Massively delayed on this due to the fact that I’m in the process of moving myself and my grandparents and babysitting my small brother. It’s gonna be like this for a while, methinks.
(Saturday August 27) Today was supposed to be the last day of work, but thanks to the anti-climactic hurricane/tropical storm Irene, yesterday was. And it was a fiasco. The bittersweetness of the day was tempered by the fact that I already have hours guaranteed for me when I’m home for Christmas, which means I kinda need to come back to New England for Christmas, something I was hoping to avoid. Working on and off in one retail job for about six years… and I still love it.
I did mention that the day was a fiasco, and it was a fiasco for many compounded small reasons. Then there was the big defining moment of the day. Today, I’m not stylizing, this really happened, and this really happened the way I’m describing. The frequent use of the word ‘man?’ Yep, that really happened too.
Baby Chickens Are Not Currency.
Usually, there are only two kinds of people who come into a pet store two days in a row: children, and people who bought all the supplies the previous day and need to pick up their animal of choice. There is apparently a third category I hadn’t previously considered, and that category would be stoners.
This guy had wandered around the store for a grand total of an hour before asking if he could have a small cardboard box to transport his canary in. He came back in on Saturday in the same outfit as before. Ripped jeans, a red polo shirt with skinny black stripes, and a black ball cap. And this guy is baked. Really baked. He speaks slowly, pausing frequently and drawing out every word he says. This is not a casual stoner, this is a professional one. He buys a mouse. A mouse that he catches and boxes by himself while neither I nor the girl I am working with are watching. He pays cash for his mouse, begins to leave and then turns and announces “I’ll be right back.”
My coworker turns to me. “Shit, did he just say he’d be right back?”
I shrug “I hope not.”
He does come right back, with his hand cup. He sets a small, yellow chick on the counter.
“This is a baby chicken,” I state, for the benefit of no one.
“Yeah man, I thought that’s what it was.” I am somewhat appalled that my obvious statement has served to end this man’s confusion about what tiny animal he has been carrying around with him.
“Yep, that’s a baby chicken. Why do you have a baby chicken?”
“I dunno, man, one of my friends gave it to me.”
“IT’S SO CUTE!” My coworker squeals and picks the chick up, cuddling it to her face where it continues peeping.
“Ok, what do you want us to do with it?”
“I dunno, man. I thought maybe you could like, take it or something, sell it.”
“I WANT TO KEEP IT FOREVER!”
“Ok, well, we’re a pet store… so we don’t sell chickens… ever.”
“You sure, man? I’ll give it to you for five bucks… or a mouse. Yeah, could I trade it for like, an aquarium or something?”
“No.”
“Man, I don’t got no stuff for it. Can you like, give me a cage?”
At this point another customer has walked in. I point at my coworker, and then the customer.
“I can’t, I have the chicken!” She explains, cuddling it up to her face again. “I wish I didn’t live in an apartment so I could take it home!”
“Go put it in the sink out back while we get this sorted out… give it some dove food or something.”
She does this, and as I walk around the store for the next 15 minutes with Stoner Dude.
“So I need like, a cage….and some stuff for in the cage… and like, what do chickens eat?”
“They eat chicken food… which we don’t sell… Here’s what we have for chicken adaptable cages.”
“Alright, nice, man. Can you give this to me?”
I pause, it’s his use of the word ‘give’ that’s making me suspicious. Does he think that I’m just going to hand him a cage and shavings because he brought his baby chicken into the pet store? This is turning out to be more of a hassle than the time a woman tried to give me that baby raccoon she found in her chimney. “What do you mean by give?”
“Dude, I like, don’t got no money. Like, I’m good for it, I get paid Wednesday. Is it cool if I bring it in then? I mean, everyone around here knows me man, my name is J----- L------.“
“I’ve never heard of you, sorry. Let me call and check with the owner, if she has, we can work something out.”
Three tries to a home phone and four tries to a cell phone later, my boss is not answer. And the baby chicken is still in our back sink.
I hear the chicken consistently peeping louder and louder. It stops when you go in to scratch its head. A lap chicken, the thing is manipulating us for attention. Still, despite being stone-faced and snippy, trying to end this ordeal as soon as possible, I can’t help but smile and scratch the chick’s soft, yellow head.
“Who’s an itsy bitsy chicky-poo?” I coo as it runs in a circle and peeps.
“I knew you thought it was cute.” My coworker is standing in the doorway. “I wish I could keep it, it’s so cute and little! We should just take it and sell it.”
I sigh, “It’s a chicken, we don’t sell chickens. No one is going to buy it because no one is going to expect it to be here… besides, your grandmother will be pissed if she comes in tomorrow and there’s a chicken for her to sell that she didn’t approve of!”
“Whatever, she’ll think it’s cute.”
I’m pretty confident that everyone thinks baby chickens are cute, but I say nothing. Every time I start to walk away from the sink the peeping chick starts up again. I finally decide that it will just have to peep because I have things to do.
The phone rings. My coworker does not wish to explain that there is a man here wanting free stuff for a baby chicken that is hanging out in our sink to her grandmother/our boss. So I have the honors.
“There’s a guy here, he was in yesterday… wandered around for a really long time around 3:30… has a baby chicken and he wants us to give him a cage for it, says he can pay you next Wednesday.”
There is a pause on the other end while my boss thinks. “You mean that weirdo that was here yesterday? Not all there?”
“That’s the one.”
“Give him a box with some shavings and tell him to go to a grain store. I don’t know who the hell he is, I’m not giving him a damn thing on the honor system.”
I try to find the guy to tell him the news, but he seems to have vanished. I put together a box, some shavings, and a sprinkling of dove food and hope he didn’t leave and abandon this chicken here with us. I am pleased to find that he has miraculously re-appeared at the front register, and I hand him his box o’ chick.
“Man, you sure you don’t want to take it? Five bucks, that’s a deal.”
“I want it!” My coworker yells. We both look at her. Her face gets sheepish as she adds “well, but I can’t… my dad’s apartment…”
I turn back to the guy and helpfully hand him a small map with the name of a grain store that often sells chicks, and tell him that he’ll have far better luck there.
He takes his box o’ chicken. “Thanks man, it’s such a big help. Man, some of my friends are Mexicans and they like, fight the chickens and stuff but like, I’m not cool with that man! I try to help ‘em out when I get the chance. Hey, one more thing, what’d I have to do if like, I wanted to put a hold on one of them boas upstairs?”
“You’d have to put a minimum of a 20% deposit down if you wanted us to hold one for you.”
“Sweet man, what if I wanted you to hold one of those big Oscars out back?”
“Same thing”
“Right, what if I wanted to put a hold on the arrowana?”
“20% deposit.”
“Right, so like, that’s for everything in the store?”
“Yeah.”
“Cool. Thanks for your help, it was nice to meet both of you.”
And then, blessedly, he leaves.
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