The worst part about retail is trying to get the last customer out of the store.
I’m seventeen, I’m still at my first job in high school where I work at a department store. You know the one, it has everything from clothing to kitchen appliances to kid’s toys. I don’t really want to tell you the company but it’s one of the big ones. The store itself is big enough that we have to wear radios to talk to each other.
Anyway, this happened about a week ago. Needing the money, I volunteer to do a closing shift a week. True, it does wreck my sleep for that night and I’m out of it at school the next day but I can’t complain about the money at least.
I will complain about Wendy though. Imagine, the most annoying, pain in the ass girl at your school who loves to tell everybody how right she is and devotes all her efforts to letting you know about it…then double the annoying. That’s Wendy.
She’s twenty, I think, and she’s the closing manager at our store. Everybody hates her, I’m told, but if I want to keep getting shifts when I know there are others on the roster not even getting any, then I try my best to do as she says.
So after we closed, and everyone except me, Wendy, and Danny (some college student) were left, I just had to bring Wendy’s attention to the “LOCKED” door in the public bathrooms.
“Are you shitting me? Daniel, I thought you said there were no more customers.”
Danny shrugged his shoulders; it was his way of saying that his shift’s ended so he doesn’t care.
Wendy huffed her cheeks as if responding to his challenge. “No one leaves until we get our friend out of the store.”
“But it’s five minutes past closing. I’ve got an exam this week.” Protested Danny.
“We all leave when our job’s finished and it’s finished when all the customers leave.”
He rolled his eyes as soon as Wendy turned to knock on the bathroom door. In a not so friendly tone, Wendy knocked and said, “Customer, sir or ma’am, unfortunately the store is now closed, I’m going to have to ask you to leave. For your convenience we’ll be open tomorrow at eight.”
No response.
“Arggh. Seriously? We don’t get paid after closing…” Wendy said to no one in particular.
“Right, so I can leave now?” said Danny.
“No, you wait here while I get the keys to the door…maybe the customer’s hurt or something.” Wendy stormed off leaving just me and the college kid.
“No one likes her you know.” Danny said.
I responded with a quiet yeah, hoping that Wendy didn’t suddenly come storming back and hearing me complain about her, terminating my job on the spot as revenge.
It only took her a few moments though to come back with the key and she almost stabbed the keyhole with it. She paused before turning, knocked on the door again, and said, “Sir, or ma’am, if you’re in there, I’m going to open the bathroom to check if you’re okay.”
With a huff and a puff she threw the door open, gasped, and let out an “oh shit…”
I peeked through the doorway and nearly threw up.
There was blood thrown on the walls in big red patches. The crimson colours glistening under the dim post-closing light of the store.
At least, I thought it was blood.
Wendy had something else in mind. “Paint. We’re going to have to write that off in shrinkage…listen asshole, I want you out of the store now before the police arrive.”
She stepped into the bathroom. It wasn’t practically big, the only things in our customer bathroom were two sinks, two stalls, and one towel dispenser. But no sign of the customer. One of the stalls was wide open, the other one was closed.
Wendy stomped around the “paint” and right up to the closed stall door, practically banging it open.
Hey, get out of there already!” Her knocking was so hard the stall door swung open, revealing…nothing. Nobody was there.
“The shit? You two, go find this idiot and get him out of the store. I’m going to call the police and file a report.”
“Didn’t you say the police were on their way?” I asked innocently.
“That’s what’s called a bluff. All good managers do that. But now I have to actually get them involved. I don’t even know why this is happening on my watch. The boss is going to kill me.”
Danny and I covered different areas of the store, he went to kid’s entertainment to check on the paint aisle and I headed over to the clothing section.
When I finished my shift, everything was a mess in the clothing section. So imagine my surprise when not only was everything faced up but it was done better than I’ve ever done it. Like it was done by the most diligent worker imaginable.
My comms radio started to crackle and I heard Wendy. “Have you guys found him yet?”
“That’s a negative.”
“Right, okay. Have you seen him, Danny?”
A moment of silence. While I waited for Danny to respond, I admired how well the face up was done. But then it slowly started to dawn on me…if I didn’t leave it like this, who did my job for me?
Wendy’s voice crackled over the radio again. “Danny? Response now. Please.”
Again. Silence.
“Jesus. High school kid. Whatever your name is. Tell Daniel to go turn his headset on.”
That’s okay. I was sure she was busy all the time and couldn’t learn the name of every employee at the store. Still…she was my only manager I regularly saw so it hurt a little. Anyway, after my brief moment of silent self-pity I responded and head my way over to the kids’ entertainment section to find Danny.
Toys, sports equipment, pyjamas, shorts, shirts, bikes, bike pumps, balls, plastic kids toys, action figures, dolls, video games, video game consoles, video game console accessories, chairs, tables, pencils and pens for school, exercise books, reading books, novels, comic books, mugs, arts and crafts supplies- all this and more at our store!
Sorry, had to. But you get the idea. Our kids section was almost half the store and there were a lot of different products, which partly explained why I had trouble finding Danny.
A few minutes passed before Wendy called me over the headset. “Found Danny yet?”
“No not-“
I looked over to the service counter where we displayed some of the more expensive Lego sets. There it was- Danny’s headset just lying on the counter.
I hesitated, taking my time staring at the headset. Then I pressed the comms button. “I didn’t find Danny, just his headset.”
There was a loud audible “fuck” heard across the store, clearly from an angry Wendy.
Her voice then erupted from my earpiece. “After I told him not to go home. Lazy son of a bitch decided to just ditch us.”
Well, it’s not like he’s getting paid to stay behind work or anything. Now that I think about it…neither am I.
“I’ve already called the police, they won’t be too far away. But I still want this idiot out of my store.”
“Shouldn’t we just wait…”
“Go find him now.”
It was then that I started to think about getting a new job…but I was suddenly taken aback by what was in front of me.
I wasn’t paying attention at the time, mostly because I was looking for a six foot guy, but when I was contemplating alternative employment, I noticed the smile drawn on the child model for the baseball bat set packaging.
It wasn’t just on one single product, it was on every baseball set. Not only those products, but on the lacrosse set, the soccer set, turning around I could see it the dollhouse boxes, the science kit sets, the face mask starter kits- every child on the packaging had a white smile painted on.
Every single item I could see.
If Wendy was pissed now, she was going to go off like a volcano when I told her.
I didn’t know who I was more scared of, Wendy, or Mr. Paints a Smile On Every Children’s Product who I had to find.
What kind of weirdo goes around a department store drawing smiles on product packaging? Not only that, but they exploded red paint over the bathroom as well.
I started to really want to for the police to turn up. Just as I was about to push the radio button and tell Wendy I was going to wait with her…I could hear a ding from the kitchen appliance section.
Then another ding. And another and another.
My radio crackled again, “What was that?”, Wendy asked.
“I think it came from the home appliance section.” I responded.
Don’t forget to smile.
I heard it clearly over the radio. But that wasn’t Wendy’s voice.
“Don’t forget to what?” said Wendy straight after on the radio.
“I thought- I thought you said that?” I said nervously.
“Why would- what, look, just go find this idiot and send him out of the store.”
I didn’t know who I was more afraid of at that point, psycho painter customer or Wendy. Must’ve been Wendy because before you knew it, I was off to the home section to investigate those beeps.
Didn’t take long to find the sources-the display appliances. Only problem, they were never plugged in. Knowing my luck, the customer was probably cooking bits and pieces of Danny in each appliance, but luckily as I turned each display off there were no signs of Danny, he’d just run off like Wendy said.
Lucky bastard, leaving me alone to deal with this jackass who wants to annoy some high schooler at work.
That loser. Whatever fear I had evaporated and turned to anger because I called out, “Hey, it’s past closing, wherever you are, get out of here.”
No one called back. Instead I heard humming.
Hmm, hmm hmm hmm! Kind of hard to type out but it sounded cheerful. As if whoever was humming sounded like they were enjoying this. And it was coming from the adjacent bathroom appliance section.
Again, thinking back, I really wish I didn’t go. I really wish I just waited for the police. I even wish I just walked back to Wendy, because whatever scolding she would’ve given me was far better than what I’m about to tell you.
So I followed the humming. Like some super sleuth using only his ears to guide him, I walked past the shower racks, the shower mats, bathroom scales…you get the idea. I walked pretty much to the other side of the bathroom department to the bedding department where the humming started to get really loud.
“Look, this isn’t a game.” I called out. “The police will be here any minute.”
In the corner of my eye I could see bed linen being folded but whoever it was, was hiding behind a corner aisle.
“Look guy, I can see, don’t you think it’s time to go home?”
The folding stopped. The linen fell to the ground. Around the corner walked some guy, looked a bit older than me. I don’t know, didn’t get a good look, had on this weird bow tie and suspenders though which caught me off guard. But when he waved to me, with no hands, only waving a bloody stump, that freaked me out.
“How can I help you today?”
He started walking closer and closer and is he did his eyes started to sink into this face, his skin sagged, his skin tone darkened.
As I sit here right now, I still don’t know what to tell you or what he was. All I know was I freaked out and ran to the front of the store, job be damned.
I screamed pretty fierce because as I was running to the front of the store all I could hear was Wendy over the radio just saying, “Hey! Hey! Hey!”
I ducked and weaved between aisles and pallets until I finally slammed against the front door. Frantic, panicked, and scared, I blindly fumbled for the open button to the side and when I did, I heard an unfamiliar voice.
“Hey kid, what’s wrong?” I was so focussed on looking for the button I didn’t see the police arrive at the front door.
“There’s a guy, he’s waving, and, and, and-“ I said in a with flurry of hand gestures.
One of the officers lowered his hand gently and is if to say, settle squirt, we’re here to help.
The cameras didn’t catch anything. Our cameras aren’t great because they don’t have the resolution to see when all the smiling faces were painted in the kids section but the cameras aren’t that bad where they can’t see people. But they didn’t find this last customer. When I ran scared in the bedding section, the cameras didn’t pick up on anything or anybody in front of me.
But I swear to you and I swore to the officers and Wendy, that there was somebody in the store. The officers just dismissed me saying I was past my bedtime but I know what I saw. I wasn’t sleep deprived, there was somebody there late at night and it was like they never stopped working.