The Cheese Lady

I once worked for a small women's clothing company called Pookie and Sebastian. The oweners, apparently named their business after their two dogs. I was just a salesgirl and not a very good one at that. One day, a woman with bright orange hair and a ragged coat came in. At first I thought she might be homeless but she had brand new shopping bags with her. I tried to avoid her but we were required to greet every customer we came across no matter what; so I had to offer her help. She was grumbling about needing to buy her neice a gift.

"What do you buy a model? My neice is a model!" she said, rather agressively, in my opinion.

I showed her some scarves- always a good choice when you don't know the recipent's size. "Nawh, Nawh! What do you get for a model?! I don't know! Jesus!", was her response to my suggestions.

But before I could show her some of our jewelry, she wipped out a large block of orange cheddar cheese- it had to have been at least a pound. I'm not sure where she was concelaing the cheese- perhaps her coat? In any case I was so stunned that I could think of nothing to say for a full minute. This revire was finally broken when I realized that she was asking me for something.

"You got a pen?" she asked.

Without taking my eyes off the cheese I said, "WHAT?"

"I need a pen to open this cheese."

"We don't allow eating in the store." (I was glad to be able to make such a concreate statement.)

She looked at me with complete and utter exasperation.

"I don't want to EAT it!! I just wanna OPEN it!!"

I thought about this and figured I'd give her sicssors instead of a pen. Though, I did pause and think to myself, "am I really going to give this obvious mental patient a sharp object?" I decided she seemed like the kind of person I didn't want having a complete meltdown in front of me. So I handed her the sicssors and after opening the block of cheese, she left.

I only worked for Pookie and Sebastian for three months. But that, by far, was the best story I got from that place.