This story takes place at the end of my eighth and final year at a home improvement store with an affinity for the color orange. I am about to leave not only my job, but the state for greener pastures (and a better paycheck), and I’m on my last few weeks.

During the last few years, the quality of life at my store was going downhill past the rate of terminal velocity, with bad management, zero advancement opportunities, insane demands, half-skeleton crews, and horrible self-checkout lanes that make literally every aspect of the job worse. I resolved to spend my final days doing everything in my power to drive my superiors to either alcoholism or mental breakdowns, including but not limited to:

• Randomly changing accents during transactions.
• Forgetting how to speak any known language.
• Very liberal interpretations of the dress code.
• Using a mobility cart to go through the local drive-through fast food.
• Suggesting DIY flamethrowers and military ordinance as pest control. 

One day, I am relegated to the checkout near the lumber section in the hopes of minimizing my capacity for shenanigans. While looking up the prices to hire a Mariachi Band to follow around my supervisors and play whenever they try to talk, I notice two young boys who have acquired dowel rods and are engaged in swordplay while their parents are otherwise occupied. This being decidedly unsafe, I decide to intervene in my own special way.

Me: *Heading over to the boys, waving my arms.* “WHOA, WHOA, WHOA! STOP! STOP!”

The boys look at me, a bit miffed, and I call over several of the lumber workers, all of whom have long since lost the ability to give a metric tenth of a f***.

Me: “We got a duel in aisle thirty-four. You want in on this?”

Worker #1: “Five on [kid in black shirt].”

Worker #2: “Ten on [kid in red shirt].”

Worker #3: “I’ll sit this one out.”

I queued up the Star Wars “Duel of the Fates” theme on my phone, put it to max volume, and nodded to the two kids.

Me: “Proceed.” 

They obligingly resume their sword fight, not maliciously, mind- until a supervisor comes and breaks it up. Regrettably, there was no clear victory and thus no payout, but it made for a nice diversion.

I’m now in a much better position job-wise, which is good, because I don’t think I’m going to have much luck returning to that company.

A grandma is with her little granddaughter (about three or four), sitting at a table I’m serving. It’s a small café, so I can easily overhear their conversation.

Grandma: “I have something very important to ask you, and I hope you feel you can tell me.”

Granddaughter: “Okay, Grandma.”

Grandma: “Are you a Jedi or a Sith?”

Granddaughter: *As completely serious as a little kid can be.* “I’m a Jedi.”

Grandma: *Beaming smile.* “Awesome! Me too!”

They proceed to giggle for at least two minutes.

In 2006, I worked for a natural gas pipeline as a remote data/communication gathering specialist. We hired a very talented lady just out of tech school to assist with data analysis, but found she couldn’t write a legible sentence. I offered to send her to and pay for night English writing classes, but she never applied.

I made a significant upgrade to our analysis software that saved her approximately twenty hours a week (half her work hours), and she took to it immediately, while I worked on additional upgrades.

In her annual review just a month later, I asked what additional she was doing to fill her extra time, and she nonchalantly said, and I quote: “Nothing. Just slowing down and letting my current tasks fill the day!”

OKAY….

I finished my final analysis upgrade, which made her completely unnecessary. I went to my boss and gave him a thorough review of my upgrade. He agreed that her role had been made redundant, so we called her into his office and terminated her on the spot. She gasped and sputtered, asking what we would do without her? Get more profitable since a $4,000 computer running MY program replaces your $50,000 (plus benefits, taxes, etc.) salary, works 24 hours a day, and saves us the $1,000 tuition I budgeted to pay for the night classes that you refused to take?

Customer: “What gives? The booze is all locked up!”

Me: “We’re not allowed to sell liquor after 9 PM. Beer and wine are available until midnight.”

Customer: “But we just need the vodka!”

Me: “Sorry, I can’t sell those until tomorrow.”

Customer: *Flashes some cash.* “C’mon. There must be something you can do for us.”

The two customers wink so badly it might as well be a cartoon.

Me: “I think I could help you out.”

They smile as I gesture for them to lean in close. They look confused when I start writing something down.

Customer: “What’s that?”

Me: “The mailing address to write to the local congressman to ask for legislation to be passed so drunken a**holes can get drunker.”

They did not take the address. I have it memorized now.

The store I used to work at has a front that faces west, and it’s all windows. We’re in Texas, so it’s always hot with the sun streaming in and, of course, the sun glares in our eyes and the register screens, etc.

Customer: “You should have blinds or something!”

Me: “We agree, but we’re not allowed to put blinds up.”

Customer: “Why not?!”

Me: “Some time before I worked here, when there were still blinds on the windows, a customer drove by through the parking lot, saw the blinds were closed, and instead of reasoning that it’s very sunny hence the blinds, parking and going up to see if the store was open, or calling the store to ask if it’s open, she called customer care to complain that the store was apparently closed in the middle of the day because blinds down equals store closed. Corporate responded by taking the blinds away and banning them.”

Customer: “…oh.”

Me: “Of course, you could call corporate yourself and say you’d like the blinds put back.”

Customer: “Hmm… nah, that sounds like a lot of work.”