Work memory # 33: the shoe department

Spring 2009

Journal entry

I have been working away like a little beaver (or some other small diligent animal) in the shoe department at [redacted]. I don’t know what the story is with that shoe department.

A salesman left one of his customers to try on shoes alone while he got into a long, loud discussion with the other shoe salesman about some blind carpenter.

“He was blind but there was never a better carpenter! He could build anything you wanted! And he was blind! That is the main thing!”

Why is everything that happens in my life like something that would happen in a weird post-modern literary work? Maybe studying Comparative Literature prepared me for the real world after all.

The shoe department at [x] store could be in a story by Flannery O’Connor. A plot concerning a crazy Bible thumping Protestant and a bitter atheist unfolds each night next to the Michael Kors pumps.

Last night Bible Girl (hereafter known as BG) tried to convert the bitter middle-aged atheist guy. “We live in a sinful and broken world! But that is why Jesus came!”I can’t deal with much at this point in my life, so while they debated this, I went into the stock room and tried on snakeskin pumps.

BG will randomly start singing and say things like, “I really think they named these shoes after the apostle, Peter! they look very Biblical!”

They are so wack I am considering starting a blog about it. Except I worry that the manager would somehow come across it while surfing the Web and instantly realize that it was about the Boston store. Then there would be the inevitable summons to HR. “J, I’d like to bring up a couple of things…”

One of the guys in the shoe dept. asked if BG was dating anyone and she replied, “I am dating the Lord!” At which the bitter middle-aged atheist snorted, “Well, what’s he gonna do for you?” She ignored him.

BG has been carrying around both a copy of the Bible and a book called “Bad Girls of the Bible and What We can Learn from Them.” I don’t even want to know about this..though at church one Sunday the sermon was actually about all these prostitutes in the Bible and what they did within the story of God’s salvific plan. (Of course, our Episcopal priest also brought in a live lamb one Sunday to illustrate “Jesus the Good Shepherd.” Baa!)

Ironically, I almost got into a fight with Bible Girl over the shoe warehouse ladder. “You better not be messin’ with me, honey!” she snarled in my direction.

Bitch, please, what would Jesus do? It’s a fucking ladder!