Not everything at work is a negative. Most of my co-workers are great to be around, I make decent enough money for what I do, and I honestly enjoy helping people with the problems that they bring me. That last one is by far the most satisfying part of my day, when I can give a customer who is having a crappy day either good news, or at least point them in the direction that will make things better. And for what it’s worth, I get a lot of good feedback from my customers who are grateful, appreciative or are at least understanding and thankful for your help. Yes, I do get the occasional asshole, but that happens no matter where you go or what you do, so I can shrug them off.

Then there are the really happy people, the ones who react in ways that you couldn’t have ever expected. As a person, I don’t mind excitement or what I call “overly happy”, where your inhibitions are bypassed and you just joyfully react. That actually brightens my day and maybe gives me a little chuckle, knowing that I made someone’s day that much better, when really all I did was use a little knowledge and a slightly upgraded Speak-and-Spell to find the answer they were looking for.

The far end of this phenomenon I refer to as PCH (Publisher’s Clearing House) Syndrome. These people are so excited that they have found what they are looking for that they go into a near-uncontrolled mania that affects any and nearly everyone who is in the store. You wouldn’t think that you’d see someone’s “I just won the freakin’ Lottery!” face in a parts store, but it’s happened numerous times.

The first time it happened, a Black lady in her early 40’s came in the store complaining about loud whining noise coming from her 1999 Buick Regal. She had just purchased the car and was real worried that her car had something major wrong with it. A quick investigation found that the Eaton M90 supercharger on her V6 was working just fine, and that she should probably plan on having the blower serviced in about five thousand miles for basic maintenance. When I told her that, she got this puzzled look on her face and asked, “That’s it?” To prove it, I revved it a couple of times and pointed out the source of the noise and explained “blower whine” and the maintenance schedule to her. The second it clicked in her head that her car was just fine, she exploded into the kind of euphoria I would expect from a Sunday church choir, screaming, laughing, dancing…and then she gave me a hug that I’m damned sure jarred a rib or two and lifted me off of the ground. At nearly 300 lbs, that’s not a small feat. I learned from my co-workers later that her celebration was so loud that several customers stopped in their tracks and looked outside. Hallelujah, there was no demon in your Regal, but the almighty power of the blower! A-MEN!

Next time, a guy comes in looking for a seat cover for his truck. But not just any seat cover, oh, no…one with the pouches in the front, where your knees would be, built-in to the seat cover. He’s been all over the area and was quoted a custom job at $150 for the set. They must be gray saddle-blanket style. I’m quietly laughing to myself, since that particular setup has been around for decades…my dad actually had that exact type in his ’69 F-100 when I was just a tyke! Bonus, I know we have them in the back, so I point them out as I’m answering phones. And the guy is starting to get wound up…so wound up that I’m wondering what drugs he’s on. He scans the boxes, then excitedly yanks one down, starts murmuring and cursing to himself, reads, pauses, and his eyes go huge. He runs up to the counter and asks if he can pull the cover out of the box to see if it has the pouches. Normally that’s a no-no, but just for the entertainment value alone, I’ll buy the covers if he doesn’t, so I open the box, unfurl the seat cover, and sure enough, there they are.

That’s when things get downright weird. He snatches up the seatcover in a hug and holds it to his face, as if he’d been waiting years to see one. I swear, at one moment I thought I saw a tear. He then hurriedly rolls up the cover, jams it into the box so hard that he ripped the box halfway down one side, and bear-hugs me while going, “Thank you, thank you, thank you…” I’m standing there in pure shock, having narrowed the drug selection this guy chose down to either coke or meth. A second or two goes by before he backs off and tells me (with tons of swearing thrown in) that he’s been looking for this type of seatcover for two years and …honestly, he went on for minutes but I phased all of it out as I rang him up to get him the hell out of the store. He freaked me out! He was going on loudly, like a kid at Christmas with Tourette’s Syndrome who had just gotten exactly what he had asked Santa for. Satiated, he takes the seatcover and leaves, and things get back to normal…for thirty minutes, which is where he returns, explaining that he bought one for a small truck when he needed one for a full-size. To keep a long story short, he found the one he needed and except the hug, repeated his actions verbatim. When he finally left for good, the Store Manager came out of his office, walked up to me and quietly said, “You see all types here…”

(The new UPCG photo is amazing….how many kids freaked out and hauled ass out of the park when they saw this going on?! — BangShift approved! -Ed.)