Day Nineteen

Red Hat Lady

An older woman was buying a lot of dessert ingredients. Crazy Red-Head Vegan was bagging groceries for me. I noticed the older lady's t-shirt had a picture of a red hat on it.


ME: Who are the 'Red Hat Ladies'?
CRV: [Giant gasp] Oh my god. Who are the 'Red Hat Ladies'?! They are a group of women who get together and do fun stuff and they're all sassy!
ME: [to the lady] Do you all wear red hats to your meetings?
LADY: Yes we all have our own red hats.
ME: When you all get together do you get really fancy schmancy?
LADY: Some of us do, I like to. I like to wear a lot of rhinestones, I call them my diamonds.
ME:What do you all do?
LADY: Once a month we get together and do something fun. I'm making desserts for our dinner this week. This last month we all took a painting class together. Sometimes we go dancing.
ME: Sounds like a blast!
LADY: Oh yes. It's a really fun group of women over 50. If a women is sad about turning 50 and thinks her life is over, um hello?! It's not!

As silly as it sounds, I kind of want to buy my red hat now. Do I have to wait until I'm 50 to do this? Would the ladies be weirded out having a 30 year old hanging with them? Old ladies are a riot.

Not A Green Guy

Crazy Red-Head Vegan came over again to bag groceries for me. A man came up with one food item to buy.

MAN: [as I bagged the one item] No bag please.
CRV: You're saving the planet!
MAN: No I'm NOT.

Erm...okay. I shot CRV a wide eyed look. He continued.

MAN: I'm NOT a green guy. Nobody can tell me what I can and cannot do.
ME: ...okay.
MAN: I was just at Kohls. They now have a plug in station for electric cars. I want to put up a time lapse camera to see how many people actually need that thing. I bet you no one uses it.
ME: I imagine it would be very useful in the case of an emergency.
MAN: I doubt that.

So, he didn't want to waste a bag, but he would waste his time with a time lapse camera in front of Kohls? I really wanted to thank that guy for giving me and the vegan something to laugh about.

Update: JV

I worked next to JV today. My Vonnegut book was sitting on my side of our counter and he picked it up to read the back of the book.

ME: Do you like Vonnegut?
JV: I have read two of his novels, Cat's Cradle and Slaughterhouse Five.
ME: Cool. Cat's Cradle is next on my list after this book (Breakfast of Champions).

Customers came along and cut our conversation short. A mom and her son walked up. The kid was wearing a soccer uniform.

ME: So, you play soccer? 
BOY: Yes.
ME: What position do you play?
BOY: Um...defense.
ME: So, are you a fullback?
JV: I don't think he has gotten to that point yet.
MOM: We are a soccer family.
JV: What's your favorite team?
MOM: Manchester U
JV: Agh, we're enemies.

The mom kept talking to JV about teams as I zoned out thinking about shirtless professional soccer players with their six pack abs and chiseled jawlines. I think I might have returned to the transaction when it was time to pay. JV had customers to tend to at that point. This guy had improved as a coworker. I also learned that he likes soccer and Kurt Vonnegut. Every now and then he would still give me the numbers to random food items I was looking up. I just ignored him. Today I noticed how much conversation he makes with customers. It was pretty good except for the fact that he seemed to shout his greetings at his customers like they are all a broken intercom at a drive thru.

A customer walked up with an empty jar from the bulk section. I wasn't sure if it was a pint jar or a quart jar. I could have deduced what it is by looking at the size of it, but I wasn't sure. I thought it might be a pint. CRV, bagging again and not doing her job as a cashier, thought it was a pint as well. JV turns around and says it is a quart. We all went back and forth with it until I finally decided it was a quart. After the customer left, CRV walked back to the bulk section an came back to tell me that that particular jar was in the 'pint' shelf. I hit JV on the shoulder lightly.

ME: Man, it was a pint!
JV: Have you ever seen a pint of ice cream? Was it the size of that jar? I don't think so.

More customers came through and when one of mine left I turned around and told JV:

ME: I think you should go to the bulk section and see that it was a pint and we should settle this little debate.
JV: [as customers walked up] I'm not participating in this ridiculous argument, I know what a quart is.
CRV: Dude! I went back there and checked. The label said it was a pint.

That was when JV grabbed one of this customer's food jars (similar to the empty one we saw previously) and whipped around, holding this jar one foot from CRV's face.

JV: [shouting, with his customer still standing there] 32 FLUID OUNCES, THIS IS A QUART!!

After jabbing the jar at the bottom where it said "quart" JV turned around to finish the transaction. Once again, I shot CRV a wide eyed look.

ME: [under my breath] You mad, bro?
CRV: Right?

After that customer left it was time for JV to clock out. CRV, still stood there in disbelief that someone could lose their shit over something so silly. As soon as he left and was out of earshot, I grabbed a jar of organic lollipops and whipped around holding it a foot from CRV's face.

ME: THIS IS A QUART!!!

Laughter. We laughed for so long a time that tears were running down our faces and our stomachs hurt. JV's irrational, juvenile anger brought us so much joy. At the end of my shift I went back to the empty jars in the bulk section to learn that CRV was right and so was JV. Those jars were on the pint shelf, but they were put there in the wrong place by a customer. Behind those jars were the real pint jars and the quart jars (like the one we argued over) was on another mislabeled shelf. I wish I knew who screwed this shelf up. I would thank that person for the memories.