Ugly : clifford a.u

Michael

Here’s the thing about being blind.

Finding a job isn’t exactly easy.

I mean, working in food was a no, folding clothes and organizing them by color? Uh-uh. Working in a store, stocking shelves and pointing people to items I can’t see? Not a great idea. There aren’t a whole lot of jobs for people like me, which was how I ended up a bagger at Olaf’s grocery store.

It wasn’t a horrible job, cramming boxes, cans a plastic baggies of fruit and vegetables into paper or plastic bags.

I got sympathy from old ladies, earned laughter from guys my age, and received sympathetic tsks and unwanted pats on the arm from busy Mothers.

I’m not going to say I was the best bagger Oflaf’s had ever seen in its sixty years of business, but that being said I was pretty damn good.

I never broke the eggs or smashed the bread, I struck up conversation with annoyed husbands and boyfriends dragged along to the store by their significant others, and I handed out stickers to little kids. Which is probably why I’d earned the title bagger of the month four months in a row.

A title I promised myself my co-workers would have to pry from my cold dead hands, if they ever wanted it. But that wasn’t a really concern, the competition wasn’t all the stiff.

There was Darla and Diana, a set of twins who were autistic savants, which came in handy if you needed to know the precise date of Elvis Presley’s birth and death, or know the day of the week your fiftieth birthday would fall on. They were quiet woman, mostly keeping to themselves so you never knew to which you were talking to, however on their shared birthday they always brought donuts which was a  welcome treat.

Another member of the bagger bunch, our so called gang, which was really just how our boss Coleen referred to us, was Bruce. Bruce was forty and had down syndrome, however that didn’t stop him from hitting on costumer of the female gender, it didn’t matter if she was eighteen or eighty, if she had boobs and a pulse, Bruce was on the case.

Then there was Ilene. Ilene talked in one of those intentionally deep voices which screams, ‘I’m so bored and annoyed by the world in general right now I want to scoop out my eyeballs with a plastic spork’. She smelled strongly of cigarettes however tried to cover it by marinating in cheap perfume, which just caused her to smell like a cheap hooker.  I think she was around my age, but I’d never asked since she didn’t seem like the type of individual morally against punching a blind guy in the face.

And finally, there was Duke. Duke was adopted from China and had an accent so thick, I once had to have him repeat himself fourteen times before I realized he was saying the word Mommy, and not telling me about a Mermaid. Through our short, infrequent conversations I’d learned that he went to college online so he could have a better job by the time his pregnant girlfriend had their twins. I had no idea how he intended to raise twins on our meager, below minimum wage, bagger salary, however his parents were loaded as guns, so it didn’t seem to be an issue.

I wouldn’t call any of my fellow baggers friends, however they weren’t enemies either, they were colleagues. I respected them, they, more or less, respected me and none of us wanted to rip each other’s hair out, so it was good. It also helped that we all shared a common enemy.

Colleen Glover.

Colleen was just one of those people you hate before they even open their mouth. She was small, almost humorously so, I could tell by the way her high pitched, whiny, nasal voice came from down nearby my navel whenever she spoke.

She reeked strongly of expensive perfume and had chronic butt breath. At first I thought she’d just had a rough morning and had forgotten to brush her teeth when she came into work. I then convinced myself it was something she was eating, or perhaps her toothpaste. However after months of nearly gagging on the dirty air leaving her mouth, which rivaled the penguin exhibit at the zoo in vulgarity, I had come to the conclusion that it was more than likely an unfortunate medical issue.