The worst time to sober up

Imagine your friend suddenly springs into your room, crying and sobbing that her boyfriend of two years has, for no apparent reason, decided not to pursue the relationship anymore. What are your options?

a) Tissues, chocolate and some romantic comedy that you yell at everytime someone says 'I'll love you forever" - "YOU LIAR!!!!!"

b) Bake muffins. LOTS of muffins.

c) Tell her how fantastic it is that she's free now (i.e. suicide).

d) Get another friend over, have a few drinks and put on all her sexy lingerie that she won't need anymore and go prancing around the university.

Yeah... we picked d.

Now, try to imagine what ran through my head when I sobered up and realised that I was a long way from home, wearing nothing except a corset, undies that said "It doesn't count if you don't get caught", fish net stockings, a broken pair of handcuffs clamped around one wrist and a vibrator in my other hand. You guessed it: "..........................................oh fuck".

The funny thing was that she was still upset in the morning. I mean, did we not do our best to cheer her up? On another interesting note, would you call this a man or a woman? We still don't know.

My wonderful customers

As some of you may know, I worked pretty much full time as a checkout chick in 2005. It was probably the best year of my life so far. Well, in some aspects - I got to go diving whenever I wanted and not live in a total hole live Townsville.

However, there was a dark side to 2005. I had evil customers. And oh man, they made my world go round. You think the nice regulars make your job more fun? Nope. It's the bitches that whine about the tiniest things, the people that continuously ask for obscure items to be ordered in that nobody else wants, the dicks that try to steal stuff from right under your nose painfully obviously that make the job worth it. So now I share with you some of the short stories I gathered over my year of being a checkout chick, because everyone knows, retail stories are the best because you get to roffle at stupid people! These are taken from an old old blog, so sorry to those who've already read them. There will be a few posts like this to come.

"Since I'm in the mood, I thought I'd enlighten you peeps on some more stupid things my customers do. Starting with that retarded chick who lives on coke and ciggies I wrote about last time...

The retarded chick came into the shop with her retarded boyfriend, who seems incapable of shaving the patch under his nose, and headed up to the juice fridge like they always do because the bloke lives on OJ. I suppose this is a slightly more healthy alternative to coke and ciggies. They come to my register and put two OJ bottles on my counter (shock! horror!) and before anything else is said, the retarded chick suddenly bursts out and says, "WHY DOESN'T THE HEAD FALL OFF?!" I was a little perturbed by this (that's "Most perturbatory..." to Ryan and "Curious" to Louise) and asked what she meant. She replied with the slightly more sensical "Why doesn't your head fall off?" so I simply said "Because it's sewn on real good". Lame I know, but it shut her up.

When you walk away from your register and leave it unattended, you lock the register itself using a highly sophisticated series of buttons and put up one of those "Sorry, this register is closed, piss off" signs. It never ceases to amaze me how many people will walked up to a closed register, clearly signed, and wait to be served for several minutes. No, that register's closed, read the sign, observe that there isn't anyone there waiting to serve you, see that you're the only one lining up there, go home, learn to read. Idiots.

Often, since our shelves are so higgledy-piggledy, someone will buy something and read the price off the tag beneath it, which isn't always the right tag. This happens especially when there are a lot of things on one shelf and the tags are all crammed together. It also happens that people read the tags above the item they want, not below, thus getting the price mixed up. So at least once a shift you'll get someone, usually men surprisingly, who will argue the toss about the price of something, saying that that wasn't the price on the shelf. It wastes my time, but I'm happy to do it, and race up to the shelf the item came from and discover, like always, that they've read the wrong label. Then I go back to inform them of their mistake and they accuse me personally of running a shop that couldn't organise a look out the window. Apparently that's easier than organising a look at a price tag.

On the subject on prices, you'll get a whole lot of people, mostly old ladies, who go through their own groceries and tell you exactly which items are on special and for how much. That's good and all that they can remember, but pointless since the new prices are in the system and scan in at the special rate. Thank you, Captain Obvious.

I don't know why, but some people like to work out their own change. They will hand me money and say "If I give you this amount, you can give me that amount in change!" and I'm all "Gee, thanks! I couldn't have possibly done that myself, or even with the inbuilt calculator in the register that does all the working out for me!" It gives me the squitters, especially that they treat me like a career woman in checkoutchickdom. NO! I HAVE DREAMS! ASPIRATIONS! Give me a chance, cruel world!!

People ask me to double bag stupid things. One woman is quoted as saying "I'll have a double bag please, as I'm doing a lot of walking and it'll make it lighter." Work that one out - one bag + bag and groceries < bag and groceries? I think not. This other woman in her thirties bought a packet of sanitary pads and asked for a double bag because it's so embarrassing to be seen carrying those down the street. Grow up, get over it. You're not the first person to ever have a period, let alone buy pads. God those people are a pain - I hope they get eaten by the whales they've helped kill."

That's all for today. Oh, and I drew this picture of hotness. If you want more, check out my deviantart page here.

It's time...

Hokkay, this is going to be tough to say but... I like Crocs.

For those of you who don't know Crocs are... where the HELL have you been? They're the Haviana, nay, the Birkenstock of 2005 and they're still going strong. Yeah yeah yeah I know they're hideously ugly and make grown men and women look like Smurfs with their bright colours and chunky appearance. But they are kinda comfy. And my feet are retarded so I can't wear thongs (they either fit and fall off or don't fit and stay on). Sadly I'm stuck with Crocs.

I bought my first pair in early 2006. They were the least gaudy colour I could find so I could get away with wearing them in public without people's eyes bleeding. I wore them constantly through that year, but slowly the gravelly dirt paths of James Cook University took their toll on my poor Crocs. They'd served me well, but maybe, just maybe, it was time to move on. To give you an idea of what made me decide this, look at this picture comparing a new croc to my old one.

When I sent that to some friends and family to assist in my decision, one friend (who may or may not want my babies) said I should cremate them, while my mother pointed out the fact that there were still a few big areas without holes.

I debated for what seemed like hours over colour. Should I go with something wild and bold? Or how about dark and moody? I ended up buying some new ones.... that were exactly the same colour as my old ones.

Now for the exciting bit! I found out that you can buy accessories for your Crocs now! They're little decoration things that you stick in the holes in the top of the shoe. It was a hard choice, but I ended up with a crab and a skull and crossbones. They're the tackiest bits of crap I've seen in a long time, apart from the fairy statuette thing Noni broke in the hippy shop and almost had to pay $80 for.

So... do YOU like Crocs?