In honour of the (un)dead Robins

I've gone. Not one for goodbyes, I thought it best to slip out quietly. Love to you all, Giles.

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.

You know that thing where a story is written in tight third person limited — we’re meant to be inside someone’s head, seeing the world through their thoughts — and then suddenly the narration says “the blond frowned” or “the shorter woman sighed” about a person the POV character knows really well?

That’s called antonomasia — using a descriptive label instead of a name. And it’s fine when we’re talking about strangers: “the cashier handed her the receipt,” “the tall guy blocked the door.” The POV character doesn’t know their names, and we just need a quick way to tell people apart.

But the moment it’s used for someone the POV character already knows, it breaks immersion. Because that’s not how our minds work. We don’t think “the older man smiled at me.” We think “Mark smiled.” Or maybe “my boss” if that relationship matters in the moment.

Third person limited means the narration sits inside someone’s perception. Their inner monologue is the story’s voice. So when you switch from “Mark smiled” to “the blond smiled,” you’ve pulled the camera away from their mind and turned it into an outside shot.

If you want to create distance or irritation, you can do it on purpose —

“The idiot from accounting emailed again.”

That’s character voice. That’s judgment. That works.

But otherwise?

As soon as your POV character knows someone’s name, use it. While we do tend to worry about repetitions, names rarely register as such to the readers.

If you need variety for rhythm, use relational or emotional identifiers that make sense in their head: her friend, his partner, their teacher, the person they loved.

Because inside someone’s thoughts, there are no “blonds” or “brunettes.”

Dance is neither about technique nor stamina. Love is what makes it whole.

You design their personalities, their past, their dynamics.

And then they refuse to behave

the way you planned.

At some point you stop arguing with them

Ilya wins his first awards and hes got nobody he really wants to thank after his team and coach cause he he hates his family but he knows his speech is too short so on impulse he goes "And I want to thank Shane Hollander for being slightly worse than me this season". Everyone knows it was going to one of those two, so everyone thinks hes an asshole to say that but whats new so it works for him. But from then on it then becomes a bit for both of them to thank each other in their speeches in a snide way as a reason they won.

Shane winning the Art Ross Trophy (Awarded to the player who leads the league in total points at the end of the regular season). and going "special thanks to Rozanov for missing at least 5 shots this season, he was a huge help"

Ilya winning the Conn Smythe Trophy (Awarded to the most valuable player for his team in the playoffs.) "Just want to give a quick shout out to Hollander for getting knocked out in the second round this season. Must hate to see me up here."

I just got a check for nearly $900 that I didn't know about. Apparently it was sent to me at the end of 2019 and I never got it, so it was sent on to Unclaimed Property.

My friend checked the state he used to live in. He didn't have any unclaimed property of his own. But his dad, who died 20 years ago, had over $10,000 in unclaimed property. My friend is the heir, so he gets that money.

It involves a little paperwork to get the money but it's so worth it!

If a company, like Comcast or AT&T or Blue Cross Blue Shield, tries to send you a check but it's lost in the mail, or you moved, or for other reasons you don't deposit it, after two years they send it to the state you live in. The state then has it in a database under your name.

Angry cat? Burrito it.

Scared bunny? Burrito it.

Tiny squish faced dog that you cant get a muzzle on? Burrito it.

Screaming macaw? Burrito it.

Injured wildlife? Burrito it.

― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

And, apparently, Burrito Goddamn Anything with hit.

“Bless me, father, for I have sinned.”

“Go on.”

“I knocked over a liquor store.”

“And why did you do that?”

“Well my mom’s sick. We can’t afford the pain medication, and I know alcohol is a bad pain reliever, but I don’t know how to break into a pharmacy, so …”

“OK, my son, what we’re going to do is, we’re going to get your mom her medicine. But I’m going to need your help. I need you to call the health insurance company, and tell them —“

“Is… is this my penance?”

Eliot in the Swiss Guard

Hardison hasn’t taken vows or anything but he runs IT for the church and it’s fascinating how much easier it is to stay under budget since he joined. I guess those computers just must be very efficient. 🤷

Parker was sent off to a convent as an inconvenient child. She’s technically a student at the Catholic school, but she also never leaves the grounds? Or at least, no one ever sees her leave. No one ever sees her around, either, so it’s kinda hard to say.