I’m Feeling Flowers

Being a salesgirl, you are bound to meet, not only delightfully interesting people, but also disturbingly distorted human beings, which my friends and I randomly call them as stalkers. I just collected two.

One, a young Indonesian guy, whose advances were not so offensive, since he was so nervous most of the time. He would linger on, followed me to every corner of the shop, just to chat with me. The last time he came, I was not there, so he took a few dvds and kept it at the counter. He came back in the afternoon, made his move to the counter when he saw me, hesitated, retreated a few steps, shook his head, turned back to the counter, and opened up his mouth to say something… except that nothing came out.

My manager asked him something, and he managed to stumble out a few words. He paid to my manager, but said thanks to me even though I was just standing there, doing nothing. Poor guy. And all that time I intentionally stood behind the counter, so as to avoid him. Sometimes you just know that a customer is being ‘extra friendly’ to you, and you got uncomfortable when they repeatedly come again every three to four days, and then spent more time with you than finding a cd.

But this guy is still okay. He doesn’t irritate me. Unlike the next one I’m going to tell you.

Second guy, a forty something white man. This is the distorted one. To cut it short, I caught him checking out my ass more than once. And it was so bloody obvious! I ran to the toilet the first time I met him, thinking I got a stain there. Then, yesterday, he came in stealthily behind my back and tried to take a picture with his phone’s camera! Fortunately (or so my manager tried to assure me), he didn’t get to take it because he suddenly realized that my manager was looking at what he was doing.

I feel so violated! And perplexed somehow, ’cause I definitely don’t have an ass, to begin with! Urghh…

Not a day went by without any encounter with interesting people.

Today I had to communicate with a mute lady, using my own creative sign languages (note plural, because I was sure mine was ‘multi’ lingual =p) and lots and lots of papers, with incomprehensible scribbles and scratches. “Oh no, we dont have that.”Scratch. “How about this movie?”Scribble. “Oh, we have it.” Circle. Tick.

Then there was a schizophrenic man, which reminds me of an old Nokia ad, “We provide human technology. No edges.” He didn’t have any either, he was just round all over. Round head, round shoulders, round belly. Well, I noticed something was wrong with him the moment he stepped into our shop, asking me loudly what movie we were playing, while his left index finger busily digging his nose. He then spoke to an invisible friend, as he browsed through our cds. I learned later from my manager that he is known by every video outlet. His father is a professor, and all his other siblings seem to fare excellently academically. They say he’s very good in math. True enough, he did multiply the prices of our cds and convert them to US dollars accurately, using the current rate, in a blink of a second.

Everyday I meet different kinds of people, and I don’t know if I ever tell you this, but they never fail to amaze me. The thing about working in a video store, it caters to almost all kinds of people. The rich, the working people, the kids, high school kids, grannies and grampas - almost everybody loves movies. Unlike previously, when I worked in boutiques or pharmacies. They only attract a certain group of people.

I look forward to tomorrow.

I met the most interesting people at the place where I work part time now.

I met a mother who bought a complete set of Barbie vcds for her little boy.

I met the LOUDEST Indian man who were looking for a ‘happy music’ for his exercise session. He sang to the whole building to demonstrate what ‘happy music’ means.

There was also a Korean lady who let her boy peed in a plastic bag besides the front shelf in our shop. Without washing her hands, much less her boy’s hands, she continued browsing through the cds. Oh, did I mention the plastic bag was of the translucent, thin type, the kind you use to put your fruits when you shop in supermarkets?

And there was also an incident, when one of my colleagues, asked a white man, “Hello, sir. can I help you?” Smiling, he answered, “Oh, saya tak berapa faham bahasa Inggeris” with heavy accents.

It was also interesting to see that sometimes people end up in sections you don’t expect them to be in. A rocker with gothic eyeliners, and tight pants may end up in Korean series section, asking for soppy dramas. An old white man may end up buying 50 Cent, Beyonce and Jars of Clay. We recommended Sarah Brightman to him and he said, “Oh, too boring.” A young teenager, instead of buying Hannah Montana, might have looked for black and white classics.

People, I have to say, are the highlights of my day.