Sunday, December 19, 2021
Wednesday, December 15, 2021
I NEARLY BECAME MRS. CLAUS
Back in 2006, when my husband retired, he began to slack off when it came to getting his hair cut, shaving and watching his diet. As a result, I ended up married to someone who resembled Santa’s long-lost twin.
He, however, was in denial. As I sat looking at his nearly shoulder-length white hair, big bushy beard and expanding waistline one afternoon, I told him I felt as if I should change my name to Mrs. Claus.
“Don’t be silly,” he said. “This isn’t a 'Santa’ look! This is my Harley Davidson look!”
“But you don’t even own a Harley. You don’t even own a bicycle!”
“Then call it my Jerry Garcia ‘Grateful Dead’ look.”
"Name one song by the Grateful Dead.”
Silence.
Not long after that, my husband took me Christmas shopping at the mall... where something happened that made him think he just might bear some resemblance to the big guy from the North Pole after all.
Whenever we went to the mall, my husband always immediately plunked down on a bench and “people watched” while I shopped. He really enjoyed studying people, and could sit there and do it for hours. That worked out fine because I could shop for hours...even days.
Anyway, after I finished making my rounds of all of the stores, I returned to the bench where I’d left my husband, just in time to see a little girl who looked about four years old run up to him and say, “I want Barbie’s Dream House!”
My husband stared at her as if she’d just been beamed down from some distant planet. The little girl then tried to climb up beside him on the bench, but her mother rushed over and grabbed her.
“I want Barbie’s Dream House!” the girl repeated.
“I’m so sorry!” the mother said, red-faced. “She thinks you’re Santa Claus! I tried to stop her, but the minute she saw you, she got so excited she just dashed right over.”
I couldn’t help it. I burst out laughing. And all the way home, I teased my husband about being mistaken for Santa. I also had to throw in a smug “I told you so” every few minutes for effect.
He, however, seemed preoccupied. Finally, he said, “You know, I’ve heard that mall Santas and department-store Santas can make pretty good money. Maybe I should look into it as a part-time job for the holidays. I think it might be fun. And unlike a lot of the Santas, my beard is real. If the kids tug on it, it won’t come off!”
He was silent for a few seconds before he added, “Trouble is, though, my stomach’s getting so saggy, it rests on my thighs. I don’t even have a lap where the kids could sit.”
“They can always sit on your knee,” I said.
“Yeah, but I have bad arthritis in my knees,” he said. “So that might end up being painful.”
I was beginning to think he should look for a part-time job that was better suited for him...like a mattress tester.
When we got home from the mall, he headed straight for the computer and looked up information about being a mall Santa. It was the first time he’d actually seemed enthused about anything (other than eating and sleeping) since his retirement.
Twenty minutes later he turned off the computer. I couldn’t help but notice that his expression looked less than jolly-ish.
“What’s the matter?” I asked. “Did you find out you have to have a college degree in ‘ho-ho-ho-ing’ to qualify?”
He shook his head. “I never realized just how much work is involved in being a Santa. I mean, it always looked like nothing but fun to me. But did you know they have to have at least three extra Santa suits ready at all times because so many kids get nervous on Santa’s lap and have accidents? And I’m talking about accidents from both ends!”
The visions that popped into my head weren’t exactly festive ones.
“And then there are the bruises from being kicked so much,” he added. “They showed a photo online of this one guy’s legs after less than a week of being Santa. They had so many black-and-blue marks on them, he looked like a Dalmatian!”
“So I guess this means you’re going to cut your hair and shave your beard now that your career plans have been dashed?” I asked.
“I’ll think about it,” he said.
I actually got my hopes up, thinking I’d finally be able to see his face and his ears once again.
But as luck would have it, a few days later we stopped at our local gas station. Our mechanic greeted us, then said to my husband, “You know something? You look really cool with your beard and long hair. I like it!”
That ended that. My husband decided to treat razors and clippers as if they were carriers of the plague.
But after a while, he finally stopped resembling jolly Old Saint Nick.
Yep. He looked more like Father Time.
# # #
Sally Breslin is an award-winning syndicated humor columnist who has written regularly for newspapers and magazines all of her adult life. She is the author of several novels in a variety of genres, from humor and romance to science fiction. Contact her at: sillysally@att.net
Monday, December 6, 2021
"HO! HO! HO!" TURNED INTO "OH, NO! NO! NO!"
I’m no Scrooge by any means, but over the years, the words “Christmas tree” have come to have about the same effect on me as the words “that tooth needs to be extracted.”
That’s because every year without fail, something goes terribly wrong when I attempt to set up and decorate my tree. This year, I’d planned to be different and instead of going through the torture of searching, finding and then chopping down a suitable tree on my land (which always has led to certain disaster in the past), I actually would splurge and buy a fresh, perfectly shaped, already cut tree.
Then I heard on the news that due to problems with everything from adverse weather conditions to the pandemic, live trees this year were going to be in short supply and require a home-equity loan to purchase.
So, having a very limited budget (like about $10), last week I dressed for winter in bright red (so a deer hunter wouldn’t accidentally shoot me) and headed out to the back forty (better known as my eight acres of land) to search for a Christmas tree.
Never have I seen a scrawnier bunch of competitors. Some of them were so bad, they made Charlie Brown’s tree look like the one at Rockefeller Center in comparison.
I walked and walked…and then stopped to pick at least five ticks off my pants, which upset me. I mean, I’d been under the misconception that the little vampires disappeared after the first hard frost of the season. But the ones attached to my pants obviously hadn’t received that memo.
Suddenly, there, to my right, I spotted a fir tree that didn’t look as if it had been on a starvation diet for months. It wasn’t as full as I’d have liked, but it was full enough to suffice. And even though it wasn't perfectly shaped and the back of it, upon closer inspection, was…well, missing…I figured I could stand it in the corner and no one would know the difference.
So I removed my trusty folding saw from my pocket and sawed down the tree. Then I grabbed it by its trunk and headed back toward home.
That’s when I realized that during the process of intensely searching for a tree, I’d wandered off my land. The tree I was carrying had been growing on someone else’s property.
A sense of panic overcame me. Just about everyone has surveillance equipment nowadays, so I felt certain that I, conspicuously visible in all of my red-clothed glory, had been captured on camera as I’d gleefully hacked down someone else’s tree. When I took a long look at my surroundings, however, there wasn’t a house visible anywhere nearby – just forest, so that eased my anxiety a little.
But what, I wondered, was I supposed to do? Go nail the tree back onto its stump? No, the crime already had been committed. So I carried the tree home.
And then I waited for the police to come knocking on my door.
I figured if they did, I would tell them it was an honest mistake and the owner of the land could come onto my land and dig up as many trees as he wanted and replant them to replace the one I’d taken down. And then I’d throw myself at the police officers' mercy.
But no one showed up.
So this past weekend I set up the “tree of crime” and prepared to decorate it. I took boxes of decorations out of the closet and sorted through them. The first thing I did was test the strings of mini-lights. Two strings lit. Two didn’t. That meant that probably one bulb was burnt out on each one, which would require hours of testing to find the culprits. But I’ve never been a patient person, so I drove to the nearest store and bought a string of 250 lights.
When I returned home and opened the box, I was disappointed to discover that the lights were strung on white cords. White? All of the lights I’d ever owned had been on green cords, which nicely blended with the color of the tree and became invisible. White would show every flaw in my decorating skills, like when I loop the lights over random branches and then loop them in another direction or zigzag them to fill in the spots I missed.
All I could think about was how the white cords would end up looking as if I’d flung a pot of plain, boiled spaghetti onto the tree. 
THE NAKED TREE
So I ventured down into the dungeon known as my basement and dug out a long-forgotten dusty old trunk of Christmas decorations from my former residence. In it, I found a couple more sets of lights…strung on green cords. Even better, the relics still worked.
I soon realized that decorating a tree that had no branches in the back meant the combined weight of all of the decorations and lights was going to be in the front. Sure enough, as I placed each decoration onto a branch, the tree began to lean forward a little more. When I finally finished decorating, I stood back to admire my work. I saw one spot on the tree that looked conspicuously naked, so I grabbed a glittery ornament and hung it there.
Well, that ornament turned out to be the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back. I heard a creaking noise, and the next thing I knew, the tree was tumbling forward. I grabbed it and shoved it back toward the corner, but not before the lights were hanging off their branches and several ornaments had crashed to the floor. The glass remnants were surrounded by water that had spilled from the tree stand.
I couldn’t see the small shards of glass on the floor in that dark corner, so I turned on the overhead light, one I rarely use – a combination light and ceiling fan. When the light popped on, it silhouetted the inside of the glass bowl covering the bulbs and highlighted what looked like 10 years’ worth of dust clumps – which they probably were, considering I’d never climbed up there before to dust anything.
I have no clue what compelled me to do so, but I finally decided the time had come to get up there and clean the light. I grabbed a dust rag and a kitchen chair and then stood on the chair and stared at the light’s glass bowl. Two pull-chains were hanging through holes in the center of it. In the past, when other ceiling lights had needed either interior dusting or new bulbs, I’d unscrewed the bowls from the ceiling. But I had no clue how to unscrew this one.
Still, in a moment of complete dumbness, I tried to unscrew it – not by removing little pins or clamps to loosen the bowl, because this light didn’t have any – but by turning the entire bowl to the left (“lefty-loosey, righty-tighty”). I heard a grinding sound and the light went dark.
“Nooooo!” I cried. “I broke it! I’ll have to buy a new ceiling fan and call an electrician to install it, and I’ll end up spending hundreds of dollars! Why did I try to dust it? Why?”
I pulled both of the chains. Nothing happened. Then I tried twisting the bowl back to the right; back to the starting point. When I did, both the light and the fan popped on…and startled me so much (especially the fan zooming around so close to my head), I nearly fell off the chair.
Alas, the dust clumps are still in the bowl. But at least the fan and light both are working now...and I’m never going to attempt to clean either one again.
After I wiped up the mess on the floor, I knelt down and tightened the stand’s screws into the tree’s trunk so it tilted back a little, rather than forward. As far as redecorating the tree, I didn’t bother to strategically place each light and decoration evenly and symmetrically as I’d originally done. No, I held my breath and just shoved everything back onto the branches, any branches. As long as the ornaments didn't fall off or cause the tree to wobble, that was fine with me. To heck with symmetry.
And starting right now, I think I’m going to set aside a little money every week so I actually can purchase a nice tree next year.
Meanwhile, I still have the uneasy feeling that this one might be confiscated and used as Exhibit-A in court.
# # #
Tuesday, November 30, 2021
IT'S THAT TIME OF YEAR AGAIN FOR THOSE SOMETIMES AWFUL CHRISTMAS NEWSLETTERS!
It seems as if every year, I start receiving Christmas cards earlier and earlier. It’s as if people can’t seem to wait to get the task over and done with. I mean, last year, I received a Halloween card and a Christmas card on the same day.
Anyway, many of the Christmas cards I receive contain what’s become an annual ritual for some people…the Christmas newsletter. It’s not that I personally have anything against these newsletters – in fact, I truly have enjoyed some of them – but let’s face it, a lot of people use them as nothing more than a means in which to brag endlessly about their family’s accomplishments. The last one I received was so full of hot air, it’s a wonder it didn’t come floating out when I opened my mailbox.
What I’d love to receive is a Christmas newsletter that contains nothing but the truth, no matter how bad it makes a family look. With that in mind, I sat down the other night and reread some newsletters I’ve received over the years, and then tried to figure out, reading between the lines, what these people REALLY were saying. The following is an example of what I feel the authors of one of these “let’s-brag-and-lay-it-on-really-thick” newsletters actually should have written. My comments are in parenthesis!
(NOTE: I have changed the names to protect the innocent....and well...because I can't afford a lawyer).
MERRY CHRISTMAS 1999!
Dear Friends, (We’re using the word “friends” because we’re too lazy to write your names individually)
Well, here it is, another Christmas already, and time to look back at all of the events of the past year (and brag endlessly to make all of you feel inferior and depressed).
Herbert and I are really into physical fitness now and climbed Mount Washington three times last summer (in our car on the auto road). We really enjoyed ourselves, despite encountering torrential rains (drizzle) and dangerous rock slides (a really sharp pebble in my shoe). In fact, we enjoyed the experience so much, our goal is to gaze out over the land from the top of a different mountain every summer (preferably from our seats on an airplane as we fly over them).
Herbie, Jr. graduated from high school with honors in June (after being a member of the Class of 1996, 1997 and 1998) and has since been weighing his various college options (on the produce scale at the supermarket where he currently works). We have advised him to take his time deciding upon his future education (because we secretly spent all of his college fund when we took a luxury cruise a couple years ago).
After working for 24 years at the Schmidlap Corporation, Herbert finally decided that the time had come to break free and search for a more challenging career (he got fired).
Until Herbert decides on his new career (gets his lazy butt off the sofa and actually looks for another job) we plan to spend some time in our luxury motor home (a pick-up truck with a cooler and a mattress in the back) and tour as many states as possible (wherever we can freeload for a few days at friends’ and relatives’ houses). It will be just like a second honeymoon for us (Herbert will drink too much, pass out, and I’ll threaten to go back home to Mother).
Our sweet granddaughter, Penelope, is the smartest student in her fifth-grade class (and next week, she’ll be getting her driver’s license). The poor darling had a little mishap at school, however. She slipped on some crayons, fell flat on her face, and broke her finger (because it was up her nose at the time).
I’ve been following a new diet for the past two months, and am finding that it really works. The secret is to drink 10 full glasses of water per day. I’ve lost 12 pounds already (because my bladder fell out) and plan to lose 15 more (because I’ll be spending too much time in the bathroom to eat).
Our elder son, Bronson, has an excellent career in medicine (making drugs in his lab out back in the shed) and recently was featured on a local TV show (America’s Most Wanted).
Our dog, Rasputin, won recognition in his obedience class (for having the most fleas) and is so smart, he responds to 20 different commands (each one beginning with the words “play dead” because the dog is over 100 years old in dog years). Rasputin is such a sweetheart, he would never even think of biting anyone (because he has no teeth).
For our 35th wedding anniversary last month, Herbert surprised me with a beautiful two-carat anniversary ring. I was so overwhelmed, I cried for days (because I could tell it was a cheap cubic zirconia). I can’t wait to see what he’ll surprise me with this Christmas (probably some more fake jewelry, because the couch potato still hasn’t looked for a job). He can be such an impetuous fool (make that just a fool) at times! (I still regret not marrying Tony Rigatoni, the local pizza-parlor owner, when I had the chance).
Well, I guess that’s all the news for now (I’m too cheap to pay for the extra postage if this letter gets too thick), so I’ll sign off with all the best wishes for the New Year. Perhaps we can get together sometime in the near future (but not too near, because we never really liked you all that much).
Take good care, and keep in touch.
Love and kisses,
Herbert, Marge and the kids
# # #
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Tuesday, November 23, 2021
NOPE - NO THANKSGIVING TURKEY FOR ME!
First of all, I want to wish all of my readers a happy, healthy and gut-busting Thanksgiving…one that will force you to loosen your belts or wear sweatpants for a few days afterwards!
I will be staying home with the dogs on Turkey Day this year, by choice. For one thing, I can’t get any of the Covid vaccines due to an allergy to one of the ingredients in them, so I’m not yet eager to mingle. But my biggest reason for staying home, and I have received plenty of negative comments about this…is I don’t like turkey. When I tell people I don’t, they give me the same sort of look they would give someone who’d just made a blatant anti-American statement.
But it hasn’t always been that way. Back when I was growing up, I loved turkey. The mere sight of that plump bird, roasted to golden perfection, sitting on the decorative platter in the center of a beautifully decorated Thanksgiving table, made my mouth water. And then the turkey sandwiches for days afterwards…well, those were even better.
Even as I grew older and went out to lunch with friends, I’d order a turkey club-sandwich or a hot-turkey sandwich. And on my honeymoon, the first meal my husband and I ordered at our hotel was a turkey dinner, complete with mashed potatoes, gravy, and all of the trimmings. Actually, that was because my new husband was a turkey fanatic. He loved turkey with such a passion, he wouldn’t have minded eating it seven days a week. His passion was so strong, I actually toyed with the idea of tossing aside my sexy negligees and wearing a turkey costume on our honeymoon.
Anyway, fast forward about nine years later to my husband’s sister’s wedding. The reception and dinner were going to be held at a fancy restaurant, with a complete turkey dinner as the featured meal. When my husband learned that news, you’d think he’d just won the lottery.
So on the day of the wedding, there we sat with my parents at the beautifully decorated table – fresh flowers, fine china, cloth napkins, crystal goblets and intricately etched silverware – as we eagerly awaited our turkey dinners. When the meal was served, our plates looked like works of art – slices of thick, white meat, a scoop of dressing, a mound of mashed potatoes, several different vegetables, and bowls of gravy on the side. It was a feast for the eyes.
My husband and I dug into our meals. The turkey was moist and tasty, fork tender.
“This is sooo good!” my husband said. “Definitely worth the wait.”
I had to agree, even though I thought the food could have been a bit warmer. I poured more of the hot gravy over my mashed potatoes and turkey to heat them up.
My mother, however, took a bite of the turkey and then, I noticed, she discretely spit it into her napkin. After that, she laid down her fork and sat there, eating only a roll with butter. I asked her what was the matter.
“There’s something wrong with the turkey,” she whispered to me, not wanting the other guests to overhear.
“Mine’s delicious,” I said. “Let me taste yours.”
I did, and so did my husband, and we both agreed it was excellent and my mother was, well…crazy.
“If you’re not going to eat your turkey, then can I have it?” my husband asked her.
“I wouldn’t advise it,” she said.
Ignoring her, he asked me to pass her plate to him. I did, and he scraped off the turkey and mashed potatoes onto his plate.
The meal turned out to be a big hit with everyone…that is, except my mother.
It was about 3 AM the next morning when my husband and I both abruptly awoke, ironically only minutes apart, with severe stomach cramps. We raced each other to the bathroom.
Let’s just say what followed wasn’t pretty…or fun.
The next day, my husband called his mother to see how she’d enjoyed the wedding. She said the wedding had been fine, but she’d been up sick all night. She said his brother also had been ill.
The plot began to thicken.
A few more phone calls later, we found out that just about everyone who’d attended the wedding was sick – a few so severely, they ended up in the hospital. I was writing a newspaper column at the time, so I mentioned the incident in my column that week, leaving out the name and location of the restaurant.
The next day, the state Board of Health contacted me, asking for details…lots of details.
They ended up investigating the restaurant, and interviewing everyone on the wedding’s guest list. The questions they asked each guest were pretty embarrassing, especially for my poor husband, who said he ended up feeling like a glutton. His interview went something like this:
“Did you eat the turkey?” they asked him.
“Yes.”
“The full portion or part of it?”
“Um, two full portions.”
“Gravy?”
“Yes.”
“How much?”
“Half the bowl.”
“Wedding cake?”
“Yes.”
“A full slice or only a few bites?”
“Three slices.”
“Did you have diarrhea?”
“Yes.”
“How many times?”
“I lost count.”
“Would you estimate more than five?”
“Oh, hell, yeah.”
I had to answer the same questions…and so did my mother, whose interview was very brief. When they asked her what she had eaten at the wedding, she said only a roll and butter. Did she get sick? No. So at least they could rule out the roll and butter as the culprits.
After a thorough investigation, the board’s inspectors reported that the turkeys for the dinner had been thawed overnight out on the counters in the kitchen. Then the chef had slow-roasted them at only 135 degrees. So he’d essentially turned them into fertility clinics for salmonella bacteria.
And my poor sister-in-law and her husband, both sick on their Niagara Falls honeymoon, thought it was due to the excitement and jitters from the wedding. Fortunately, seeing that no one had cell phones or Facebook back then, they had no clue what was going on back home while they were away. I don’t think hearing, “Oh, Aunt Zelda is in critical care right now from eating your poisonous wedding meal,” would have enhanced their honeymoon very much.
My husband’s love of turkey, however, wasn’t affected by the incident, and he continued to be a rabid fan of the bird. In fact, when we moved into our new home out in the country and he spotted wild turkeys running across our property, the look in his eyes told me he was picturing them smothered in gravy.
I, on the other hand, can’t even look at a Thanksgiving card without turning green. My turkey-eating days ended at that wedding.
But my husband and I did learn one important lesson on that fateful day. Whenever we went out to eat with my parents after that, we always had my mother sample our food before we ate it.
Our
septic tank thanked us for it.
# # #
Sally Breslin is an
award-winning syndicated humor columnist who has written regularly for
newspapers and magazines all of her adult life. She is the author of several
novels in a variety of genres, from humor and romance to science fiction.
Contact her at: sillysally@att.net
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Tuesday, November 16, 2021
DOCTORS WHO ARE SERIOUS AND "ALL BUSINESS" MAKE ME NERVOUS
I’ll be the first to admit that doctors make me nervous – like sweaty palms nervous. And when a doctor is “all business” and very serious, well, even my eyeballs begin to sweat.
So my six-month post-op cancer checkup with a dermatologist last week was something that caused me to lose sleep the night before. When I got up that morning, my first thought was, “Okay, let’s get this over with!”
An assistant, a blond young woman wearing a mask (I also was required to wear one), led me into an examining room. She asked me a few basic health questions, then told me to remove everything but my panties and put on a shin-length hospital gown with the slit open up the back.
Without realizing it, I muttered out loud, “If I take off my bra, the doctor won’t be able to see anything on my stomach, thanks to gravity.”
I heard her laugh and say, “You’re SO funny!” Even though I wasn’t joking.
She left the room and I noticed that one whole wall was a picture window facing an office building. I wasn’t about to remove my clothes while standing in front of a picture window, even though I toyed with idea of doing a striptease and slowly removing one item at a time and tossing it aside. But then I figured the people in the office building facing that window all instantly would be stricken blind. So I pulled down the blinds.
After I got undressed and put on the gown, I sat on the paper-covered examining table for 20 minutes…waiting. My feet were so cold, they actually were changing color. I was in the process of rubbing them to get the blood circulating when the doctor finally entered. At least I think it was the doctor – he was dressed like someone about to enter an asbestos manufacturing plant.
His voice, which sounded strictly robotic, began to methodically list body parts. “Let me see your left arm. Now raise it. Thank you. Let me see your right arm. Now raise it. Thank you.”
Then he checked the soles of my feet – and between my toes. The way he stared at my feet told me he probably was thinking I must have been the victim of some terribly deforming accident at some point in my life, so I offered the information:
“Ballet dancing,” I said. “Ten years of prancing around on my toes, which no human foot ever was created to do, ruined my feet.”
“Did you dance professionally?” he asked.
“Let’s just say that when I performed in “Swan Lake” years ago, I was one of the mosquitoes.”
No response.
“So,” he said, “Do you routinely check your body, including your labia and anal area for lumps or spots?”
I shook my head. “No, I’m old…and not a contortionist.”
“Then, does your family physician check those areas?”
“Oh, yeah, all the time.”
At that point, I honestly thought I felt my nose growing beneath my mask.
As the checkup continued, he listed body parts and spots as he went along, and the assistant typed them. I heard “seborrheic keratosis” about a dozen times, which I knew were what dermatologists often referred to as “old-age barnacles,” and then a couple “cherry angiomas” thrown in for good measure. But the doctor said my cancer surgery looked fine and he didn’t see anything else that looked suspicious, which was good news.
He then asked if I had anything that was bothering me. I told him I didn’t like the brown scaly patch on my jawline.
“Let my freeze that off for you, then” he said, grabbing a can of liquid nitrogen from the counter and spraying me with it. By the time he was done, he’d also sprayed a patch on my neck, one on my shin and one…well, let’s just say it was in a place that would make sitting down pretty uncomfortable for a while.
He then said, “Those areas l treated should be completely healed and gone by Christmas. If not, give me a call because sometimes skin cancer can mimic something that looks benign.”
But he did say if all went well, I wouldn’t have to return for another year. So that also was good news.
Anyway, after my exam, as I was checking out and giving my paperwork to the woman at the front desk, she casually asked me how I was doing.
“Fine,” I said, “except that spot he froze on my butt really is burning right now. I hope I can sit still long enough to drive home.”
“Well,” she said, sounding completely serious, “I can always give you a note, if you’d like, just in case you get pulled over by the police for driving erratically. It might be easier than having to drop your pants to show them why.”
I burst out laughing, and so did she.
I felt like telling her that maybe she should give a few personality lessons to the doctor.
Now I just have to figure out how to keep track of that one awkwardly located spot to make sure it’s all healed and gone by Christmas.
Somehow, I don’t think knocking on one of my neighbors’ doors and asking, “Hey, can you do me a big favor and check out something for me?” would be such a good idea.
# # #
Sally Breslin is
an award-winning syndicated humor columnist who has written regularly for
newspapers and magazines all of her adult life. She is the author of several
novels in a variety of genres, from humor and romance to science fiction.
Contact her at: sillysally@att.net
Monday, November 8, 2021
SOME EMPLOYEES (UNINTENTIONALLY) HAVE MADE ME LAUGH
Having worked in retail for five years, I know how stressful dealing with the public can be. Sometimes I’m sure I was perceived as rude when I hadn’t meant to be, or totally clueless when I was asked a question about a product I wasn’t familiar with.
But recently, with the shortage of help in the majority of stores and restaurants, and customers complaining about poor service or having to wait in long lines, more than once I’ve heard a manager say, “We’ll hire anybody who walks in here, we’re so desperate for help right now.”
It made me think back to some of the less-than-stellar employees I’ve witnessed or dealt with over the years and how they rated their own special paragraphs in my daily journals.
Several of the employees at Walmart have made particularly great fodder for my journal entries.
For example, back when the store had an aquarium section and sold live fish, I remember a little boy and his father asking an employee for two goldfish. The employee, a young male, grabbed a net, dipped it into the aquarium and pulled out two of the fish, both of which had been floating belly-up before he removed them. I thought he was going to toss them out, but instead he put them into a container for the customer.
The father, looking surprised, said, “Um, those two fish are…dead.”
“Oh? Really?” the clerk said, peering down into the container. “I thought they were just sleeping and would be easier to catch.”
Then just a couple weeks ago, a clerk at Walmart made me laugh. I had gone shopping there the day before and when I got home, realized my bag of chicken was missing. I wasn’t about to rush back to the store, mainly because it nearly was dark by then and it was a 30-mile round trip, so I waited until the next day to return.
I went up to the service desk and asked the clerk if anyone had returned the chicken I’d left there the day before.
She rolled her eyes and said, “God, I hope not!”
I burst out laughing. I guess having chicken sitting out back in the lost-and-found area all night wouldn’t have been too great – and I definitely wouldn’t have wanted it back. Anyway, she told me to just go get some fresh chicken to replace it.
And I remember a Walmart employee last year who definitely was fed up with the pandemic rules.
There was a woman loading her cart with rolls of toilet paper, even though the sign clearly said to limit one per customer. An employee suddenly swooped in, seemingly out of nowhere, grabbed up all but one roll of toilet paper from the woman’s cart, and then shouted at her, “Can’t you read? It says only one per customer! I am SO sick of this shit!”
I suppose using the word “shit” was appropriate when referring to toilet paper, but I later saw that same employee do and say a similar thing to a woman who was trying to buy more than one gallon of bottled water.
On the plus side, you can bet I wasn’t about to attempt to take more than one of anything, not as long as that employee was still lurking about. So I guess her tactics worked.
And then there are Walmart’s greeters. One elderly greeter was very gung-ho about stopping customers as they were leaving the store and making them show their receipts for items that weren’t bagged. Armed with her hand-held scanner, she stopped me and said, “Whoa! Let’s see your receipt for that six-pack of paper towels that’s not bagged.”
While I was digging into my purse, where I’d just shoved the receipt so I wouldn’t lose it, I noticed a guy pushing a cart with a flat-screen TV in it walk right past us and out the door!
The current greeter at Walmart, however, makes everyone laugh by saying, “Thank you for that nice smile!” primarily to people who are wearing masks.
I remember being at the checkout counter in another store years ago and this young employee with “trainee” on his name badge picked up the store's red plastic divider that was separating my items from the customer's the customers’ behind me and tried to scan it. Amused, I watched him and wondered what the heck he thought it was…a “go fetch” stick for my dog? Finally, he held it up and asked me if I knew how much it was. I thought he had to be joking, and I couldn’t stop myself from laughing. But the poor kid was serious. To this day, I still wonder if he’d ever even been in a store before he was hired, or if he might have just been beamed down from another planet
But, and I hate to say this, some of my worst employee experiences have involved food servers.
I’ll never forget when my friends treated me to dinner at a popular restaurant one afternoon and there were only about four other patrons in the place. Still, we had to wait for what seemed like hours for our food. When it finally was served, my steak tasted like old grease and my baked potato was completely raw, as if it had been taken straight out of the potato sack and slapped onto my plate. The server never came back to ask how our food was, and there were no other employees anywhere to be seen.
When she finally did return, to ask if we wanted dessert, I explained to her that my meal wasn’t even edible. She shrugged and said, “Don’t blame me – I didn’t cook it!”
She made no offer to remove it from our bill or to get us something else, so we asked to speak with a manager. She said the manager hadn’t come in that day.
That explained a lot.
I still cringe whenever I recall how my friends paid the full bill and even left her a tip! Had I been paying, I think I would have camped out there until the manager finally did show up.
Another time, my mother and I ordered fried haddock at a restaurant in Manchester. When it was served, we could smell a strong ammonia-like odor coming from it. My dad, an avid deep-sea fisherman, always told us that whenever a fish smelled like ammonia, it meant it wasn’t fresh. So my mom and I notified the server.
She, looking extremely irritated, used her bare hand to pick up my mom’s piece of fish. She then took a big bite out of it, tossed it back onto my mom’s plate, and snapped, “Tastes just fine to me!” and walked off.
But the server I’ll never forget is the one we had at Lamey’s Tavern in Hampton many years ago. My parents, my husband and I had decided we’d go there for Thanksgiving dinner so we could just relax and eat without any cooking or cleaning to do.
The server, a middle-aged woman, greeted us with an angry rant about how she hadn’t been scheduled to work on the holiday and how upset she was about not being able to spend the day with her family, and how she wanted to strangle the employee who’d called in sick at the last minute. She then asked what we’d like to order.
My husband, a man who never would eat any vegetable created (other than mashed potatoes or fries) even if he were on the verge of starving to death, and who also ate only the breast portion of poultry, explained to her that he’d like the turkey dinner, but with all white meat and a double serving of mashed potatoes because he didn’t want any squash or green beans. He then added, “Oh, and no dressing. I don’t like the strong seasoning smell of it – it ruins the whole meal.”
The server narrowed her eyes at him, put both hands on the table and leaned forward, close to his face, then said through gritted teeth, “You WILL take the standard turkey dinner and you WILL eat all of your vegetables! WON'T you?”
My husband, his eyes growing wide, leaned back away from her and squeaked, “Yes, ma’am.”
To this day, I’m still sorry I didn’t hire her to come home with us. Cooking for my husband sure would have been a whole lot easier with her around.
When I consider the fact that the above-mentioned employees were hired during a time when no one was desperate for workers, I can’t help but wonder what the holiday help in stores will be like this season.
I
think my journal is going to get full very quickly.
# # #
Sally Breslin is an award-winning syndicated humor columnist who has written regularly for newspapers and magazines all of her adult life. She is the author of several novels in a variety of genres, from humor and romance to science fiction. Contact her at: sillysally@att.net
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