What Is She Doing With Those Pens?

(I am a supervisor at a local grocery store. We have just hired a bunch of new cashiers, many of whom are minors. As I’m walking over to tell one of our new girls to close so that I can have her till counted and her punched out on time, I overhear her and her customer talking about school supplies. My cashier is high-school age; the customer looks to be about in her mid-thirties and is buying a bunch of pens and pencils that we have on sale.)

Cashier: “I always buy way more pens than I need but always manage to lose them.”

Customer: “Right! It’s such a fetish! We all buy so many pens and pencils and then don’t know what to do with them!”

(The lady was super cheery and the cashier, to her credit, just kept the conversation going without missing a beat. But we both had a good laugh about it after the customer was gone.)