The Regulars

Ahhh... and after 13 hours of sleep, Bridget is back on course for awesome!

I'd forgotten how good getting a lot of sleep feels. I woke up with a song in my heart and a smile on my face. For all of you who think that's a dumb cliche, it's not; get enough sleep sometime after a week or two of getting five, six, and seven hours of sleep a night, and you'll know what I mean. I feel FANTASTIC.

See, I generally have this inability to go to sleep before midnight. I just can't. I hate sleeping enough because I feel like I've lost so much time out of my day. If someone said "If you give me half of your stuff, I'll magically make you only have to sleep two hours every night to end up feeling as fantastic as you do after 13 hours of sleep on a little-sleep week," I would do it in two seconds. And I'm an incurable packrat. To let you know how bad I am, I have some paintchips that I displayed on a shelf in my room for years that came from a slide I liked as a child, that got squished by a falling tree. I still have them, somewhere.

So anyway, I thought I'd finally get around to posting about The Regulars. But first, Sarah.

Sarah is a coworker. I don't see much of her, but she's a sturdy black woman who always wears a headscarf. She's very sweet, although not that bright. Thursday, I went into work and didn't notice anything; shortly thereafter, police cars came into our parking lot, and I asked Joe about it.

"Oh... Sarah's boyfriend came and bashed her car windows in with a sledgehammer. While her five children were in the car. Now he's gone back to her house and is vandalizing everything."

"Uhh..."

"That's Last Chance Thrift Store for you. This is actually the fourth time they've been here today. Must be something in the moon cycle or something."

Oh yeah--and yesterday, we got the fun and exciting experience of a guy taking a shit in a dressing room. I heard this guy kind of grunting in one of them while I was cleaning up the returns rack outside of the dressing rooms, but didn't really think twice about it--sometimes people put on clothes that are too small. But then, about ten minutes later, I noticed that there were boxers sitting in a room. Sighing, I went to hang them up, because we do sell boxers and lots of people leave things all over the floor in the dressing rooms. The moment I went in, though, I smelled the stench of shit, and backpedalled out to find Tara, our general manager. She called Victor the custodian to the front, and while I was waiting for him to get a mop, a girl went into that dressing room. I ran over, eyes huge, and told her friends to get her out of there. They thought the whole thing was hysterical.

Anyway, The Regulars.

Apparently, a whole bunch of our business is done by people who come in a LOT. There are people who come in to the thrift store EVERY DAY. Listen, I don't get it either, and I love thrift store shopping.

So let's begin.

OCD Book Guy

OCD Book Guy was the first regular I heard about. He's an elderly fellow, looks kind of like a professor. He comes in every other day or so and after perusing our behind-the-counter stuff (things that cost a bit more), he goes over to our book section. Where he proceeds to put EVERY. SINGLE. BOOK. in a special order that only he understands. It's alphabetic, but no one knows how he organizes by section. Joe warned me to just let him do it; he gets really angry if anyone bothers him. Joe's had to escort him out a couple of times so that he doesn't bother other customers. Also, if he's not done by the time we close, he freaks out and yells about how he has FIVE MORE MINUTES!

Miss Mary

Miss Mary is harmless, but I see her pretty much every day. She bought $80 of crappy jewelry the other day, and she is fairly discerning in her taste. Her taste is Really Fucking Weird, but somehow she ends up making it look good. She's very sweet, but her hair is in this weird teased style, and it is orange. I can't decide if she's one of those black women who just naturally has really light hair, or if she dyes it. At any rate, she always asks me if I've seen a particular kind of clothing ("have you seen any white shirts with puffy sleeves today?") and she always asks me "How are you doing today, girl?" She's a pretty nice regular, as they go.

Crazy Glasses Man

Not much to say about this guy--he looks like a turtle, and I think he's an antiques collector. But he always wanders around the store kind of aimlessly, until he sees something he really likes--and then he pounces on it, his round eyes huge behind the severe magnifying effect of his glasses.

Six Kids Butch Woman

This woman has a weird haircut that looks a little military, and she's usually wearing camouflage pants. She has at least six children (although yesterday, Joe saw her with one in her cart and said "Only one today, huh?" and she nodded, unsmiling), and she often brings all of them with her. They proceed to run screaming around our store, hiding in clothes racks, abusing items that are not toys (ie, the exercise bike we had in yesterday), and generally creating havoc. Also, they are big fans of our wheelchairs. For some reason we always have at least two wheelchairs for sale. Go figure.

Constantly Drunk Guy

There are probably a lot of these, but there's one in particular who always comes in and mumbles a lot at us. He usually buys four or five things, and rips the tags off the clothes. We aren't supposed to sell things that don't have tags, but Joe will usually name a price just to get him to leave. He always gives a price that is higher than what he thinks it would normally be, though, and that's how we feel vindicated. This guy's hands are always filthy, and Joe gave me some hand sanitizer afterwards.

Good Work Man

I've actually only seen this guy twice--my first day of work, and my second day of work. He came up to me, leaned down, and said conspiratorially, "You do good work," and stood back up to regard me. "Thanks!" I replied with a bright smile. The next day he comes up to me and leans down close to me and says conspiratorially, "You do good work," and stands back to regard me. "Uhh..." I said. Joe, who was standing nearby, says "Oh, leave her alone," and the guy walks away, cackling. Creeeeepy, anyone?

Scary Eyes Penny Lady

I've only seen her twice as well, but Joe tells me she's in a lot. Thursday, this little old lady came up to us with this crazed, excited look in her eyes, and hands us a lollipop each. She giggles like a little girl both times, and then goes off with her cart. After watching Joe put his in his mouth, I did the same. "Interesting. She usually gives us pennies," he remarked. "Oh yeah?" "Yeah, there are some other old ladies who give us lollipops, but she's the penny lady."

And, finally,

Eyepatch Scrubs Guy
This is one of our nuttiest regulars. We call him Doc because he says he's a doctor, although we know he actually isn't. He's always wearing blue scrubs, and has an eyepatch over his left eye. He comes in near closing, and wanders around singing at the top of his lungs, looking at things in all our departments. I asked Joe about him.

"Well," he said, "he's a wealthy nurse who once got an eye infection and then didn't tell anyone about it. It got so bad that they had to remove his eye. In the process of healing, he got addicted to pain medications, and now he's always on them. He's usually so drugged up that he doesn't really know where he is. Sometimes he'll walk up to you and give you a twenty dollar bill. As long as Tara doesn't find out, you can keep it."

I haven't gotten any money from him yet, but I'll post if I ever do.

That's all the regulars I can think of for now. Hope you enjoyed it!