Arriving at the store yesterday I was blessed to overhear a bit of an intense conversation as I was wedging my "open" sign up against Radical Edge's goddamn bike display. Two gentlemen... one in his late 60s, tubby, wearing a powder blue "Top of the Rock 33" T-Shirt and what appeared to be a freshman college beanie... the other in his 40s wearing birks, brown slacks/shorts and a striped shirt (of course). The exchange went thusly:
Beanie: You just can't beat a Broadway musical for entertainment!
Stripie: No, that's true.
Beanie: Those folks have such great talent!!
Stripie: Not just good.
Beanie: No. Great!!!
As I've probably previously commented on... I get a lot of resume clutching late-teen/early 20somethings, especially in summer months. In 96.8% of these cases it will be the one and only time I'll ever see these folks in my life... so I know our Yellow Pages ad must be working... at least as a beacon of sorts for slack-job seekers.
Yesterday I had two appliers... the first a young lady who looked liked she'd been sent in from a 40/50s Hollywood central casting office for the role of "Sassy Older Sister." She was wearing cutoff jean shorts, a plaid shirt knotted just above her belly button, a little rash of acne on her chin and a Darla from Little Rascals bangs and big curls 'do. Her resume had a cover page from a program called Youth Options, with a first line whose intent outlined: "to provide interventions to youth at risk, before they come into formal contact with the criminal justice system."
The rest of the resume made me wonder what the cover letter was about... listing girl guides, air cadets, tae kwan do, sandwich artistry and papergirl of the month awards amongst her many achievements. Only the fact that the pages were stapled out of order... and that her high school achievements included "maintaining a 90.6% averaged."
The second applicant was a young gentleman who strode into the store cowboy-legged, like he had an ostrich egg swinging between his knees, and greeted me with a jaunty, "Hey bud!" Following this was his query whether not I "needed someone to help run this place." I let him know he probably would be of little help... he took this fairly well, cursorily examined a Def Leppard CD and sidled off.
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What saved me from depression about my retail place in the world was stopping into Strange Adventures this morning just in time to overhear what I imagine is a more or less ongoing monologue in the store... the gentleman (in his late 30s/early 40s) picking up his comics expounding on the relative virtues of recent superhero movies. Highlights included when J, who works there and obviously has to occasionally interact with these folks, interjected how another customer preferred the recent Hulk movie to the recent Iron Man movie... to which the customer said, "Let me think on that." I nearly tipped over a rack of trade paperbacks. I then had to hurry out while he began explaining why Jennifer Connelly was a much better Betty Brant than Liv Tyler had been in the last Hulk movie (though she had undeniably been stellar in Lord of the Rings).
My freaks or yours?
