Spring has arrived, ladies and gentlemen, and you know what that means.
Back to School time is upon us! Well, technically school doesn't
even end for another 4 months, but that doesn't stop
advertisers and retailers from preemptively striking terror into
children across America. Before I contradict myself, let me
clarify: I'm all for terrorizing children. However, the only thing I
could possibly enjoy
Now, before you think my disdain for school and office supply companies
is unwarranted, let me first tell you that I work at an office supply
retailer. I can't tell you the company name, but I can tell you that
our biggest selling items would have to be staplers and staple
accessories to use with your stapler, such as staples. **wink**
In a school & office supply store the Back to School (B.T.S.) "season" is a five month celebration of academic anarchy.
For those of
you who work in retail, imagine if Black Friday lasted for the entire
length of the Holocaust, except without the merciful cleansing gasses
to put us out of our misery.
A typical B.T.S. day usually involves herds of mothers and their
offspring advancing upon our parking lot like the disgruntled Scots
from Braveheart. If the store opens at 8am, you can guarantee that by
8:02 I'm up to my eyebrows in menstruating, camel-toe-wearing,
estrogen-driven, mullet-having, trailer-dwelling, she-mammals ... each
of them armed with a pre-prepared school supply list. Their hunger for
school supplies can be so overwhelming that I'm often forced to use a
wandering toddler as a human shield, or occasionally, a projectile
diversion. Some of these supply lists are so specific that I wonder how
many school districts are getting funding from companies like Mead(R),
Crayola(R), Pentel(R) and others. Why else would a twelve year old need a
FiveStar(R) 3.5-inch Periwinkle Binder, with Magenta Dividers by Avery(R),
and Orange Hole Reinforcements by Post-It(R)? And getting the EXACT color
listed is also of utmost importance, because using any replacement hue
will no doubt lead to your child failing 6th grade, only to become a hemorrhaging prostitute just like Grandma.
"Stay in school." When I was twelve, all I needed was a #2 pencil, and a switchblade to
stop anybody from stealing it. Now a whole arsenal of "necessities" is
required in order to succeed in today's competitive school atmosphere.
This can lead to added anxiety, and ever since the Columbine "incident",
even being a school bully has become more stressful. Luckily, retailers are working on a way to exploit this fear and simultaneously boost their
profits.
 If the school systems were indeed taking bribes from school
supply manufacturers, it wouldn't bother me if the money were being put
to good use. But the shit they teach in grade school today is WORSE
than what they used to teach a decade ago. Case in point: My little
sister is under the impression that there are 10 planets. At first I
thought she had just forgotten to take her Ritalin, so I doubled her
dosage. When she finally woke up, she still stood by her claim. I
eventually find out that her science teacher is telling kids that
N.A.S.A. has found another planet circling Pluto's Uranus. And what are
they calling this new "planet"? None other than planet 'UB313' - codename: "Xena".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_UB313
My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nine Pills of X-tasy Stop this
madness! Home-Schooling is the way to go ... well.... assuming
abortion is no longer an option. Regardless, as much as I would
like to blame all of this insanity on corporations and the public
school system, there is clearly another culprit. Jews? Of
course not... I'm referring to the consumers themselves. The
average gullable american parent who insists on conforming to the
school systems every whim. These are the same idiot parents that
make my job shittier than it has to be. For
example, when we are out of stock on an item on their kid's school
list, customers always ask if
we have the item in the back room. Why do people think
that the back room is an enchanted place where clerks keep out-of-stock
items that we don't feel like putting on the shelf? To clarify -
the back room is a
big gray room where associates go to talk shit about customers behind
there backs. If you go to a store and ask somebody to go check in the
back room, trust me, they're gonna talk shit about you to
their buddy and then they'll come back to you with a fake
expression of sympathetic disappointment to let you know that they are
indeed out of stock. Sometimes we sexually harass female
coworkers there too.
And then come the
questions. Customers love to ask questions. Most of the
ones I receive are about using a
particular office supply in a way it was not intended to be used. Other than using a
letter opener to shank an over-affectionate cellmate, I'm
not quite sure why anybody would want to use an office supply in a
way other than it's intended purpose. Nevertheless, the following
are things I have actually been asked during the Back to School season.
Q: "Hey stock boy, are gluesticks flammable?"
A:
"It is my experience that everything is flammable if you apply enough
open flame to it. Here, I'll show you. Let me borrow your
face."
Q: "Hey stock boy, can you tell me if you make non-adhesive Post-It Notes."
A: "Yeah, it hasn't been tested yet, but we keep it in aisle #19. It's called PAPER."
Q: "Hey stock boy, can you remove your boot from my anus."
A: "Not now, I'm on break."
-Sai
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