A Night at the Nordstrom

Well I haven't posted in about a million years, but life has been crazy. This Summer, I'm employed both by a temp agency that will send me wherever the money is, and by a company that provides banquets with servers. Last night was my first job with the temp agency. I was bummed that it was on Sunday, but they swore up and down that won't ever happen again, so I got over it. My shift was from 4:30 P.M. to 1:00 A.M. Nordstrom is renovating all of their fixtures (read: the things they hang the clothes on), and needed folks to offload the boxes, assemble the fixtures, deal with the garbage, etc. We ladies were told we'd be dressing mannequins, but that turned out to be a serious mis-communication, so we were doing the grunt work, too. That didn't bother me, since I'd done so much of that with Pottery Barn. Last night was just a reminder of how much I really love this kind of work. I had never worked a night shift like before, so it was quite the experience. I was the only white girl on the temp team of twenty five (there were other white girls working there, but not much with us), there were two middle aged white men, and one white guy from London in his twenties. Everybody else was black, but that didn't bother me. I hung mostly with the black girls, until they got too whiny about how we weren't dressing mannequins, and how "mean" the Nordstrom people were, blah blah blah, so I started working more with the guys. At 11:00 P.M. Nordstrom fed us dinner. We had salad, lasagna, and canoli, which I hadn't had in forever. Dinner was when the night got interesting.

I sat at a table with one of the white men on my right, and the London guy on my left, who had some black guys around him. There was an unopened soda sitting in front of me that no one came back to claim. Then a black dude named Shawn sauntered up and sat at that spot, saying, "Am I taking someone's seat?" I told him no, I hadn't seen anyone there. "That's 'cause I put it there," he said. "I don't believe you," I laughed in reply. "You don't? What you say if I told you I put it there just so I could sit across from you?" he asked. "Well, thanks for the compliment," I said, "but I still don't think you did." At that point, one of his buddies came up and asked Shawn to go back to the other table with him. "Would you miss me if I sat over there?" he asked. With dripping sarcasm, I said, "You'll break my heart if you go." "Well damn! I can't go now!" I laughed again, sure that he was just kidding around like I was. "You'll break his heart if you stay," I told him. "Either way, someone's heart is getting broken. Will it be mine or his?" Shawn thought for a minute, then got up and left. Ten minutes later, he came back, and this was our dialogue.

Shawn: So when we goin' on our first date?
Me: Excuse me? I'm not going out with you!
Shawn: You not?
Me: No!
Shawn: I've got a really big truck.
Me: I like really big trucks, but no. I'm not going out with you.
Shawn: I'll take you to Burger King.
Me: ...No.
Shawn: What, you don't like Burger King?
Me: I like their fries. No.

At this point, he finally got the idea and gave up his little game. Naive me thought he was still kidding, but I thought about it for a few minutes, then turned to the other guys and asked, "Wait, was he serious about all that?" "Yeah, yeah he was serious." I couldn't believe it. "But why?" I asked. "We don't even know each other!" "Well how's he supposed to get to know you unless you date him?" one of the black guys asked. "What's wrong, don't you date?" "I don't date unless I'm thinking I might marry the guy," I responded. And from there we launched into a huge debate about love, dating, marriage, etc. that I found highly amusing. They found me highly ridiculous, but that's fine. I got the typical don't-buy-the-car-until-you've-tested-it shpeel, the marriage-is-just-a-piece-of-paper lecture, the how-can-you-put-boundaries-on-love argument, the dang-you're-21-and-still-a-virgin deal, and so on. The British guy stayed 99% out of the argument (he chuckled occasionally), one black guy named Sheldon was my debator, and the other two were the peanut gallery, only good for laughing. So we went round and round, and at one point, Sheldon randomly said between arguments, "You know, the world needs more women like you." What? That totally blew me away! Here he was, totally bashing my standards and the Reason I hold them, and then basically congratulates me for it. It was so weird! Then we all headed back to work, and one of the two guys that laughed the whole time came up to me and said told me good job, keep it up. "You have no idea what a blessing you'll be to that man one day," he said. He's a Christian. When he laughed, I think he was laughing at the other guy. So he encouraged me, and we talked for a few minutes, and he was encouraged, too. I was completely shocked. It was interesting to think that if I had kept my big mouth shut, we wouldn't have found that common ground. A while later I was dumping garbage, watched by the security guard who had been in Vietnam, when Shawn came back. He said something to me again about going with him, then walked to the dumpster. The security agent said to me, "I think that guy does crack." I laughed and told him, "Yeah, he asked me on a date." "What? That dirtball?" "Yep. He wanted to take me to Burger King." "Burger King," he scoffed. "Well, for him, that would be pretty expensive. He'd probably make YOU pay when you got there!" He was pretty funny. But anyway, yes, I love my job, for all it's craziness. Off now for another round! I'll be home around 3:00 A.M.