A Tale of Two Ass Managers

This is the story of a boy who fell in like with a girl. For all intents and purposes, let's say the boy fell in like at first or second shift with the girl. The girl had a boyfriend, but the boy remained hopelessly optimistic. He spent his time with her when she asked, joined her on outings she couldn't get her lazy boyfriend to go on, talked to her as much as she wanted, but she always insisted upon their friends-0nly status. One day, the girl and her boyfriend broke up, leaving the boy feeling like the sun might just shine upon him that day. The boy waited for a few days for the girl to turn to him in her despair. A few days turned into a week, then into two weeks. Before he knew it, a month had gone by, and the girl never ran to him for comfort. In fact, she seemed to be getting back on her own feet without him. His like of the girl soured, curdling into distaste and finally into a roiling, indignant rage. What had started out as a massive crush washed back to crush him. He was the victim of a heartless harpy who took his money and time and gave him nothing but heartache.

Or at least that's how he would tell it. This is my version of the story.

The Ass Manager and I started out as friends. We were not always the seething ball of mutual dislike that we are today. There was a time when he didn't think I was an evil shrew, and I didn't think he was an incompetent, spiteful douche. Most people actually thought that we were dating, which was met with my vehement denial of the idea. Physical incompatibility aside, I have a strong personality that is most compatible with another strong personality. The Ass Manager just didn't have one strong enough to stand a chance against mine. If push came to shove, he would fold before I would, and that was often the case near the end of our time working together. Let's not skip ahead though.

I think the Ass manager and I became friends because of our mutual desire to get out there in the world and do things. We are both intrepid souls, not content to sit in one place and stagnate. The summer of 2009 was full of adventures. We'd go play pool or check out the nearby national forest area, or hit up the local jazz festival. The Ass Manager was always up to do the stuff my boyfriend at the time wouldn't want to do. Trying to get my guy away from his Xbox was like trying to push a legless buffalo up a hill. In the miraculous event that I could actually roll the behemoth on its side, it would either remain a massive lump or roll back downhill on top of me, pulverizing me under its stubborn girth. En lieu of boyfriend, there was the Ass Manager.

As you can imagine, this behavior became confused for more-than-friendly attention. There were at least five conversations that went as follows:

          Ass Manager: So, my parents keep making jokes about us dating, hah hah *insert a very attentive stare here*

          Me: Why does everyone think that? Why can't we just hang out but not be dating? Why can't we just be friends?

After every time I asked that, he said that he agreed. We both knew it was a lie, but continued on as though neither of us recognized that there was a serious flaw in our friendship. Unfortunately, I learned the hard way that you cannot be just friends with someone who wants to date you.

The boyfriend and I hit a rough patch starting in about October of 2009. The Ass Manager sensed the approaching end like a rat in a sinking ship. Instead of running from the disaster, he began gravitating towards it. Maybe it would finally be his time. Once one disaster was gone, maybe he could be the next! How right this turned out to be...

My relationship with the boyfriend finally kicked the bucket in January, 2010. I was mad for a week or two, allowing my anger to build up a wall from the depression and floods of ice cream I knew were coming. The Ass Manager withstood my furious rants, perhaps hoping that I would start crying on his shoulder and then he could sweep me away into Happily Ever After Land. This may have been the point where he realized that would never happen. If he knew me at all, he would have known that I absolutely don't cry on peoples' shoulders and I'm incredibly skeptical about Happily Ever After Land. I'm more of a subscriber to "There Might Be Something Better, but Let's Prep for the Worst" Quarterly than the belief in Happily Ever After Land. At that moment in my life, I was more of a "Guys are the Devil and Nothing Good Ever Happens Unless I Make It Happen for Myself" subscriber, so no guy stood a chance, especially not the Ass Manager.

March rolled around and I was pretty solidly on my own two feet again. I was still picking up the pieces of myself that were strewn about post-breakup, but I was mostly put back together. When I finally stopped focusing on piecing myself back together, I realized that the Ass Manager had picked up a bit of a cold shoulder when it came to me. He was ignoring me, and when he wasn't ignoring me, he was going out of his way to make sure I knew he was displeased with me. I was confused. I felt like a kicked puppy: I knew I was being punished for something, but I didn't know what. When I finally bullied him into telling me what was going on, I learned that he had just figured out it would never happen between us. After almost a year of me asking him why we couldn't just be friends, he figured out that we wouldn't ever date. Not only that, but he actually repeated what my ex-boyfriend had told me when he and I were fighting, "You're great, but there's going to be someone better than you out there."

This embittered me. Like any girl, if I'm given enough time, I can work myself into a fiery, poisonous wrath. Fellas, this advice is for you: girls are like pressure cookers. Given enough time to stew over something, we will erupt and try to burn your eyes out. How dare he "break up" with me when we weren't even dating! I had done nothing, merely acted the same as I always had. He even admitted that I was always consistent in telling him we were just friends, and I was being punished for it.

Suddenly, all the things I had tolerated about him because we were friends became huge annoyances. Someone's change couldn't just be "$6.32," it had to be "six hundred thirty-two pennies." Who the fuck wants 632 pennies? Not only that, but that became their total as well. Where one of us would normally say "That'll be $55.49 if that's it for you..." the Ass Manager had to say "That'll be 5,549 pennies." I secretly hoped someone would have $55.49 in loose pennies just for him to count. The most change I ever had to count was close to $10 in dimes, nickels, and pennies, and that took long enough.

The Ass Manager's greeting became a joke to everyone. "Hooow we doin'?" he would ask, the grating sound of the "how" drawn out like a goat starting up a lawnmower. "Nooooot too shabby" was always his answer, as though no other responses could exist. I suppose his unflappable nature in the face of derision could be something to his merit, though he could try to shake things up a bit with a simple "fine."

I tried to repair our broken friendship on multiple occasions. My invitations were met with either silence or an empty promise. I finally realized that we could never be friends again when he stopped helping me close. April and May were incredibly frustrating. He and I were scheduled to close every Wednesday night for 6 weeks. During that time, he did nothing to help me close. Closing goes smoothly and quickly if all scheduled help out with the closing list. When one person deliberately opts out, the closing list becomes daunting.

The first night he refused to help, I thought it was simply because he was busy with other things. I was irritated, but I managed to get everything done before we had to lock the doors. The second night he refused to help, I was even more irritated. All he did was talk to customers. The Ass Manager doesn't just talk to a customer, he talks. For minutes on end. A customer will stand in front of the micro-brew section, contemplating beer, and then it happens. The hair on the back of their neck stands up, and they can sense the utter horror lurking around them. The customer becomes a victim in the water, bobbing up and down at the surface, knowing something gigantic is approaching. From nowhere, the victim is struck, flying out of the water with a huge great white shark propelling them upwards and into the beast's mouth. The Ass Manager is much the same. He strikes the customer, chomping down with his conversational jaws and locking them in place for at least twenty minutes.

Each night after that got worse. I was closing alone, with no help from the Ass Manager. It enraged me to the point of tears when he would joke about how I was doing all the work but not correcting his behavior. The final night that he and I closed together, I wrote only my name down on everything, with a note saying "I need to talk to someone about never closing with him ever again." As soon as I closed down the final drawer, I left. The Ass Manager was still stocking the cooler, and I could have helped him, but I couldn't have cared less. He had thrown away our friendship to be a petty jerkoff, so it was my turn. He and I never closed together again after that.

I do lament the loss of his friendship. In one breakup, I lost two people I held dear. The last time we closed was not the last I had to deal with the Ass Manager, and our dealings only got worse. But that is a tale for another time.

The Freak Show

Imagine stepping into a world where there had previously only been members of the opposite sex, and you were the first of your gender to take up residence there in quite some time. You haven't really established your place in that world order, and the work required of you is geared towards the dominant gender's natural strengths. Now imagine that you are not only the only one of your gender there, but that you're obviously, visibly well-endowed. You become a freakish attraction, a clear outsider with attributes that the dominant society quite spectacularly lacks, and that the dominant society is nearly willing to pay to see. Welcome to the circus, my dear little freak show. Now that I've successfully placed you in my clown shoes, let me walk you through the hazards of being the freakish woman in the three-ring liquor store. 


This post may appear to guy-bash, and that's not my intention. I like guys. While I frequently wonder what the fuck guys are thinking, I tend to understand them better than my own gender. This misunderstanding I have with the behaviors of most girls is exactly what prevents me from going rogue and turning into a lesbian after every time a guy does something bafflingly stupid. That and it's hard to find a girl who is so attractive that she overrides my ingrained straightness.  Back to the point, my intention for this post is to explore the many...I don't want to say dangers, but that's probably the best word for it....involved in girls working in liquor stores. One of the top things that bothered me about being a girl in a liquor store was the harassment received. 

I was never physically accosted during my time at the store, mostly because I think the customers sensed their own mortality when faced with the idea of molesting me. A famous Jeannie once said, "I am very cute, very alone, and very protective of my body" ("Ferris Bueller's Day Off," see it if you haven't). I am extremely protective of myself, and my flight or fight response is generally geared towards fight. A molesting hand would come back as a maimed stump. This freak show comes equipped with a short temper and the knowledge of how to completely disable someone using only their thumb. 

However, just because I wasn't physically harassed doesn't mean I wasn't verbally/visually harassed. This I got in buckets. During the first week of working at the store, a man was so enthralled by my chest that he didn't look at my face once. At the end of the sale, he said, "Have a good day" while still staring blatantly at my tits. My response was to hunker down where his eyesight clearly was, make eye contact, and say, "They will, thank you, and so will the rest of me." I never saw him again.

Most people were more subtle about staring at the woman in the man's world. I think that's precisely where the fascination sat: the fact that I was a woman in a predominantly manly place. I was a break from the norm. In a veritable sausage-fest, a curvy blonde was a sight to see. Most of the people who stared at me did so discretely, to the point where I didn't even know they were, and that's how it should be. There were certain Hispanic individuals who were anything but subtle.

Time to break for another disclaimer. I'm disgusted by people who judge others based solely on their ethnicity. If I'm going to judge someone, it's going to be based on their actions. That said, I'm NOT saying that every Hispanic guy who came in was a pervert who mercilessly stalked me. That's definitely not the case. For every pervert I met in the store, I met at least two people who were genuinely nice and decent. The actions of a few individuals do not represent the actions of an entire group of people. So the following are stories about individuals.


I don't speak a lot of Spanish, but I know enough to understand the disgusting things. One day, two scrawny young Hispanic gentlemen waltzed into the store. One was a couple inches taller than me, and the other was a few inches shorter. They immediately started speaking Spanish as they headed towards the 40's (40 ounce beers, normally cheap and always disgusting, though I might be a bit of a beer snob now). On their way out, I was hovering around the front, and Dreugh and I overheard them. I tried to ignore them, but Dreugh's ears picked up more than mine did. After they left, Dreugh and I exchanged a disbelieving look.


"You know that short guy said he would make you his bitch, right?" Dreugh asked.


I found it laughable and entirely offensive. I could hurl the little man across the room with one hand, so I would like to see that Lollipop Guild member try. It sets up images in my mind of him coming into the room, calling me "bitch" once, and me punting him out the window. I don't often spend my time defenestrating horny Mexican munchkins, but I would make an exception for him. 

If those two ever came back into the store, they kept their mouths shut and left me alone, which is more than I can say for my Fan Club.


My Fan Club appeared a couple months into working at the store. They became a running joke in the store for everyone else, but they became a source of extreme discomfort for me. My Fan Club consisted of three young Hispanic men, almost always the same three, but sometimes they swapped one member out for another. They would show up in the evening after work, covered in the dirt and toil of the day. They initially came in to get beer, but then they would begin hunting for me. I thought it was a fluke at first, that they would wait in line to get to my register, and that they would "accidentally" bump into me in the aisles if I weren't working at the registers. It soon became apparent that they were hunting me down. 


Not once did any of the three of them say a single word to me. They would stand in line and then stare me down. There's a big difference between looking at someone and staring them down. Had they only been looking, it wouldn't have bothered me. They were staring though, their predatory gazes digging into me as though to say, "Don't let me catch you alone." The final time I stood out in the open before I began hiding when they walked in was one of the most uncomfortable times of my life. I was on the phone with a customer, and the Fan Club was being assisted by someone else. I turned my back to them to write a note for the customer I was talking to, and one of them broke off from the pack. He wandered to the other side of the counter, where I was, and stood there. He didn't say anything, he just stood in front of me and stared with a coyote smile on his face. After that, I was never around to help the Fan Club. I made myself scarce, a rabbit startled into hiding by the circling dogs. 

It's inevitable when you're a sideshow in the liquor store circus that you'll collect a horrified/intrigued fan club. The lure of the freak is hard to resist. After all, if you see a sign for a two-headed cow, you can't just keep driving by. It's a two-headed cow for chrissake! You can't keep going past something you've never seen before. If it's freakish enough, you might even keep going to see it, to make sure your eyes aren't lying to you. When only one member of the Fan Club came in and spotted the She-Worker at the store, Dreugh would turn to me and say, with a knowing grin, "They will be back, and in greater numbers."


P.S. "Los pechos" means "the breasts" or "the chests" as per my darling Nicole, for those of you who are as Spanish-challenged as I am.

Training Day

I wish that I could say that training day for me was as epic as it sounds. I can't help but think of the movie whenever those two words are combined. It brings up images of shootouts and dirty cops, and an ominous feeling that not everything is right on the first day of the job. In reality, the day I was trained was a quiet Sunday in April, and neither Ethan Hawke nor Denzel Washington were anywhere in sight (talk about a letdown). Maybe if Denzel Washington had trained me, I would have learned more. Or much less, if he chose to go the PCP route he did with Ethan. On the other hand, I probably could have lifted a lot more weight for all of an hour or so, provided I didn't go batshit first. Getting ripped off PCP in a liquor store would have been a very, very bad decision given how much glass was available, and I wanted to make a good first impression. Under the circumstances, I'm glad "Training Day" Denzel wasn't the one training me. Instead, it was the assistant manager, henceforth known as the Ass Manager.

The Ass Manager and I have a rather rocky past, hence why he gets his own post later on, and a nickname I know he hates. The morning I walked into the store was like any other Sunday morning. It seems that, despite the fact that the law went into effect a couple years ago, people still don't really know that liquor stores are allowed to sell alcohol on Sundays in the state of Colorado. That's fine with me. Fewer customers to deal with, but less to do at the same time. Sundays are ideal training days because you can introduce the trainees (I like to call them "babies") to the store at a leisurely pace.

I don't want you to think that I'm condescending towards The Babies. Quite the contrary, I have a special fondness towards the new kids who came to work at the store. They needed guidance and direction, and a little shielding from the worst of the worst. The Babies appealed to my more nurturing side, though it may not have seemed like it. I got angry when customers were mean to The Babies, and indignant when the Ass Manager bossed them around. I was happy to help The Babies as they discovered the store for themselves, and adopted a "figure out the best way for you to do this, but I'm here if you need me" attitude. There were definitely times when my patience wore thin and I'd get snappy, but overall, I was happy to consider them part of the store family.

My experience as a Baby was confusing and trying. I was trained by the Ass Manager, whose method of training includes overwhelming you with information and expecting you to get it immediately. In the event that you ever need to train someone, please don't do it this way. He went in depth about everything and bounced from topic to topic. All I needed to know was how to run the register and where the bathroom was. I pretty effectively learned neither.

Instead of teaching me the steps to successfully complete a basic sale, he introduced me to the most complicated ones first.

"If you want to sell a single beer from a six pack, you have to hit 'S' first. Unless they want more than one, in which case you hit 'Ctrl S 92 Shift Pg dwn #*' then scan the item, then go to the Windows main screen blah blah blah blah computer mumbo jumbo blah...How we doin? Ok super, have fun." He didn't really say all that, but to someone who literally just walked in the door, he may as well have.

Plopped down at the register, I cautiously proceeded ringing up customers. Each time, I greeted them by prefacing our encounter with, "It's my first day here, I have no clue what I'm doing. Sorry." The customers were pretty understanding, which has not generally been my experience with customers. That's for another time though. They understood that I was a Baby, crawling out into the retail world with no supervision and a naivety that I quickly learned was completely and irrevocably stupid. After doing my best to figure out the computer system for a couple of hours, I decided it was time for a bathroom break.

I vaguely remembered being shown the bathroom during the initial tour of the store. I didn't really get a good look at it, but the Ass Manager gestured half-assedly at the back area after showing me where the whiskey was stationed. He was too busy telling me about the difference between scotch and whiskey to be bothered with silly things like restrooms. At the time, all I gathered between lofty descriptions of "hints of peat" and "smoky barrels" was that the difference between scotch and whiskey was where it came from. I was more interested in knowing where things went.

I left the safety of the register and sauntered towards the back office area. Once back there, I had a few options. To the right was a doorway beyond which I couldn't see because of  a wall obstructing my view. To the left were two doorways, both with mostly closed doors. I went to the right. There, I was faced with mountains of boxes and a hefty metal door. Unless the bathroom doubled as a panic room, I doubted that was it. I turned around and tried the first door I came to on the left. It was pitch black and computers whirred noisily from the desk that took up all but a foot of moving room. I closed the door behind me as I left that room. The last room was indeed the bathroom, whose walls looked as though they would collapse at the bottom because of a heinous yellowish mold that was overtaking the inside of the drywall. I spent as little time as possible in that bathroom for fear of being devoured by the mold that was taking hold of the bathroom. But at least I found it.

I was scheduled from 10:00 in the morning until 2:00 in the afternoon. Later on, this shift would be called "a bullshit shift." Original, I know. That's why we were customer service representatives, not poet laureates. At the time, I was pretty ok with it. I can't remember who the first other employee I met was aside from the Ass Manager (sorry, guys!) that particular Sunday. The next person to come in was probably Dreugh (like Drew, but with a Scottish accent).

Dreugh and I had worked together before the liquor store. He was the one who helped me get the job in the first place, something I am entirely grateful for. He and I worked at a doggy daycare place together for a few months before he left for greener pastures and I left for France. He and I rarely had shifts together at the daycare place, but we would see each other for a few brief moments as one arrived and the other left. Our first bonding point was my new iPod. I remember telling him about it right before he left for Ireland in 2008, and he told me that he hoped it came in before he left so he could check it out. I wouldn't call it an instant friendship, but a sense of camaraderie ensued. I left for France later that summer, and when I came back to the doggy daycare place, Dreugh had left. He and I hadn't exchanged any contact information, so I thought I had lost him forever.

One day in February 2009, my friend Jenn and I stopped by the liquor store to pick up some wine. Lo and behold, Dreugh was working at the front register. We exchanged numbers this time, and met for some much-needed catching up. That night we hung out, he introduced me to an absolutely fantastic local band. I've almost religiously followed that band since, and over the course of the last two years, I've only missed two, maybe three shows. I mentioned that I was jobless, since the daycare place had closed its doors in December. He mentioned that he could try to get me a job at the store. My fate for the next two years was sealed after that point. Just like Denzel sneaking PCP to Ethan in "Training Day," Dreugh snuck my impending corruption and jading to me in the form of great music and a job. Just like Ethan before me, I took that hit, and started down the path that would forever change me.

P.S. The walls in the bathroom have been fixed, so they aren't moldy anymore. You may do your business there without needing to bring a sacrificial lamb with you now.

An Introduction

"It is not in the stars to hold our destiny but in ourselves," said William Shakespeare. I recently decided to take that idea and apply it to my own life,  and this is how I became an unemployed graduate student. Trust me when I say that I know this wasn't the best decision I have ever made. At a time when unemployment is rampant and money is scarce, quitting my steady job in favor of going to school and writing a weekly blog makes me seem as though I am spitting in the face of the economic gods. The look of downtrodden hopelessness on my mother's face when I told her I was putting in my two weeks told me that's what I was doing well enough.

"You were a bit rash, not finding another job before quitting." said another friend, dubious about supporting my decision to leave.

My coworkers were hardly surprised, and merely asked what I planned on doing next. The fact that they were not perturbed at all by my quitting should speak volumes. To the outside world, my decision was idiotic. To anyone else who worked at the same store I did, it was escape. Sweet freedom from the slow soul-death provided by what seemed to be a wonderful store.

The store itself is a great place. A wide variety and knowledgeable staff create a store that has just about any liquor you could possibly want in a customer-oriented setting. The owners who took over last May really cleaned up the place and brought out more of the store's true potential. It sounds fantastic. Don't let that fool you. Raccoons are adorable and seem like perfectly functioning animals, but they carry disease and bring destruction to your trash cans, and heaven help you if they decide to take up residence under your house. In a roundabout way, don't judge a book by its cover, or a raccoon's true nature by how cute it is.

The staff is the true heart of the store.The collection of college and just post-college kids working there were probably the reason I lasted as long as I did. I worked there for nearly two years, which for a girl is impressive. The average stay of a girl working in the store was less than 6 months. Personally, I saw 3 girls come and go during my employment. Two were pretty chill, and one was a flaming fucking moron (there will be a post about her later). The rest of the 7-10 employees were guys. It makes sense when you think about it, because that job is all about lifting and carrying and putting bottles up high. I can lift a decent amount for a girl, but not as much as any of the boys and I'm only 5'6, so heights are harder for me to reach. This is not to mention all the sexist shit I had to put up with and the disgusting creepers that frequented our establishment. Taking all this into account, I had a fair run.

But now I'm free. And that means I'm free to tell you all about my experiences there. From the dirty Mexican pervs who thought I couldn't understand them to the kind customers, the successes to the failures, the quiet nights to the knife fights, it's all here. Names have been changed of course, to protect certain identities, but the trials and happenings are all very much real. Get ready, kiddos. And please have your I.D. on hand.