I keep saying it, and I keep getting proven wrong, but I simply cannot believe the kind of stuff that goes on in the store that no customer ever knows about. I don’t mean the random pranks, or the “verbal altercations” in between the stock shelves. I don’t mean the lover’s quarrel between the store manager and the new hire who just isn’t working out as an employee. I mean the really depraved shit: pranks involving food…you sickos know what I’m talking about…wiring a battery to the delivery dispatcher’s metal chair to liven up his afternoon, and worst of all, the dares.

Compared to the work environment that a mechanic, for example, has to deal with, counter clerks have it easy. Stand in the air conditioning, do your job, go home. But random employees can up the injury chance percentage by a factor of 500% when the Good Idea Fairy bashes them in the cranium with her wand. After being out of the store for so long, I thought that I was beyond seeing this kind of stuff. Wrong.

I had to dive into a store real quick for a one-off, pain-in-the-ass shaped socket that works on one bolt in any of the cars in my fleet. I didn’t go to my normal store…no point, really, for a socket…but as soon as I walked in I found myself listening to dialogue between three clerks that meant that I was either going to be entertained or was going to call 911 in a matter of a few minutes:

“For $500, you wouldn’t do it?”

“For $500? Hell, for $50 and a long enough break to go to Wal-Mart and get some Listerine for afterwards, I’ll do it!”

“If you’re serious, I’ll go get it!”

At this point, I had to jump in. “Um, not to be a buzzkill, but paying someone $50 to put something in their mouths is illegal in this state…”

As they laughed, one spoke up: “Naw, it’s not like that. We just got in one of the nastiest oil filters you’ve ever seen, off an old tractor. If he (pointing to the youngest looking guy out of the three) takes a little bit into his mouth and swishes it around like mouthwash, he gets $500. Would you do it?”

Resisting the urge to tell him what I really would say…which sounds like “buck, doe”…I just shook my head, paid for my socket, and muttered something about “Y’all ain’t right.”

I don’t know if any store managers or workers read my words. But if you do, and you hear this kind of stupidity out of your workers, do the right and proper thing: take a garden stake and proceed to smack each and every one of them upside the head. Words won’t work anymore. They will only respond to pain.

*shaking head*….what the F….