I Worked For Crazy Men

Introduction

Just so you know, I really did work for two crazy men, so this isn’t just a title meant to draw you in.  If it were just that I would have spiced it up a little, I’d have gone with something like I worked For Two Crazy Naked Men and Their Harems of Crazy Naked Women and Took A lot of Pictures. But I didn’t, I went with I Worked For Crazy Men because I did.  So these aren’t going to be short stories with some kind of linear plot development, instead it will be some of the stuff I remember about working there.

So I should tell you a little bit about the job: I used to work in a store that bought and sold records, cds and dvds. And it was a pretty successful store except that we were always short of money. Not because of a lack of business but because of how the business was operated. When I arrived there were two owners, one we’ll call B and the other R. Eventually B drove R to what I believe was a nervous breakdown. I’m no doctor but I think anyone rocking back and forth saying ‘Fuck, Fuck, Fuck’ ad infinitum should qualify as some kind of breakdown. But maybe that’s just my opinion.

For me, I find the experiences are a lot like high school, funnier from a distance. Anyway, these are some of the things that happened, I hope you enjoy them.

#13

Notes From The Underground

B left this note for a co-worker and myself.  At that time, we were constantly short of money and were having a difficult time running the store. After complaining about it, B left us this note, which in his mind solved the problem forever. Now whenever we were short of cash, we were supposed to take this note to the bank, along with a store cheque that we’d written to ourselves and have it cashed.

The problem of course is that no bank is going to consider any note when cashing a cheque, let alone one that looked like it was written by a 3 year old. How anyone would believe that merely by presenting this note, a bank would cash a $1000 cheque is beyond me.

When I called B to say this idea was ridiculous and no one would cash the cheque, he told me I was wrong. With this note, they would cash any cheque. I said it was embarrassing to have to present a note like this. He said, “Take it to the bank.” It was as if it was some sort of magic note, written by fairies without any motor skills.

One day, with no money to operate the store, I was forced to swallow my pride and go to the bank  armed only with a cheque written out to myself  and my special magic fairy note. The employees of the bank of were amused of course. They had never seen a note like this. They passed it back and forth, spoke in hushed whispers. I believe I even heard a bit of sniggering.  Ultimately though, they refused to cash the cheque.

These were the type of ideas B was continually having. Like the idea that if he overpaid on what were at that time his GST payments, the government wouldn’t bother him if something went awry. A ridiculous assumption and a waste of money.

B really belonged in a small town. One of those towns where everyone knew each other and so when you went to the bank with a note like this they would know that it was just eccentric old B and they would chuckle at the note and cash the cheque.  There he would be colourful, one of the town eccentrics that everyone knew was a bit crazy but not dangerous.

I know because as a youngster I lived in one of those towns for a few years. It was a small town in Nova Scotia. We had moved there from Halifax because my father had been transferred. In that town was a small department store called Cox’s Department store. It was owned by old Mr. Cox whose family owned quite a bit of the town. Now old Mr. Cox was about 200 years old and moved accordingly. Everyone in the town knew about him. His sole purpose in life was to sneak up on the women who were shopping in his store and pinch their bums. It was no big deal in the town because, as I say, everyone knew. And he actually walked at a glacial rate much like that old Tim Conway character on the Carole Burnett show, so he was very easy to avoid. When he got too close the women when they were shopping, they would move to another aisle, he would follow, and when things were safe, they’d move back to the aisle they really wanted to look in.

However, when my mother went to the store for the first time, she was not aware of the ground rules for shopping at Cox’s. So when she saw this ancient proprietor shuffling towards her, she didn’t give it a second thought. That is until he pinched her bottom. Then she moved. Afterwards the employees took her aside and explained  the ground rules when shopping at Cox’s.

In this small town everyone knew about Mr. Cox, he was colourful and eccentric, so people just dealt with it. He could do pretty much as he wanted and people would say, ‘ he’s Mr. Cox being Mr. Cox.’ This is where B belonged. Where his crazy cures for dandruff and his nutty notes would be accepted. Not in the city though. So maybe a case could be made that it wasn’t so much that he was crazy, but rather geographically challenged.

#12

It’s For The Ladies

Working in a music store was a lot like being a bartender. Sure you bought and sold music but you also interacted with everyone who came into the store. And many people came in for that interaction. For some it was just a ‘hi and good-bye’: others required more. They wanted to discuss baseball, business, the unfairness of life, health, plans for the future, family problems, whatever: each had their own needs. Some would come in once a day, some once a month. Everyone though was looking for some sort of validation.

There was one customer who would come in once a week and he loved soul music. He always played several discs and bought a few. All the while gabbing away about nothing in particular.

One day he came in as proud as Yahweh on the seventh day because he had just made a compilation cd of his favourite music. Now when I say favourite, I really mean songs with a funky, sexy feel. In addition he said he had made a cover for it and he would show us next time, if we wanted to see it.  He wanted us to say yes, our job was to say yes, and so we said yes.

The next week he came in again with a cover he made for cd. Now I have to say that I was not in that day and I never saw the cover and so can only go by how it was described to me. Basically it was him in bed, naked with strategically placed blankets to hide his manhood. The description reminded me of Michelangelo’s Last Judgment after it was repainted or as the Catholic Church said ‘corrected’ in the 1560s. This censored version looks like a hurricane touched down on washday which also happened to be the day the world ended, swept through a backyard full of drying towels and blew them into an oncoming rush of the resurrection whereupon they all came to rest in the genital area of both the elect and the damned. So it was with his blanket, some how it had gravitated to his genital area to give him what he considered a sexy look.

When we asked him what cd was for he replied “Its for the ladies, ho, ho, ho, ho.”. Apparently he was giving this as a gift to all his lady friends. Anyone who had the unfortunate combination of being both a woman and an acquaintance was to be given this as a reward. And when he said the phrase ‘it’s for the ladies, ho, ho, ho, ho’ it sounded like Santa Claus impersonating Barry White. It always creeped me out however he thought he was being sexy. So I’ve done my best to impersonate him. Give it a play and you decide. Creepy or sexy?

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#11

The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and The Crazy Man Behind the Counter

I’ve said several times that B mismanaged the store so that we were continually short of cash. Here’s a good example of what I mean.

B was working one Sunday. He had just bought a copy of ‘The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover’ on dvd and had left it on the desk. A customer came in, a man B disliked, in fact hated. I use the term hate because that’s the word B used. Why he hated this man, I don’t know. Granted he could be mildly annoying, he was one of those guys who always talked at you and never to you.  And no matter what you were doing, whether you were engaged with another customer or just swamped from the day-to -day running of the store, he would talk at you. This wasn’t that unusual though as many of our customers had a tendency to do this and to my mind, it was just part of the job. Just another lonely collector trying to make some form of human contact. So while at times I found him annoying, I never understood the hate part.

So this customer comes into the store and sees ‘The Cook, the Thief”… blah blah blah on the desk.

“Is that for sale?” he asks.

“Yeah,” says B.

‘How much?”

B looks at him. “It’s out of print, so it’s expensive. It goes for about $75 on line.”

“Yeah? How much then?”

“$13.99”

The guy is ecstatic. He starts to talk at B, tells him how much he loves the film, what a great price it is, how happy he is to get a copy and on and on and on.

I only know this story because the next day, B told it to me. When he told me what he sold it for, I just looked at him. It felt like a half hour but I’m certain it was only a couple of seconds.

Finally I found the words, “You sold it for $13.99?”

“Yeah.”

“Last time we got $35, most places sell it for double that.”

“Yeah, that’s what I told him.”

“So?”

“I hated the guy.”

The sentence was said with such finality that I knew it was meant to be the last word on the subject. It was as if this was the ultimate piece in his argument, an argument so convincing that I would be forced to throw my hands in the air and bow to the awesome nature of his mental powers. In a sense it did work. I was stymied and it did make me walk away. But all I could think of when I was walking away was ‘thank God he hated the guy, otherwise he might have paid him to take the dvd away.’

#10

Cleanliness Thy Name is Insanity

A customer came into the store. After looking around for a while, he came over to the counter. One of my co-workers was there cleaning a cd with a lint free soft cloth.

“Are those rags wet?” he asked.

“No, they’re dry.”

“Can I spit on them?”

I quickly came to the conclusion that there are no witty rejoinders to that question and so we passed on the opportunity to acquire a sample of his saliva.

After some deliberation, I’ve come to the conclusion that the customer was acting on some kind of rogue maternal impulse.  As a child whenever my mother and I were out in public, if at any point she saw a hint of dirt on my face, she would immediately spit into a Kleenex and wipe the smudge into oblivion. Being continually on the wrong side of the offending Kleenex however, I can assure you, you never feel cleaner.

I believe that some how this man had come to share some of my mother’s DNA and was overcome by the same misplaced impulse. Subsequently whenever he saw dirt, he instantly had an overwhelming urge to spit on any material in the immediate vicinity and clean.  So while I don’t blame him, I do pity his children.

#9

The Grass is Always Greener

At the height of the feud between R and B, B would regularly threaten to go and open a new store.  I was talking to a co-worker about this one day. I asked him where B wanted open this store.

“Little India” he said.

I looked at him “What’s he going to call it, ‘Who’s Sari Now’?”

#8

Round and Round and Round We Go

I find it amazing how what is considered ‘normal’ can shift over time to become something unrecognizable. A good example is the duct-taping and humiliation of city employees in Mississauga. Sadly, though, you don’t need to search the newspapers to find examples of this kind of behavior.  Near the end of my time at the store, I was perplexed at how working conditions had deteriorated over time. What was once a fun, well-paying job had become a nightmare with two bosses unable to reign in their worst impulses.

B hated notes from R. It didn’t matter much about the content, whenever he would see a note it would infuriate him. Leaving a note was like waving a red flag at a bull or booking Moby at a folk festival, there was only one outcome: hostility. If a note were left on the turntable, he would smash the turntable cover as soon as he spied it. If it were taped to the counter, he would tear the note off scratching the desk, literally leaving claw marks in the wood.

R on the other hand, would become incensed every time B bought unnecessary product, which was pretty much every day. His way of showing displeasure was to nail the unwanted product to the wall in the staff room as a warning to all. Records, cds, whatever, if R didn’t like it, he nailed it to the wall. Going into the staff room was like entering the territory of a tribe of headhunters but instead of shrunken craniums being the medium of the message, U2 albums and unremastered Who cds took their place. He railed against wastage while destroying hundreds of dollars worth of stock in a misguided attempt to stop wastage.

Perhaps R was just paying homage to the Romans and their favorite form of execution. Whatever it was, it sapped the morale of the staff. Foolishly I pointed out that all this nailing and smashing was costing us money at a time when we had very little to spare. This of course was greeted with looks of incredulity. It was as if I was dressed as a Martian, was speaking Urdu and using my tail as a third hand to enable me to smoke a hookah. So on went the nailing and smashing, smashing and nailing, and nailing and smashing until they eventually tired of that mode of expression and devolved to something else.

#7

Take a Letter Maria

Music is a powerful art form. It can motivate people, calm their nerves and even facilitate an emotional catharsis. I know at various stages in my life, I’ve played certain records or cds over and over and over as if somehow they had become the soundtrack to my life. When I was a moody teenager, I played Jackson Browne’sLate For the Sky continually one summer and later as an adult whenever I was looking to calm myself, I’d reach for Brian Eno’s album Music for Airports. Bach’s Cello Suites, Nanci Griffith’s The Last of the True Believers, Keith Jarrett’s The Köhn Concert and John Martyn’s Solid Air are just a few of the recordings that have anchored in time certain episodes in my life.

I mention this because working in a music store, I have found many strange things that people have left inside album jackets.  Notes to loved ones, hand written song lyrics, birthday greetings, grocery lists, photos of naked people, photos of people partially clothed, photos of people fully clothed, record reviews, bad poetry, and even lists of people’s names.  The lists of names have often intrigued me and I’ve speculated on what they could be; a random list of names, good people, a Christmas list, a hit list or perhaps a list of people who say the word ‘irregardless’ . In any case, I’ve always been intrigued by found memories.

My favorite of all my finds is a sad little hand written note. Now why would this note engage me more than the naked photos or the scathing record reviews of milestone recordings?

I guess it is because this note confirms my belief in the power of music. I’ve always imaged this scenario as to the origins of the note: some guy comes home heart broken. He immediately reaches for his favorite recording and listens to it while composing this note. The only thing missing are a few well-placed tearstains.

So I’ve scanned the original note and transcribed it for those who wish an easier read.

Sexual Lepar

“just friends” is a consolation prize

I’ll only ever be “just friends” with women

being “just friends” means I am pointless (sexually women don’t and therefore pointless)

I am worthless

I have no sexual value I am a sexual lepar

There are a lot of things you can say about the poem but I will limit myself to just two.  I especially love the snowman at the bottom of the page. Nothing says sexual lepar like translucent ice crystals packed together into a number of misshapen spheres and crowned with a hat. And finally I believe that some higher power was at work in getting this note to B’s store. Over the years B has turned misspelling into an art form and waged an unrelenting war on syntax. Speed was always more important than accuracy. So a note which throws punctuation to the wind and corrects the correctly spelled leper and turns it into lepar was meant to come to our store.  A serendipitous convergence in the universe allowed this note to finally go home.

As a side note if you are interested there is a web site that talks about  stuff found in records. Check it out.

http://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2008/11/items-found-in.html

#6

Pick a Roach, Any Roach

One Saturday, B and I were working when a customer brought in a knapsack, put it on the desk and said he wanted to sell some cds. The knapsack was lying on its side, so instead of sitting it upright, I just opened it. Immediately a herd of cockroaches scurried out of the bag. I’m not sure that herd is the correct scientific term.  They certainly weren’t a flock, they were too haphazard to be a group and they lacked the required attitude to be a gang, so I will continue with the term herd. As soon as the herd of roaches bolt across the desk, B started to yell, “Kill them! Kill them! Kill them!”

What was disturbing was that none of the other customers bothered to look up, it was as if the phrase “Kill them! Kill them! Kill them!” was not out of the ordinary for them. That for some reason, the idea of another’s impending death did not interest them in the least.

Anyway as B was yelling, I lifted the knapsack and he began to smash the little devils into another plane of existence. After a multitude of well-placed smacks, our little genocide was complete, so I started to close the bag.

“What are you doing?” B demanded.

“Putting this away. I don’t want to rummage through this. Besides there might be more of them in there and the last thing we need is to be infested.”

“Gimme that,” he said.

“You’re not serious.”

But serious he was. After all, he was the guy who bought everything and, by God, a plague of insects was not going to stop him from buying a 5th copy of Abba’s ‘Greatest Hits’.

#5

MR. FUCK

R was a strange fellow. Being an honest man, he always wanted to make sure that anyone who was selling us cds or dvds was not selling stolen items. He often relied on his so-called ‘spidey sense’. “My ‘spidey sense’ is tingling,” he’d say as he turned someone away.

His problem was that his ‘spidey sense’ was quite defective. It may well have been manufactured by Toyota and he sadly missed the recall. Still R went on and on about his great ‘spidey sense’.

There was this one guy who R always suspected. A middle age man who once every couple of weeks would bring in dvd’s to sell. R was certain he was selling stolen product. The only problem was that the guy never exhibited any of the tell-tale signs. He was never nervous, the product was definitely used, he could always answer any question about his films (proving he had watched them) and the selection of dvds he brought in was consistent in regards to taste. The rest of the staff was baffled, yet R was certain this poor guy was a crook.

One day after he sold a couple of dvds, R followed him out of the store to his car. Within a few minutes he came running back into the store “He’s definitely selling stolen things, I knew it, my ‘spidey sense’ in never wrong.”

“How do you know?” I asked.

“His car had rust. How could a guy with rust afford dvds? “

R was to logic what Stalin was to economic planning. Long after R had left, this guy continued to come in and there was never a problem.

Then there was the case of Mr. FUCK.  Mr. FUCK had been a customer for about a year or so.  A reasonably nice guy at the beginning but it turns out Mr. FUCK had problems. At some point after starting to shop at the store he had become an addict. The bad part of that for Mr. FUCK was that he would buy a few cds one week and then have to sell them the next in order to pay for his habit. While it was a bit of a bonanza for the store, it became quite expensive for Mr. FUCK. Finally he had tired of this merry-go-round of buying and selling and came up with a solution to his problems. Now, a rational person might think about quitting. This however, was not the resolution Mr. FUCK came up with. Instead he decided to write the word ‘FUCK’ across the paper sleeves of all his cds and, that way, he would be unable to sell them to anyone. In fact, he had asked me if someone did something like this would we buy them?  On course, I said we wouldn’t. So off he went, bought a permanent ink marker and had himself a little arts and craft time from hell.

The problem was, when he needed a little snort, he came back in with his now specially monogrammed cd’s. We, true to our word, refused to buy them. He badgered us unrelentingly but we held our ground. So then he went home and scratched out the offending word as best he could with what looked like his fingernails and then tried to sell them to us again. At this point, everyone on staff was feeling a bit uneasy about Mr. Fuck and told R. We thought he was unstable and we were more than a little worried for our safety, not to mention the difficulty we had in dealing with some guy strung out and needing money to get his fix.

“No”, R said, “he’s fine, my ‘spidey sense’ says so and my ‘spidey sense’ is never wrong”. These positive affirmations of his obviously defective sixth sense reassured no one. So worry we did.

Shortly after this, we caught him stealing the paper sleeves for cd covers (you figure out why) and even with that R refused to listen. “He’s okay,” he’d say, “my ‘spidey sense’ says so.”

We had to catch him stealing a second time before R finally relented and Mr. FUCK was banned from the store. Still R would constantly talk about his ‘spidey sense’ always overlooking its rather spotty history.

#4

HAIRDOS AND DON’TS

B always had something to say about your appearance, he would comment on hair or clothes fairly regularly which I found odd coming from a man who would often as not wear a pajama top in place of a regular shirt. I believe that he was a regular contributor to ‘The Rummy’s Guide to Fashion’ however, I must admit I have no physical proof.

One day I was working with him and all of a sudden he started scratching his head. I asked him what was up. “Dandruff” he said.

“Yeah I can’t stand it. I need to get something for it.” he continued and he abruptly left.

He returned about 10 minutes later with a bag. I watched as he pulled a bottle of olive oil out.  “This’ll fix it,” he said as he poured a bit onto his scalp. After massaging it in he glanced up. He looked like an ad for pomade gone horribly wrong, he did however have the faint aroma of a Greek salad. And that’s how he worked the rest of the day.

As a side note, if you are interested in trying this look, let me tell you that it was extra virgin but not cold pressed. And the great news is that if you do try this and it doesn’t work, at least you can make supper.

#3

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

A customer walked into the store one day with a bunch of cds to sell. He had open wounds and scabs all over his arms and face. He dropped the bag on the counter and said, “I want to sell these cds. I need to get some money to buy my Ferret some food.”

My co-worker looked at him ‘How’s it going with the ferret?’ he asked.

“Not so good.”

#2

THAT’S HOW I SPELL IT

We bought and sold cds but sadly because there are many people who like to steal, we were forced to leave empty cd cases in the sections. This meant that we had to file the cds behind the counter, so that when someone brought up a cd to buy, we would fill it. In theory, we filed the cds alphabetically behind the counter. I say theory because B was unable to file. Everyone makes mistakes but with B it was beyond belief. He was mildly dyslexic, inserted letters that were not there, could barely write and believed that speed was more important than accuracy.  My favourite misfile had to do with Bill Cosby. Every time someone would bring a Bill Cosby cd to the counter, I couldn’t find it.  Every time. Eventually I found a bunch of Bill Cosby cds together but they were filed as if the were spelled Bill Crosby. One day I pointed this out to B.  I told him where I had found them and then I mentioned that Cosby is not spelled with an ‘r’. B merely looked at me and said “That’s how I spell it”. There after whenever I looked for Bill Cosby, I always started looking in the Crosby section.

#1

THE GUY WHO BUYS EVERYTHING

The dynamic between B and R was always very interesting to watch as they were opposites. B always wanted to buy everything while R was much more conservative.  This worked quite well for a while but eventually B became obsessed with buying to the point that R  stopped buying almost entirely. I remember one day when I was working with R, some guy walked in with a bag of the worst cds mankind has seen. We looked through them and had to pass on the entire collection. The guy then looked up and said “when does the guy who buys everything work?”. That was the beginning of the end for