Okay, well, now you absolutely have to tell us the story about the fish guy.
LMAO okay warning that this might get kinda long
so I was probably seventeen at the time and I just started my job at the watch shop. At the watch shop, we had these tables at the front of the store which were covered in watches. they were in little tins (collectable tins!) and there were easily 100-125 watches on them at any given time, so there always had to be someone watching them
I was standing at one of the tables keeping an eye on them, trying to count who had what watch where, when this guy comes up to me.
“You know what I always think?” he says.
“I walk by and I see you guys standing at these tables and I think, ‘there’s got to be a better way to sell watches!’ Like, you could put them in your jacket!”
I hold my jacket open, and laugh, “Very ‘hey, kid, wanna buy a watch?’”
We laugh, and I think that’ll be the end of it. Or, that he’ll start, you know, actually looking at the watches. It is not, and he does not.
Instead, he says, “You know, I’ve had a pretty rough day.”
“Oh,” I say, kind of startled. I’ve heard of retail therapy, but I’m not prepared to be a retail therapist, you know? “I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Yeah,” he agrees, looking downcast. I feel like I need to tell you that this guy looked very normal, very clean cut. Nice hair, neat clothes, a smiley attitude. Probably in his early- to mid-twenties. “My fish died.”
I don’t really have a response for this, but he doesn’t seem to expect one.
“Can you,” he asks, looking hopeful, “Can you tell me something nice, to cheer me up?”
Now, I’m not saying that you can’t be sad about your pets dying. You absolutely can! I’ve never had any pets myself, but I can’t imagine it’s an easy thing. But a twenty-something man coming up to a seventeen-year-old while she’s at work, telling her that his fish died, and asking her to cheer him up is weird, right? Like, it always stands out to me as weird. I was so caught off guard by that request. Like, I’m sorry your fish died, but I’m here to sell watches.
But I’m a nice person, so I laughed a little awkwardly and said, “I like your shirt.”
It was purple, and it was from either Niagara Falls or Calgary, I honestly can’t remember, but it was somewhere in Canada.
He broke into this massive smile, clapped me on the arm and said, “You know, you look like such a badass. With the leather jacket and the hair--” this was back when I had my super short hair-- “it’s really cool. You’re a badass lady.”
And then he just left. He didn’t look at any watches. He barely looked at anything in store-- except, apparently, my jacket.