3/7/99

I left the note. Today was so busy, I was so busy, working a nine hour shift with no break and at the end the store manager looked at me (not knowing it was time for me to leave) and told me I needed to supervise the front end so he could go out for a cigarette. Or go home early, or some other thing, I don't know what the fuck he wanted to do. I love this guy, and he didn't know he was doing it, but he pushed me just enough over the edge so that I left my two weeks' notice and I can't get it back, the office manager is going to find it now and there's nothing I can do. Oh, my, what have I done? I've quit my job, I've quit, and they need me, they need me there. Oh, my.

And then I think about all the people who rang the bell at my counter today when they got fed up waiting for someone to answer the bottle return bell. Those cheap metal dingers convey a surprising amount of attitude. I always know when someone is pissed off at me before they even know what I look like. That bell DINGS and sometimes TWICE and I just know I'm about to take the shit for something. The bell goes DING (and maybe Ding DING) and I steel my will and poke my head out the door and I glance innocently at the space in front of my counter, which is empty...and I scan over...over...oh, there's someone at the bottle return? Can I help you? "Can I help you?" I say. I say this from within the door of my office. And they say, "Ahem. Bottles??" Ohh, they say it with the eyebrow thing, that Helen Huntesque "YOU'RE stupid--" eyebrow thing.... And I say....

I say, "Oh!" as though it had never occurred to me, ever, not once, to count bottles. And then the infinite patience and kindness of my soul propels me from the office to the bottle counter, angelic confusion on my face, and I say, "Do you know how many you have?" And, invariably, the person who rang my bell so impatiently is NOT the person at the front of the bottle line, but someone rather toward the back. So I take the slimy sticky dirty foul-smelling trash-filled bags from the first person in line and I count them out slowly, meticulously tossing them into the correct vendor bins, pausing as though I have no idea where the individual brands are from. Making a show with my forceps-fingers when the cans are slimy. Pointedly tossing the non-deposit cans into the trash.

And by the time I've finished the first few bags, with any luck at all, there will be a genuine customer at my counter and I will look at the original offensive bell-DINGer--who is now next in line--and smile, lean over and push the bell for the bottle return, before flouncing self-righteously over to where I belong. Oblivious.

No. I am not sorry about the two weeks' notice.