Chapter 50: Another Visit to the Institution

I think I have written before about running into crazies at work, but maybe that was in my Myspace blog. There’s a manager at work…we’ll call him Frosty because he always does this hilarious dance that he says is from those old cartoon movies such as Frosty the Snowman. So I have a bit of a habit of almost getting Frosty killed. I’ll recap quickly just in case I have never mentioned it. So one day I had a bunch of trainee’s at work and I was coming downstairs to check to see if they were there. There is a door to get to the stairs that you have push open if you are about to go down the stairs. So I pushed it open and it was a little too fast and it turns out that on the other side were Frosty and my trainees. I almost hit Frosty with the door and told him I was going to kill him one day but it was only going to be by accident. A couple of days later (seriously, it all happened in the same week) there was a crazy lady at work. She was in line for one of my trainees and she asked me what kind of credit cards do we accept. I told her pretty much all credit cards. She told me to wait a second while she pulled hers out to double check. She handed me a hotel card, the kind you use to unlock the door. I flipped it over a couple of times in my hand just to make sure that I was right in it being a hotel key card and not a credit card. I told her it was a hotel card and she nodded and continued to look at me like a hotel card was going to cover it. At that point I realized that there was something wrong with her so I told her I would be right back. I went over to Frosty and told him that we had a crazy lady in line who was trying to pay with a hotel key card. Frosty came over to help out with the situation and I tried to continue to coach my trainees on register (I had two of them). My one trainee finished up with the customer in front of the crazy lady while Frosty talked to her. She handed him something and he threw it away so I assumed that she had given him trash from her purse to throw away. Then she gets an attitude with Frosty and says, “Where’s my money?” and Frosty is absolutely confused at this moment and he’s not sure what to say but he asks, “What money?” and she goes on that he threw away her money and he contests that all she gave him was a paper clip and a piece of trash and that he threw it away. She insists that her money was on that paper clip. Bernie reached into the trash can and pulled out the paper clip and handed it to her. This only made her more irate, she started to yell that he took her money. Frosty turned to me and said, “Move you’re trainee down to register 12,” and then he looked at my trainee and said, “Welcome to Ukrop’s.” and then turned to continue to face the customer who at this point had come behind the register, grabbed the trash can and dumped it out on to the register belt. So I pack up one trainee and take him to a safer location and get him set up. I look back at Frosty and the lady is going nuts, Frosty at this point has already called the security guy to the register and he is on his way. Frosty gives me a look and it turns out later it was because I had just missed her shove him, so he had looked over and by that time I was looking in his direction, but had missed the actual push.
The rest of the day Frosty was telling everyone that I tried to get him killed and I had threatened him earlier that week so now I had just paid that lady to cause him harm. It was horrible, I felt really bad, but we always joked about it. That was several months ago. This past Friday I was training courtesy clerks, four of them, so it was hard to keep track of all of them, and one of them was bagging for a lady that was complaining or something about a card, but no one could really understand her. I asked her a bunch of questions about the card, I thought maybe she lost hers, or wanted a new one, but she didn’t want any of that, and in fact may have already slide her card for all I know. I helped my courtesy clerk bag for a while and then went to check on how another one was doing. Then I returned to the first one, the lady said that she had to wait and asked if the courtesy clerk could wait with her, he said he would and they went and stood by the wall. They were standing there for a while so I wasn’t sure how long she was going to make them wait and I wasn’t sure what she was waiting for. So I walked up and she asked if I was going to check her bags. I thought she was just taking training seriously so I said, “you want me to check the bags?” and she said, “yeah for drugs and alcohol.” Which actually I didn’t catch on the first two go arounds, I caught it on the third. I kind of look at the courtesy clerk and we both shrug our shoulders and start looking through the bags, you learn that maybe you should just humor the crazy people of the world. But then apparently I wasn’t doing it right, and certainly she didn’t want me to open the grocery items so I told her to hold on a moment and I went to customer service to get a manager, and who should be the first one I see? Poor Frosty, who just got back this week from working a month in Roanoke, so…welcome home, here’s a crazy lady. I just looked at him and said, “Frosty?” and he knew by the look on my face and he just said, “You’ve gotta be kidding me.” So I quickly explained the situation and he came out to talk to her. The moment she saw him her face broke out into a smile and I don’t know if it’s because she thinks he cutes or if she’s just so excited to see a manager. She starts asking his name and he just cheeses it and tells her his name and she starts to write it down on her receipt and then starts to write down other things and Frosty tells her that he can write it all down for her on a piece of paper at customer service. So he writes down his name, the store number, and the general manager’s name as well. I don’t even know what to do about the bags because she seems to have forgotten she even wants them checked. She’s gone into journalist mode and she’s writing down everything. After she was done with Frosty she went back to the register she checked out from and starts to get the cashier’s name and keeps asking questions and finally Frosty goes to her and tells her that he is happy to help her but she needs to leave the store now, she can’t interrupt business on the front end like that and if she doesn’t leave he’ll need to call someone (like the cops). This is when I realize that my trainee is still set to take her outside, Frosty is getting ready to walk with him but then turns to me and asks if it would be better if I follow him out since it would probably set her off if he did and the trainee might be more comfortable with me there. So I said I would go and then Frosty says, “Better yet, let’s switch him out.” So we picked an individual who is more seasoned and used to dealing with people there who may not have it all together in the cognitive factory upstairs.
The rest of the day was spent smoothing things over and telling people what happened. I don’t know when it happened, but at some point since I’ve gotten to that store the employees have come to expect me to know everything that is going on and they all come to me to find out what, “that was all about”. I hope this doesn’t mean that I am the “town gossip”. I’m going to console myself and say I’m not, I’m simply telling interesting stories, now people’s personal business. I just think it’s cool that the people like me and know where to go to get the interesting stories, considering when I first came to this store I didn’t think I’d ever get to the point where I would talk with any of them with more than a ‘hello’.