to hear it so many goddamn times. It began, "Fact: a bathroom that gets constant traffic needs constant freshening." Even still the word "freshening" makes me cringe... My tactic was to sneak over to the television and mute it, and theirs was to crank it back up to max. Of course I never did this while I could be seen (presumably), but I think one of the managers knew it was me who was turning it down. Similarly, the aisle had these portable televisions and DVD players. Every person who walked by, and I mean Partners and Members, would jack each one all the way up in turn. Why, I ask you? Why? These things all had shitty built-in speakers and shitty reception, so end the end you had your own personal Merzbow concert. That was easy enough to fix, but for awhile they had this backpack thing high up on one of the endcaps. See the idea was you buy this $600 portable television-in-a-bag, hang it over one of the front seats, and PRESTO your spawn are busied drooling over Spongebob instead of yelling at each other not to look out "my window." The bag had a video player of some sort in it, and they had this ancient Olson twins music video playing in a loop. This was, I assume, from the height of their Full House popularity, and they couldn't have been older than ten. The shitty speakers at full volume did nothing to improve the off-key renditions of "Wheels on the Bus" and "Old MacDonald." After enduring this affront for several days, I lost my better judgment & scaled the display to mute the bitches. Fortunately, none of the Partners spotted me or had the minerals to get up there to turn it back up.

Up next... Part three: Terrifyingly Beautiful

Winders! Part One: The Hours

Back a while ago I made some terrible images to accompany my tale of woe with Lundberg Windows and Siding. This was during my "humorously bad Photoshop phase," from which I have not fully recovered. I will, as my high school German teacher would say, salt and pepper them throughout this retelling.

First, let's set the stage. A 19 year old boy returns from his first summer at university jobless. He puts in applications at all the usual spots - Starbucks, uh... actually I think that was the only one. But he picks up applications for all sorts of crazy places. Oh yeah and Target. His friend got a job there but he applied too late or something. Right, so he naturally starts scouring the paper and finds that Cutco hires all the goddamn time, but this guy's no sucker. Okay he's not that kind of sucker. He finds one that sounds promising... "Demo representative" for $10/hr plus commission. He thinks "demo" will be the sort of thing where he tells people about a product & shows them how it works. He is wrong. Oh so wrong. He shows up for an interview dressed in his best Sunday slacks and polo within a Sam's Club, where he is not a member. He is not so much given the job as he is immediately asked to man the booth for the next four hours. He politely declines. He meets the man again (for the penultimate time) at a K-Mart... and the odyssey begins. He receives no vest, I repeat, no goddamn vest. Then he stops using the third person present tense because, frankly, it's getting irritating.

The K-Mart gig was actually not so bad. See my job was to stand at this booth for four hours. It was this little rolly thing, like a big box, with a sign and a sample window on it. At first I tried to glean what sort of information I was to be giving the customers, but I eventually determined that the answer was a tidy amount of none. In fact, it almost seemed like I was being aggressively denied information about the product... but I'll get to that later. Anyway I was beginning to wonder what exactly "demo" stood for, since the only demonstrating I could do was open and close the window display. "Tilts open for easy cleaning!" The beauty of the K-Mart gig was that there were people there, you know, buying things and walking by. I was also right by the front door with a girl selling cell phone plans (never buy from these people - it's a big ol' ripoff), so you better believe you were gonna get harassed when you walked in. Just by the sheer number of people I got a decent number of leads. And by the way, what the fuck is a lead? I just ask everybody "Do you have any home improvements coming up?" and, if so, take their name for a "Free in-home consultation!" That's a lead in the home improvement biz. Call me a traditionalist, but it seems to me a lead involves some kind of inside information, not just bluntly asking people. So I guess that's why it was called something other than "salesman," because I didn't actually do any selling. And oh, while we're there, let's talk about pricing. That's right I still don't know how much anything cost. Not even a ballpark figure. Sure, I can't go quoting prices to people without seeing their house or whatever, but cost was 9 times out of 10 the first thing people asked about. And when denied any kind of range, most just walked away. I mean I had that line about the free consultation, but you have to figure most people don't just go replacing their gutters on a whim. I'll talk more about the customers later though.

K-Mart only lasted about a week when Lundberg's contract with them expired, so I was relocated to a Sam's Club in Matthews that was being remodeled. From the outside it looked closed for remodeling, but there was a sign up that they were still open around the side. There were... not so many customers. I was positioned near the back in one of the main aisles. Let me please tell you that I can still recall how it smelled. Like a warehouse floor... with sawdust. I saw, by my best guess, about one person every half hour. Within my four hour shift, let me also tell you that the frequency (with those 8 people) that were in the market for home improvements was tragically low. Originally I claimed that I would be interested in working 8 hour shifts... I needed the money after all. But let me tell you further that a single 8 hour shift at this job would render one in a similar state to that kid who saw his whole family murdered with a croquet set (only $14.99!) - irreparably mute with a thin lock of white hair. So boring. Here is a list of some things I did to keep myself occupied:
1) Recovered the combination to the lock on the box by trial and error. It was 776. I started at 000.
2) Not reading. It was so boring that anything further relaxing would have put me in a coma.
3) Not writing. With the exception of a letter I wrote once, the experience was so mind-numbing I couldn't come up with anything. Imagine, if you will, trying to get a group of 10 year olds excited about balancing a checkbook, and you will catch a rare glimpse into my brain at that time.
4) Cataloged the things I could see. A list, I mean, of the various products and their prices within my proximity.
5) Engaged in a cold war with the Sam's Club staff (you'll have to wait until installment 2 for that!).
6) Created dialog for customers in the distance. I think somebody only heard me once, and they didn't say anything about it.
7) Sung to myself quietly.
8) Scanned the pamphlets in the box, only a handful of which were for products Lundberg carried. I was never told which handful those were.
9) Walked to the bathroom or for water, about once an hour.
10) Worked out increments for how long I had remaining on my shift. For instance, "I am 3/10 of the way finished."

Every one of these tasks was like a little reward I would give myself to stay sane. I might, say, scold myself for going to the bathroom too soon or pat myself on the back for not looking at the clock in five minutes. Actually the last time I saw my supervisor was when I had been in the bathroom, but he didn't seem to mind. Still, I lived in fear that he might show up when I wasn't there or something, so I always arrived and left exactly on time. I even accounted for the time it would take me to roll the box into and out of the aisle from the front.

Alright I'll wrap this segment up. Next I'll talk a little about the Sam's Club staff.

So I have a crush on you...

A GUIDE FOR WHAT TO DO IF I HAVE A CRUSH ON YOU

ACCEPTANCE
1. Congratulations!
2. Although I may appear uninterested, it's a ruse.
3. You may become confused or frightened at first. Don't worry, that's normal! I can be pretty intimidating. Fear not though, I'm harmless. I've never even been in a fight! Well, except that one time that another kid threw a book bag at my head and I tackled him. But you know I didn't have a crush on him & I was 12.
4. Seriously if you're still thinking about #3 you shouldn't. Look at these arms! They're like noodles. Sexy noodles?
5. Chances are the only time we've conversed is when I asked you what size you wanted for your drink. In rare cases we may have exchanged names. This is also normal.
6. You may be wondering, "What's in it for me?" Wonder no more (but don't worry, wondering is normal!). See all this coffee? I'm authorized to give you a discount of up to 10%, yo. Okay I have to make up the difference but that's like paying for a date, right? So like if I give you that discount a few dozen times that's almost as much as dinner I think. At Elmo's maybe? First date! Without leaving the shop!
7. Now you may be worried about how things work out mathematically in #6. Like if you're expecting a firm hug or possibly a peck on the cheek by date 3, we should probably discuss that first. Especially if we are working with fractions of dates. I know most girls think it's a bit weird when you take a calculator out on a date (I think), so maybe we should work out a rounding system.
8. Apparently in high school I was known as a druggie. Like that guy in the drive thru at Taco Bell asked me what school I went to and if I "smoked tree." As I paused to figure out what "tree" referred to, he asked me again and I sped off without collecting my change. So anyway I'm really just a sleepy guy. I like naps. Is that so wrong? It's okay if you're into that sort of thing (drugs I mean). Who hasn't smoked the proverbial "tree," right? Am I right? You're right, I don't know.
9. Maybe I went a little too far with #8? Let's just stick with a "say no to drugs" policy. I don't want to wind up in one of those conversations with all those confusing slang words. I have a general rule that if I can't identify something I don't put it in my mouth. Unless it smells like curry. I am a curry fiend! Please don't put drugs in my curry.

UNDERSTANDING
1. You may not be aware of the crush. This is normal.
2. I will not tell you directly about the crush, and I may refrain from looking you in the eyes. This is because I am afraid of you. Not because you're a scary person! I'm just sensitive.
3. My job doesn't really allow me to tell people I have crushes on them. We wouldn't want the other customers to get jealous! Soon everybody will be wanting a crush. And then come the 10% discounts... and my calculator only has one memory slot! So let's just keep it to ourselves. Or I guess I'll just keep it to ourselves since you're not aware of it yet.
4. If we run into each other spontaneously, I will pretend I have never met you. This is a common defense mechanism for humans I promise because I read it on the internet (it was a forum or maybe wikipedia!). I may then curl into a ball and weep softly. This is a common defense mechanism for puppies. Everybody loves puppies!
5. My friends may try to tell you about the crush to ease the the strain of my infinite sorrow. Ignore their lies! I have no friends. You are witnessing a doppelganger!

Hopefully that clears up a few things. Now if you'll excuse me I have a couple of results in my area from Nerve.com. I have it on good authority that they have what I'm looking for in Durham.

Nevermind, they didn't seem very nice. Casual dating indeed! That's why I carry my Grandmother's engagement ring with me all the time. Wouldn't want to let one slip through! Of course I have to give it back to her once she figures out it's gone, so act fast.