Jupiter Magician

This man was wearing a bike helmet. Without a doubt, a man this advanced needs to protect his brain at all costs. With as much depth as it would add to this story, I would love to proclaim that this man was normal looking... but no, he looked strange. He looked like everyone's seventh-grade science teacher; you know, the one that brought in cattle heads to dissect and then toss in an aquarium full of maggots. The kind of person that looks about as close to being deformed as a person can be without actually being deformed, possibly through an intricate display of prisms and perception-altering toxins. I cannot recall what exactly it was that he bought, but it rang up as something to the effect of $17.73. I'll give this head-strong, googly-eyed, mushroom-headed magician the benefit of the doubt and say he was buying a tub of vaseline, tampons, a wheel of cheese, a pogo stick, a donkey, and a case of glow sticks. I stated the total of his transaction. He pulled out his checkbook and began writing. Once again, I don't remember the exact total of the transaction, but I know that when he handed me a check that was 11 cents over, it did not round the number to anything in particular, and he obviously hadn't simply heard me wrong (which happens from time to time in the event of a "16", sometimes it sounds like "60")... and besides, he frantically looked up at the total displayed on the register several times during the written odyssey across his rectangular funpad of recycled dumbfuck. And to put the final nail through the coffin of this surreal adventure through the basket weaving muppet brothel on Lunacy Farm, he looked me in the eye and said firmly "I wrote the check over"... At first sight of seeing the amount it had been written over, I looked up and meticulously studied this man's face for any medication that might have, earlier that day, missed his mouth and perhaps stuck to his lips, cheek, or inner ear... that is, the face of a man I would associate with complete absurdity. What else could I do but punch this number from the left-field of Jupiter into my register and guard my eyes? Such was done. 11 cents is your change sir. Do you want it with a dime, a couple nickels, all pennies, or perhaps a quarter and some pennies made of negative matter? This transaction had done away with common sense long ago, so I found myself resorting to the level of thought manifested by this alien being and gave him a dime and a penny. When he opened his mouth to speak, I heard a series of clicks and gurgles punctuated by the squeal of a bottle rocket. The words I deciphered from this audible nonsense were as follows: "Here's 11 cents someone else might need." That's it. If, as you are staring at your monitor, my website starts to fade away and you see skinless bunnies plotting the libido of the Nile, you may be experiencing, through reference, the raw, inane aura of this horrible helmeted organism sent from the outer reaches of imperceptible volatility on a mission to destroy a targeted singularity in the profound masses of Sam's Club proletariat.

Cash, Check, Change

I was working at the cigarette counter. Again. I'm starting to think of it as my summer home away from home, as there is no indication that I will work at a regular checkstand again... not that that's a particularly bad thing. The cigarette counter also doubles as a regular express lane. Fifteen items or less; designed to slide people through like greased popsickles through a KY plant. And it works too. With me behind the register, I'm popping them out the door every thirty seconds! That was, until this 80+ year old woman showed up. There's nothing wrong with being a little on the older side, but you've gotta realize there's a line behind you, full of mostly impatient, blood-frenzied ogres... and some of these chainsmoking fuckers are twelve hours past-due for a cancer stick. I rang up $64.58 worth of groceries for this corpse, pushing my speed and agility to mach four as not to make this woman late for her date with Death (who happened to be holding the marker at the exit door, he looks much taller in person). I think it was 1997 when she began pulling money out of her purse. I happened to notice a gang of turtles with crutches meander the perimeter of the store several times and a large boulder to my left methodically deteriorated into a pile of sand before the currency came out of this skeleton's hand bag. But she finally managed to boldly produce a $20 bill onto the counter. $20 indeed. $20 for her $64.58 of groceries. As I bent down to the level of her rolling coffin-mobile to explain to her mostly deaf, half-cyborg ears that I needed more money, she bestowed a curse onto the people of Fairbanks, who were now stretching in a single-file line outwards, damn near approaching Hawaii. Oh yes, these people were certainly standing. So much time had passed that these Farbanksianites had evolved and were now sporting fin-like appendages and shot pressurized, ozone restoring gas out the air ducts embedded into their flipperized feet, reminiscent of an upside-down air hockey table that smelled of moist monterey jack cheese, keeping each and every one of these creatures suspended centimeters aloft Earth's salty juice. This incessent strand of arctic amphibians fishtailed deep into the heart of the Pacific, closing in on the equator as each beast baked in the blazing sun for the opportunity to tar-paint their remaining lung the color of coal, and they looked pissed. The curse came in the form of a faint muttering: "I'd like to... pay the... pay the rest... with a check". As she wrote out the check, I happened to notice the sun burn out just before I felt the weight of the universe beginning to collapse in on itself. The former human, aquatic creatures of tomorrow fell out of existence and formed anew from an inanimate Bic pen on checkstand nine before the "Pay to the order of" line had been filled out, and I enjoyed a brief stint of dying and being reincarnated forty-seven times (twice as a photon) before the tender was signed. As she handed me the check, my face was swept with the color of madness as I spotted the amount it had been written for. $44. And zero sense. Out of the corner of my eye, I managed to catch Death tapping his foot over by the exit door as this hateful, relentless, God-forsaken widowmaker whispered "I... I think I have... some change". Unless that change comes shooting out of your giggling shitfold of a christpurse fast enough to turn back time and send Abe Lincoln through six feet of stone hieroglyphics, I'm gonna steal Death's scythe, don my own decrepit black robe and cut me up a wrinkle-relic fillet, you vicious crime against time! Eons later, exact change appeared on the counter through some sort of modern miracle of science, and the woman snailed her way out the door, evading Death who was now laying motionless on the cement floor with a gun clenched in his lifeless hand.

The Quitting Quitter

The "Quitting Quitter" is not a specific person, rather a customer that comes through the cigarette counter whose reactions to rare circumstances match the template of a real quitter's quitter, or a quitting quitter if you will. I have been working behind the cigarette counter at Sam's more often than not these days, and I seem to encounter one of these quitting quitters at least every other day. The quitting quitter will first ask for his or her favorite kind of Nicorette gum or Nicoderm patches, and when I inform them that we are currently out of said quitting-aid, they say something stupid like "Ah hell, gimme a carton of Marlboro reds instead". If a raven somehow made it into the building, and this raven could switch to a somewhat predator-like "self-discipline" view and take an aerial shot of the inside of the store, there would be a lot of black area on this fool's side of the counter. A complete void. Well, in a sense you can't blame a person for trying. There is always the alternative: the person that comes through my line, asks how much the Nicorette gum costs to which I reply "$50", and they ask for a $40 carton of Camels instead. Apparently we're not thinking in the long term here.

The Self-Inflicted Flu

Up until this day, I had been under the impression that endless amounts of coffee is the perfect solution to staying awake and lively on less-than-adequate amounts of sleep. I have been working as a cashier at Sam's Club for about a month now, and have survived on only a few hours of sleep when I needed to. One night (early morning rather), I decided I'd avoid the pain of waking up on three hours of sleep and just not go to sleep at all. This was a mistake. I spent the last two hours I could have been sleeping drinking massive amounts of coffee. Like 12 cups. I had to drink it early so I could get that gallon of piss out of my system before the day started. Other than the sound of tidal waves crashing in my inner ear with every pound of my heart and my nervous double-take at the kitchen clock each time it struck a new minute, my plan was flying smoothly. I got to work. The first 15 minutes, I felt myself getting drowzy. Luckily, my feeling of drowziness faded away as a new sensation clouded over my work morale, the sensation of a flu. Not a true flu, mind you, just the feeling that 12 cups of coffee after being awake for 26 hours will give you. Imagine working two and a half hours, looking at the clock every three minutes hoping you'll be able to hold the vomit back for yet another three minutes, looking forward to your break if only for the chance to rain down on the damnable public toilet with a 98.7° chicken Top Ramen classic roast cinnamon bun fiesta. Such was this day. Somehow, I made it through... and I'm never touching that much coffee again.

Dr. Entity

Something came through my line. I'm not entirely sure what it was. It looked like a shorter-than-average man. It was wearing a backwards baseball cap, and it had very dark, thick whiskers around the beard and mustache areas. It also had long hair in a pony tail. Didn't seem too out of the ordinary until this entity began to talk. What came out of its mouth was cleary, without a doubt, a woman's voice. I'm not talking about just a higher-than-average voice, this voice wouldn't have even passed for a six-year-old boy's voice, it was a woman's voice. Well, I think people that are different are cool, and I respect them! But I was put into an odd situation here. At my store, you're supposed to thank each customer by their last name (or else they can take this dollar that's hung up). I looked at this being's name on its membership card, what do you know, its first name is Shawn. So, thank it by its last name... that's all fine and dandy. Mr.? Mrs.? I couldn't decide which one to pick before my time ran out, so I just said "Thank you, have a nice day" and it was appreciative, and didn't take my dollar. Phew. I shoulda just called it Dr. or something.

26 Cent Bitch

These two teenage girls came through my line. As I began ringing up their stuff, one of them went "HEY! ... Uhhh nevermind" and I was thinking "Eh?" Well, I know now that she was going to inquire about this whole dollar for forgetting to say her name thing, but at the time I was entertaining fantasies that she wanted to ask me out on a date or something (heh heh heh, shut up! shut up!) because she was pretty dang hot (so was the other one). I keep each customer's card at my little card scanner thing so I can thank them by name when I'm done, because the receipt is sometimes missing the person's name and has a business name instead. I guess it didn't really matter this time. The girl paid cash, and as I was making change, she ripped out her receipt, reached over and snatched the card from my little ultra muffin workstation. That was it, she had all the bases covered, I don't look at the names before that point, so I was screwed. I gave her her change and said "Thank you! Have a nice day!" and she went "HA HA! YOU DIDN'T SAY MY NAME! I GET YOUR DOLLAR!". She took my dollar and walked away laughing it up with her friend. As I began ringing up the next customer's items, I found a fountain soda sitting on my checkstand. It was completely full! I asked the customer "Is this your soda?" and she was like "Nope!". Put two and two together and HA! That girl left her 74-cent soda behind. You just made out with 26 cents you dumb bitch! Mwahaha!

Holy Smokes

I had to ring up what appeared to be a huge box of filters of some sort. I'm not really sure what it was, but the box contained 24 rolls of little circular, paper filters. Now, this girl who likes to give me a hard time at work (and not in a funny way either, she's really out to make my life miserable) was yelling at me from a couple registers away about how to ring these things up, because there was no bar code on the box. She yelled "Open the box! OPEN IT!" and I opened it! Alrighty, I counted 24 individually-wrapped rolls, so I type in 24 and hit the quantity button, which will multiply the price of one by 24. Well, apparently the system is set up so you only have to scan one, and it rings up as the price for the whole box. So, this box, which was supposed to come up at around $40 rang up as about $930. To make things worse, a glitch in the system pops up a prompt asking if the customer wants the extended warranty for these things (for little circular pieces of paper)... Now I'm just confused. I ask the customer (who is an Alaskan native) if he wants the extended warranty, he looks confused, he looks at the display and sees the $930 and exclaims (in his muffled, accented, native Alaskan voice) "HOLY SMOKES!" You could see the pain in his eyes, and feel the despair in his heart. He looked crushed. He looked like he was coming to the realization that his kids wouldn't be going to college. He looked beaten and resigned, about to cry... when all of a sudden, that girl a couple registers back yells "You're an IDIOT!" and I'm like "I know, just work with me here!" (or something like that) and I hit the panic button to call over a supervisor, and all was taken care of!

Mrs. Boner

Some lady came through my line, a very loud, talkative lady. When the time came to thank her by name, I looked at her club card, and her last name was "Boughner" and I was thinking to myself "Oh dear god no". I decided I could save us both a lot of potential embarassment if I pronounce her name "Bah-ner". Of course, something had to distract me at the very moment the words came out of my mouth, and I said "Thank you Mrs. Boner, have a nice day!" Now, I can shake off the embarassment of a simple pronounciation mistake, but of course that would be letting me off too easy. It turns out the "Boughner" name printed on her card was the wrong name entirely, and up until this moment, this woman didn't know about the mistake. It was a completely different person's name. I'm sure Mrs. Elliot could have just as well started off the day without a cashier calling her "Mrs. Boner", but watcha gonna do.