Gather round for another fairytale story time from Erin's magical life...
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Right before I transferred to Texas State to get my undergrad degree I worked at an electronics store. It's a pretty popular electronics store, so I won't say the name of it, but chances are everyone at one time has been there. I liked working there just fine; it was a way to save up for college because they liked to give you plenty of hours. I also met a lot of really cool people there, including a childhood friend I had lost contact with, and that was the best!
I started out working in the area that sold CDs (I forget what it's called now, maybe Media). The skinny, awkward, somehow married manager of that section, Casey, had pretty severe OCD, so if your team happened to close the store with him, everyone had to put up with several after-hours worth of watching him painstakingly line each CD and game up with razor-like precision, only to walk by it and do it all over again, complete with a judgmental glare for the rest of us. I couldn't take much more of that so I ended up transferring to be a cashier.
I had fun as a cashier; the co-workers were awesome and I enjoyed talking to the customers. Eventually management shifted and changed and that's where my actual story begins...
Part I
Our section had several different managers, Rhonda, Neesha and Kim. They all reported to the head manager, Marcus. Kim was always joking around and super fun to work with. She loved to laugh and got along with everyone. Rhonda and Neesha were best friends; they were both from Jamaica but aside from that they were night and day. Rhonda was really nice and kind to everyone, laid back, and seemed to enjoy life. Neesha was not nice to you unless you were Rhonda or another manager, and tweaked her work outfit to be super skintight khakis with knee high stiletto boots. She had a shaved head and the middle of her teeth had that model-esque gap in them. Neesha seemed to go out of her way to be mean to every cashier, and no one really knew why. We still had fun though.
One day I was ringing up a customer who had a little kid in her cart. He must have been about 3 or 4 years old. Nesha was standing at the front watching me struggle with an ever growing line, giving her usual glare. At one point she finally went to a register next to me to help with the customers. Right then the little boy points at me, and in a sing song voice (almost like he was talking to a pet), he says "Who's the pretty girl? Who's the pretty girl? YOU ARE!" At this point I'm trying not to laugh because Neesha is by now dead staring at me. The little boy's mother is trying to shush him quietly, and suddenly he starts up again with "Who's the pretty girl?" Then he turns around to Neesha, points at her, and yells, "YOU'RE NOT!". His mother is mortified, and I'm trying to keep a straight face (after being treated so badly by her I couldn't help it). Neesha begins to leave as his mother tells him, "Now you apologize to that lady." At this point Neesha turns around and waits for his apology. He looks back and forth from her to his mother several times, trying to figure out what to do, then freaks out at the thought of apologizing, refusing vehemently to do so and almost begins to cry. Neesha walks off and the boy's mother picks him up and carries him out of the store as he quickly became happy again, smiled, and blew a kiss as they turned the corner and were out the door.
It was bizarre (and funny). But that's not where this story ends.
Part II
Not long after this happened Neesha began going out of her way to badmouth me and give me bad ratings when our reviews came up, etc. Several times I tried talking to the manager, Marcus, about it, and each time he would vehemently defend her and tell me that I was making things up. I never understood why he would do that, especially since he was never there to actually see what she was doing, until one day the WHOLE story came out to me from a co-worker. Apparently word spread faster than ice cream melting in August.
The whole time this had been going on, Marcus had been cheating on his wife with Neesha. They had been sneaking around for a long time. Then one day, and no one really knew why, Neesha got in a fight with Rhonda and had Marcus fire her, which he did. Little did they both know, but Rhonda had gotten her hands on a certain "movie" that Neesha and Marcus had made. Rhonda blackmailed Marcus and Neesha and told them that if they didn't get her another management job at another location, she would call corporate as well as give the video to Marcus's wife.
A few days after that news, I left to go to school in San Marcos for the Fall semester, but a few months later I was back in town with some of my best friends. We happened to go into another location of the same electronics store where I had worked, and the minute I stepped in the door I heard my name. I looked around and WHO was walking toward me smiling? RHONDA! I was actually really happy to see her, and we hugged and talked for a few minutes- just small talk. I never saw any of them again after that.
OH- and the most important part of this story, YES! I DID use my employee discount to get a TV for my student apartment. I know you were wondering. And a DVD player too (not Bluetooth though, because college student paying her own way here). It was awesome.