Jessiqa's Platypus

Working in retail is really fun, and the times when major fuck-ups happen, they can be either anxiety-attack inducing, or make it possible to get through the rest of your god-awful shift with a smile depending on the customer. My all-time favorite absolute fuck-up is as follows:

This kind woman is just doing her thing. She scans her membership card from her keychain. The register beeps to acknowledge the scan. We continue as usual. Neither of us notice right away, but after I’ve scanned a few more items, I hear a very quiet, “Um,” from the lady, very polite. I look at her. She is looking at the screen of my register, blinking. I, too, look.

And lo and behold. There is a charge of over four-thousand dollars ($4,000) worth of garlic bread staring us in the face. There are no words for a minute. We’re just… in awe. How did this happen? How the hell did this happen?

She didn’t even have garlic bread in her cart.

I sputter a partial apology - I was incapable of forming actual sentences in the moment - and try to void the garlic bread. Since there was no garlic bread to scan, I try to manually remove $4,000-some from this transaction.

Well, the registers don’t like it when you try to void off more than five dollars ($5) from a transaction, so naturally it pings my manager for confirmation, but she’s not by her pager.

At this point, both myself and the lady are just… dumbfounded. She’s not even mad. I’m not even all that embarrassed. Both of us are just looking at the screen. There’s a bit of laughter, but it’s mostly just… confusion.

I have to call through the whole store for my manager on the intercom because she’s not answering. She shows up, ready to override and void it, when she too, sees what exactly is being voided.

“What… did you do?”

“I genuinely. Have literally. No. Idea.”

She voids it, and I go to finish the transaction and tell the woman her total (minus the garlic bread). My register pings. It tells me that she hasn’t scanned her membership card. Odd. I distinctly remember her doing that. The woman goes to scan her card again, and I notice that her library card is stuck to her membership card. I tell her gently, and she separates the two and scans her card.

My manager, hovering nearby still, sees this and says, “I think it mistook the barcode of her other card for garlic bread, and the remaining digits were read as the price.”

And that’s when the laughter really came over us. There were no hard feelings at all. In fact, the woman was incredibly glad that the receipt still showed the garlic bread and the voiding of. I will remember it until the end of time, my only regret in the entire situation being that I didn’t take a damn picture, because she has proof and I don’t. But I swear to God it happened.

Clue

i have been talkin on this alot during my book tour but wanted to put words here for any buckaroos trottin around the internet.

questions chuck gets asked in signings or Q AND A sessions have WIDE VARIETY in their way, but theme that comes up over and over is: 'i wish i was a creator but i cannot find success in this way' or 'i wish i was a creator but my mind is blocked'

bud, you ARE a creator. we are all HERE TO CREATE it is our natural state of being. we cannot help but create.

buds might say: 'but i have not painted in months i have no inspiration left'

as far as chuck is concerned this is missing the incredible vastness of what CREATION is and what ART is. the art of a painting is not just about oil on canvas. it does not end at the border or the frame. the ART and the CREATION is so much more than that and sometimes we can numb ourselves to this way. the months spent pining for inspiration are just as important as the brush you pick. what you had for breakfast that day is just as important as the colors and hues. every misstep or big win along the way IS THE ARTWORK.

your art is not just your painting, it is the mixed media piece called your life. you are creating thoughts and ideas and dreams. in a physical sense you are creating heartbeats and breaths and even words vibrating through the air saying 'i cant think of anything to paint'

BUD THESE ARE ALL VALID PIECES and together they make something incredible and unique and POWERFUL. how deeply moving it is to exist here on this timeline, adding yourself to the even LARGER piece that we are all constructing together as we push back against the empty spaces and fill the cosmic void with our love.

so do not be discouraged by writers block or a blank canvas. a canvas is never actually blank and you are writing with every moment that you trot through.

i cannot speak for YOU, but whenever i let the artwork of this timeline flow around me, the more my specific pieces like writing or drawing come into focus.

From the article.

The picture in question originates from Mason, Michigan, where a close group of friends who liked to build personal computers and organize LAN parties grew up. Through Reddit and email, we were able to get in touch with a large portion of the group, as well as obtain verification and additional images…

For the Mason alumni, the night they taped Drew Purvis to the ceiling was just an average day, another LAN party with friends.

“It was still early in the day and the LAN had already become fractured,” said Nick Wellman, another LAN goer. “There were about 10 of us there, and we were already playing three, four different games. Tyler was looking around and said, ‘I think you can duct tape someone to that I-beam.’”

At this point, the teens gathered the necessary supplies, bought duct tape on a friend’s employee discount and had the tallest attendee, Brian, hold the subject, Drew, aloft while the rest taped him up.

What you see in the now-iconic photo is actually the group’s second attempt to suspend their friend from the ceiling with duct tape. After about 10 minutes, the tape digging into his sides, Drew asked to be cut down. They revised their plan, adding pillows, and strapped him back up. Once on the beam, someone else had the idea to stack some tables up so Drew could still play on his computer.

“That is the funniest part about the picture,” Nick told us. “Gaming from the beam was a complete afterthought.”