I choose you!

We had a pretty slow day recently. There was no one in the store except the four people on shift. While one person was in the back a man came in. He saw three of us clustered up chatting together. We all turned smiles on him and he pretended to be taken aback, exclaiming, "There's more of you than anyone else in the store!" We all laughed and he approached us, looking us all over like we were products he wanted to buy. I almost expected him to open up our mouths and check our teeth like they do with horses to tell their age.

Hmm, looks to be in her twenties, lightly used, good education

After another beat he points at our male coworker and says, "I choose you!" He then walks off, confident that the chosen employee will follow after him to attend to his needs. Me and the remaining girl look at each other both amused and offended. "Do you feel like a Pokemon?" she asked. "I was thinking that exact same thing- dibs on the fire starter!" Beaming at the thought of Charmander, I waited for her choice. She thought then said, "Water." I nodded. We chuckled about it all while we waited for our male associate to return. When he rejoined us I tsked and said, "Look who got stuck as the plant starter." After we explained the situation he began complaining loudly, "I want to be fire!" I shook my head gravely, "Too bad man, that guy picked the grass starter, cause I called dibs on fire."

No one loves you bulbasaur. No one.

The Pill Case

Despite widespread skepticism about aphrodisiacs, we do a booming business in them. At STORE we keep ours in a locked case, and the main people who buy them are guys. It's always the same body language when guys ask us to open the case. At the moment, there's only one guy working at STORE. When a man comes in and asks for a pill, he will then back up a good distance and wait to be rung up. But when girls open the case guys will always stand uncomfortably close, and I can only imagine that they really like our head's vicinity to their crotches. In almost every instance, men will stand right where we're opening the case, despite the fact that we never hand them a pill, they have to come up to the register, and almost all of them are regulars who know that. If we get too uncomfortable there are different techniques for opening the case, but all of them have disadvantages. 

The most practical is just trying to ignore them. They stand with their crotch  right up close to your face and smile and smile. It's like, man, if you think a blowjob is having a chick leaning over next to your fully clothed junk, I don't think you're using these pills right. We fume with resentment, but asking them to step back almost never works. Some regulars are nice but most float around in our bubble.

Mmm, let me just thrust my crotch at your obviously unhappy face

The next tactic is crouching fully down. It doesn't accentuate your butt, but you do have to be careful of the shirt of the day, because anything with boob access doesn't work well with this position. Kneeling down however puts you at a disadvantage. Most men will take this opportunity to ask questions just so they can see you looking up at them, and subconsciously lean over, looming like some sex crazed giant.

Do you like being below me? Cause it looks like you do.

 The last tactic is sometimes effective if you're just sick of crotches in your face, but not if you don't like being ogled. You turn your back to the guy to open the case and use a passive aggressive elbow to clear some space for yourself. This will make them back up, but simultaneously makes them remember you have an ass. One Halloween dressed as Harley Quinn a guy told me he was going to follow me to the counter just so he could extend his eyeful. These days I only wear shapeless Value Village pinstripe pants that make me look like a 1920's gangster, but it doesn't really deter men on principle alone it seems.

Oh look, you're female and have a butt, let me look at the place where I think it is.

These days I just try to tune it out and ignore people who look like they're heading straight for the case, something I make harder for myself by being the most knowledgeable about the active ingredients in all the pills we carry. Someday I'll snap and punch them in the crotch. When they react with affront I'll say maybe they shouldn't be in range.

My Week

It's been a pretty bizarre week.

Monday:

I won't make eye contact with you for anything, I'll just lurk for two hours

 This guy comes in, with long brown hair, looks like he's trying to cross dress which might go better if he didn't have a huge bald pate. He has three diamond studs in each ear, and a single tooth. When I approach to talk to him he won't make eye contact, and it seems he's barely on this plane of reality, so I leave him alone. He's the only one in the store, so I pick up my book. After lurking through each section of the store he comes up and gives off the weirdest vibes. There is no word in English to express his demeanor, but it was as if he was defiantly-awkwardly-preening, daring me to make fun, but simultaneously coquettish. He asked, while being a weird jumble of things, "What size do you think I wear here?" Without batting an eye I said, "Probably a large or an extra-large." I expected him to then go away into lingerie, but he just stared at me, waiting for me to elaborate, then finally asks, "And where are those?" Resigned I explained lingerie was divided by color, not size, so anything that took his fancy he had only to look for those sizes in each rack. He continued to stare so I grabbed a large and an extra-large green sequin baby-doll and hustled him into a dressing room to check his sizes. When he came out he was beaming. "I'm an extra large. I have a photo shoot coming up, so I'll certainly be back tomorrow." Haven't seen him since.

Tuesday:

In my delusions, I'm in the Olympics winning all the turkey

A homeless man came in, scruffy and in numerous jackets, he struck a pose when entering the store like he'd just stuck the landing in the pole-vault, and proclaimed, "da-NUH!" and then left.

Wednesday:

Don't worry dear, I'm sure he'll stop crying and poop the bog of eternal stench soon

A woman brings in her baby. We can't allow strollers so she's forced to wake him and carry him around with her while she browses lingerie. When the baby wakes up he starts crying. She passes him off to her friend who coos and rocks to no avail. She comes up to retrieve the pacifier from the stroller and I look on in anticipation. I can't stand babies, and I didn't expect to encounter as many as I do working in a sex store. It's also just bad business having them cry in the store, because it reminds people of the most awful thing that can happen if you fuck up. With the pacifier the baby quiets for almost a minute and I start to relax again when to my horror, in slow motion I can see the baby open its mouth and the pacifier starts falling to the floor and I can hear a distorted slow-mo cry of, "Noooo!" and it's me, and I dive but the binky hits the ground. He starts crying again and in desperation I offer the lady use of the private employees only bathroom to wash the pacifier and she does so. I think I can relax when he's got the pacifier again, but no, it was on the ground again in no time.

Thursday:

I'm crazy and drunk, and I probably kill toons, can I do yoga on your sex couch?

A man comes in plastered. He looks like the villain from Who Framed Roger Rabbit except less well dressed, tall, with a wide brimmed hat, and sunglasses. Drunk, he asks the Assistant Manager to call him a cab. When she does the wait for cabs is over an hour and he says to forget it. She offers to call another service, eager to get rid of him, but he declines and wanders drunkenly around the store. He tells everyone loudly how he's moving to Montana tomorrow, bothering customers and staff alike. The AM tells me he came in when she opened and asked to use the bathroom, already drunk, and she refused. So he returned hours later to harass customers. He comes over to me as I'm helping two ladies check out, blatantly eavesdropping. I apologized with my eyes and turned to deal with him. "Wha's that?" he points to our position couch. "It's a couch for different positions, just takes the weight off and make a lot of positions easier." He nods, "C'n I do some yoga on it? I jus' wanna do s'me stretches." "No" I say, taking a tough line. "Oh... do y'have any magazines?" I point and he nods, leaning over the counter at me. "Wha's your name?" my smile is brittle as I say, "I don't give my name to customers" and walk away to put a product back. I hear him mumbling to himself as I busy myself around the store. When he comes to check out he can't seem to stop talking, "'M movin' to Montana soon, jus' havin' a last hurrah aroun' town before I go, shut up shut up, d'ya like Montana Miss No-Name? Shut up, shut up Hey, I'm Mister No-Name." I hand him his change and pretend I can't hear him telling himself to shut up. We're all pretty sure we'll see him next week when he realizes he spent all his Montana money on booze.

Friday:

Please sir, just take the bag

 I'm lounging at the front chatting to a coworker. Everyone has been talked to and we're just being silly when this guy comes up with a cheap dildo and a DVD. He's speaking something that is is almost but not entirely gibberish. She  tells him his total and he pays, but things get sticky around when she tries to bag his items. He keeps gesturing at the dildo and miming taking it out. Confused, my coworker asks if he doesn't want a bag, if he doesn't want the packaging. After failing utterly to communicate, she slides the toy across to him. He opens the package and shoves the garbage at her to throw away. She attempts to bag the DVD and meets the same resistance. Concerned that the DVD would get scratched without a case, she offers him a paper sleeve to cover it with and he refuses. He shoves the CD into his inside jacket pocket. As we watch he takes the dildo and does the same. I can only imagine he was hiding it there for ready access in case he needs to smack someone in the face with a dildo.

20lb Ass

So we sell these fully realistic female butts. They have a hole for anal or vaginal and weigh 20lbs. They cost about $500 with tax, but I've now sold three of them and each person handled how to transport it differently. The first one I sold the guy was pretty embarrassed and since none of our bags were big enough he had us cut up store bags to wrap around it. That seemed totally normal.

The second guy I sold one to was completely cavalier about the whole process. He knew he wanted it, he wasn't ashamed and when I offered the cut up bag option he shrugged and just hoisted the thing into his arms and said he didn't need a bag.

The most recent one was last night. Of all the guys he was by far the most sketchy. He came in twice and had both me and a coworker take it out of the box for him to see. The sucker is heavy so he was helping to move it and kept commenting on how it looked much more cartoony than on the box. I shrugged and said, "Photoshop, what can ya do?" He left both times after asking about coupons. I told him I actually had one for items over $80 but he said he'd think about it. I think I'd need time to think about keeping a 20lb ass in my closet too. But to my surprise he came back moments before we closed for the night to buy it. I offered the bag option again and he said he had a garbage bag in his car that might work. He came back with an enormous black bag and I offered to hold it open. He then opened the box and just started moving it all over into the bag. I considered it, then thought: pretty smart, now he doesn't need to dispose of an embarrassing box. The best moment was when he slung the black garbage bag across his shoulder like a weird parody of Santa as he was walking out.

What would you like little boy? Cars? No, Santa's giving you a 20lb fully realistic ass

Kanamara Matsuri (The Cock Festival)

I'm just gonna let you know right now. I learned about a festival today, and that festival is called the Kanamara Matsuri. That was not how it was explained to me.

This elderly Japanese gentleman comes up to me.  He's radiating a question as I'm crouched down re-tagging some toys so I look up and wait. Typically when speaking a language that's not your first you're slower to form sentences and you speak slowly and more quietly so mistakes go unnoticed. This also makes it infinitely harder to understand.So he approaches and I wait for him to say what he needs. His accent is pretty heavy and he's almost whispering so I stand up and lean in a little. "Have you been to Japan?" I shake my head and smile, "No, I'd love to visit, they have this temple with deer who bow to you, a friend of mine went." This sank in, and I regretted getting off topic so fast. "Did you need something?" He nods and I can see the sentence percolating in his head. "In Japan, they have shrine. Festival. It's" and he mumbled something unintelligible. "I buy for my friends. In Japan, $100, but here is much cheaper, so I send to them." I process this, and come to the best fit conclusion. A lot of people buy sex toys from us to send to friends in other countries because ours are quite a bit cheaper and there's less restrictions on them. I assumed he was just being a good friend. So I take him around and show him a few of the slimmer ones since he indicated he didn't want it to be too thick.
He was having trouble deciding between two of them and as he was thinking about it, started elaborating on the festival he mentioned. "The festival they hang these up, all around the city." He gestured at the wall of dildos. I was sure I'd misheard him. "They hang up penises? ...Really?" He nodded, "They go to shrine, hang up cocks. It's the cock festival."

I must have misheard, what do they put on shrines?

 I realized the word I hadn't understood before was cocks, he was too embarrassed to say it above a mumble the first time. "What part of Japan is this? When is this?" He shrugged, "All over, I think maybe June. They go to shrine, have festival." Resolved to learn more later I laughed and told him it sounded like a fun time. Apparently he always buys three of four dildos to send to his friends around festival time. He always gets nice ones just in case his friends use them later. Concerned over the mounting price he decided to come back later for one of our discount days. I was getting pretty fond of him when right before he left he turned to me and said, "Are you married?" I laughed nervously and shook my head, lifting my left hand and shrugging, "Not even engaged." He nodded to himself, turned and left. Really hoping he doesn't come back and propose. Best case scenario he has a grandson he wants me to meet.