the best and worst of a day in retail

Tuesday, June 3, 2008

What fresh hell is this?

There are times that you will do anything for money. Rent is due. The landlord is unhappy. You haven’t eaten since Sunday and it’s Wednesday. Or, almost anything, anyway. Some lines will not be crossed. Shopgirlove drove a cab, once. Friday and Saturday nights were filled with the kind of propositions better directed at girls with no visible means of support. Why would a girl who drove a cab, nights, in the city, engage in that kind of activity? She wouldn’t. This is why she drove a cab.

This is actually why she stopped driving a cab. The male of the species seems to be incapable of an encounter with a female who is struggling on her own without indulging in the idea that she should compromise her independence without asking her to compromise the very same independence he found so charming to begin with.

After countless weekend nights of men asking her to “come up for a drink,” Shopgirlove was not able to ignore the South Asian man who told her that he “really needed a date.” And that he was “willing to pay.”

She had spent more than a year of weekends explaining that the remainder of her shift was worth $250 and that a tip of $300 might make her reconsider her plans for the evening. But the boyfriend, curled around the warmth from the ceramic heater with sleep in his eyes, kept her from seriously entertaining any of these offers. As did the rather insistent calls from the burser’s office of her elite, private college with no endowment.

So she demurred.

None of this compares to the absolute crap she is dealing with now.

Oh. She dropped that fare at the Police Station.

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