No, Thank You

If there's one thing that irritates more than anything is invasive sales tactics. I've worked in sales before and they[The Companies]always push employees to make sales in any way possible, be it deception, forcefully telling the customer they need it, and many other twitch inducing methods. There is something that bothers me more than regular invasive sales methods - something with a hidden agenda - something commonly including lies. Donations. Don't get me wrong! Donating is great when it's not pushed onto you, such as a website you really enjoy or a comic page that you enjoy reading(Sorry, I don't have a donation button if you're wondering). No, what I'm talking about are people that forcefully tell you to make a donation for their cause. Allow me to show what happened to me once before.

Perhaps some of you can relate to this. If you live in a semi-ghetto area you can definitely relate to this. Certain people like to use scams to make money, and they tend to use a lot of the same tactics as sales people to acquire it. The first sign I knew this woman was going to be a general pain in the hind end was when she walked in and immediately started throwing bags of what was, obviously, garbage from the dollar store, then instantly demanded to know which one I wanted. Did she think I was a simpleton? I could see what she was up to in her expressions(I drew all her actual expressions as well - they were that intense). The second thing I realized is that she didn't mention any organization she was raising funds for. If you're wanting to gather donations for a cause perhaps you should mention who they're for first, no? I regretfully didn't inquire as to who it was for or for some credentials just to see how she would respond.

Needless to say I wasn't about to fork over any donation for her. Especially not with the amount I was being paid to work at this dump. What gets me is Frank gave her some money, but I think that's because he was busy and not exactly fully focused. I later mentioned my assumptions about her and he admitted that he wasn't thinking clearly at the time. Oh well, at least she wasn't as bad as the man trying to sell me AAA maintenance service while I was clearly trying to work. That will be a different story for a better time.

Manners

I don't believe most people are taught manners anymore, at least not from my experience. Although it could be where I live, since whenever I take trips elsewhere people are more courteous while going about their daily lives. From what I have observed though, most people learned how to behave from either their parents or whoever they happen to be raised by the most. I dealt with a good example of this observation.

So the first thing that goes through my mind when looking at the sandwich is whether or not it wasn't evenly distributed BEFORE or AFTER she took that big ol' bite out of it. Frank mentioned that particular customers would, indeed, buy a sandwich, eat two thirds of it(or more in some cases) only to bring it back stating that there was something wrong with it and they wanted a refund or another sandwich. These were days where Frank obviously could not handle the level of idiocy that breached his mental wall and all form of care he had for the integrity of this shop would vanish. Luckily this rarely happened to that extent and most people were decent enough.

Waka Flocka - OOPS

One of the things Frank liked to call aggravating customers was "Waka Flockas." I'm not entirely sure why he called them that other than the rapper's name is funny sounding. There's probably many underlying reasons, but I never bothered to ask. So, the first night I actually heard this term from Frank was...

His response right after saying "Waka Flocka" was actually saying the name of the store, but the customer knew what she had heard and was kinda angry. It was somewhat funny that she was going to order something afterward yet changed her mind after a few moments. Frank and I were laughing so much afterward because he was not expecting it to be a customer. He told me that he had said "Pep Boys" before just to be funny, but the last time he did that it happened to be the store's owner so he refrained doing that.

Candy Machines

Every time I see those candy dispensing machines at places, generally small restaurants or large stores like Wal-Mart, all I can imagine is how long that candy has been sitting there. Most of the time it's not even candy that appeals to me so I don't take a lot of notice. At the store there were around three of these machines in the eating area. There were Mike and Ike, Reeses Pieces, and Skittles if I remember correctly. One night a coworker had a craving for some candy and. . .

Ironically right next door there was a grocery store that carried such things. She realized that after I pointed it out and we started laughing like we had mental issues from sniffing too much glue(or propane in this place). The most amazing part is that even though we suspected the candy would be stale, it actually wasn't! Either the person who owned those machines replaced the candy very recently or it's really dry inside of those dispensers.

Hurricane Comics

After hurricane Irene hit where I live we were out of power for a few days. During daylight I doodled some comics on sketch paper using a marker that was running out of ink.

Comic 1: A few days before the hurricane arrived my dad decided since he had time off that we would repair the garage. So he started tearing all the shingles off, ripping off the tar paper, and then went and ordered all the supplies needed to fix it. When he decided to do this I vividly remember the weather stations mentioning concern about the hurricane hitting our coast. I mean, really, just that fact that they mentioned a hurricane hitting Florida should have been a clue that maybe we should have waited till a better time to fix the garage roof -- the roof we've been mentioning needed to be repaired for almost thirteen years. Anyway, we rushed a good three days putting new boards on the edge that had been rotting, rolled out new tar paper, and put new shingles on it. It was kinda scary being up there considering it would bend under my weight.

Comic 2: Once the power officially cut out our neighbor pulled his generator out. It was about ten minutes after everything went dark that it started to get noisy. The next day was even noisier because everyone who had a generator was using theirs. You could have sworn a dirt bike rally was going on.

Comic 3: During the storm our neighbor's large oak tree uprooted and fell down, luckily not hitting anybody's house. We all rushed outside to see the damage(yes, it was raining like crazy. No, we didn't care.) I started jumping around in the huge puddle that formed on the driveway because I'm easily amused like that.

Comic 4: While it was too warm in my room, there wasn't very much light, and I was sweating to death, the only thing I felt like doing was eating and exercising. We had a lot of stuff in the fridge that none of us wanted to go to waste, so I ate a lot of it. Especially the yogurt.

Ms. Pacman

Ever since I was around three years old I've loved videogames. Most guys like videogames, I guess. So whenever I see an arcade machine, I want to play it, even if it's a really simple game without any mission other than to increase your score. While working at the restaurant they had three arcade machines inside. The first one was a golfing game that nobody ever played(Who wants to play that? Unless of course it's Neo Turf Masters.), the game next to that was Operation Wolf, which wasn't calibrated correctly so it played horribly. And the last game; the money maker; the gender confused sensation of the 80's; Ms. Pacman!

That wasn't my actual score, but it's close

I'm not amazing at Ms. Pacman, not compared to people who are really into it, but compared to anyone who played the machine at the restaurant I was a mad man. Sometimes I wondered how the joystick on the machine even functioned, to be honest. All these older men and women would come in and treat the joystick as if they were having an arm wrestling match, bashing it left and right as hard as they could to make Ms. Pacman move. Those joysticks function on microswitches. The harder you press doesn't mean the faster she'll move. Most people who came in were really awful at Ms. Pacman and it's not really that shocking that it was so easy to beat their high scores every day.

SHORYUKEN

Doing the same monotonous tasks over and over again, every day you work, for hours on end will begin to wear on your after a while(Unless, of course, you have severe OCD issues and work in a factory creating the berrings that go inside ballpoint pens, or something of that nature). This is why some of us find things to liven the atmosphere so as to prevent the impending doom known as mental insanity. I probably already have some of that already, but working at this place I feel increased the level of it, for a while there, at least. Anyhow. . .

At the register, especially when Frank was manning it, the receipt slips would keep printing out, and since most customers didn't want them, Frank would let them constantly print out until this long strip of paper would be hanging off the front of the register. One day I looked at it and, considering I like Street Fighter, noticed it had an uncanny resemblance to Ryu's headband. An idea sparked, causing me to snap it off, tie it around my forehead, and thus becoming a total geek. I yelled to Frank so he would look over at me to see what was up. I started yelling "HADOUKEN!" and "SHORYUKEN!" while doing the moves(I wouldn't attempt TATSUMAKI SENPUKYAKU in that kinda small space)to which Frank repeated his typical phrase, "Awww jeeeeez", while laughing quite amused.

You have to make things enjoyable sometimes, I suppose. The owner probably wouldn't have found it funny, but what did he find funny? Not much.