Here it is, the final chapter  of Kathryn McLeod’s fantastic book,  “THAT LOOKS GOOD ON YOU–YOU SHOULD BUY IT!” This is it, lucky chapter 13. Please enjoy, Kathryn is an amazingly talented human and this book is incredible:

Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven 
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve

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Chapter Thirteen

The End

“A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.” G.K. Chesterton

“yikes… ran out of phucks to give…” Rihanna

And here we are. Two years, two failed performance evaluations – and I mean #FailToTheMax failed performance evaluations – and I had finally figured out what was happening.

Chestertons was just like the NDP.

I’d either have to quit, or die. Because I was not going to get fired.

And dying wasn’t an option because I had a son to relaunch.

I was no better at sales, sales, sales than I’d been when I started. And yet I’d outlasted 4 Ashleys, 3 Caitlyns, 1 Emily, 1 Tj, an Iranian lady, a Russian lady, an older British lady who had glimpsed one of The Beatles on a London street, Eva, Lindsay, Arlene, Esther, and several university girls who would be there one shift, gone the next, because both the work and the workers are a dime a dozen in retail. And given the pay, the hours, the random scheduling that made it impossible to have a second job, combined with the pressure to make sales and provide customer service, Chestertons had to at least be fun.

And that’s one thing Chestertons definitely was not – fun.

But of all the departed I missed the Russian lady the most. I think it’s probably because I’m a naively optimistic glass half full Pollyanna Sunshine type, and Olga was Russian.

Also, she talked like Natasha in the old Rocky & Bullwinkle cartoon, so naturally I felt compelled to force conversation out of her. It was so satisfying a contrast, thousands of years of oppression vs “Hiya, did you guys get those pink socks with the little pigs on them this year?”

She was tired, still, from a previous life, the least of it being a bout of breast cancer, but also hated helping Chestertons’ customers, whom she referred to as stupid bitches. So she’d pose in a corner like a mannequin, except leaning against the walls for support. Then if a customer got too close she’d scare the crap out of her by moving her arms like a robot and saying with her Natasha accent “I will help you.”

A couple of them complained to Gwen about it, but since Gwen kind of liked her pessimism, they didn’t get much traction.

She liked me because I loved hearing her stories about life in Russia, and just before she quit she had a bunch of us over to her residence in Rockcliffe, where she lived with her German diplomat husband.

Actually, it was just me from the old lady side of Chestertons, and a whole bunch of university girls because Olga liked to counter their youthful idealism with her reality.

I told her about my plan to write a book about Chestertons.

“Katerina, you know, once I write book. By hand. In dark. Was during bad time. Soviet Union fall apart but Russians, we are lost without boot on neck. Mother was dying, too, but able to… negotiate… with old man neighbour for candle. I write about first marriage to husband who die in horrible accident. I still young then. We both young. He die horrible slow painful death caught in machine. Take long long time to die. Alone. They find him next day. Is why I live with dying mother. One hundred thousand words I write. Then another one hundred thousand words more. So two hundred thousand words. I count. Then I read. All shit. Two hundred thousand words of shit. Life is shit. Forget book. Tell me how punish daughter in this baby country. Husband too soft. We leave her alone, nice parents to leave daughter alone with boyfriend. We want she shows him good girl to marry. Later we come home. We do not love each other but is okay. Germans cannot love. Boyfriend gone. Daughter watching stupid show on television, laughing like drunken Finnish pig. That okay to say? Like drunken Finnish pig? Is expression in Russia. So sensitive in this baby country. Question Katerina, I don’t know schedule. Is crazy bitch day tomorrow?”

“You mean, is Gwen in tomorrow?”

“Yah. That one. I want just to stand, stare at wall. Stupid bitches buying shit from store. I see better shit on bottom of shoe. I buy in Paris. You like shoe? The French they treat dog better than black man who clean dog shit off sidewalk. Is terrible country but children not drunk like Finnish pig, I tell daughter.”

Anyway, I get nervous when parents not from here talk about disciplining children, so I told her about the time one of my daughters showed up drunk at a Friday night school dance. I think she was in grade ten. I got a call from the principal informing me that Monday would have to be her one day in-home suspension, but that the school would work to ensure upon her return Tuesday that she did not suffer any undue stigma as a result of either her behaviour or the suspension. Then the principal asked if I’d like to meet to discuss the incident further, but I said no thanks because the last time I met with a principal I got a lecture about not signing my other daughter’s agenda. That was when she was in grade three, and I still hadn’t recovered from it.

Thank the gods of citizenship I was born in this baby country is all I can say.

But back to the beginning of the end, which isn’t far from the end of the end, because once the gods of employment sent a customer my way, deliberately, to tip my hand, that was it. I was as good as gone. And at the top of my game, too.

Never mind that my top was everyone else’s bottom. The point is, I was being very proactive about my own game, which I guess could best be described as working-to-rule. And now I was ready to take my game to the finish line.

Not for me was it to just waiting around for the crabby hand of death to swat me out of existence, I was going to quit.

It all came together on an evening shift, two years from “Katie Sees a Sign”. I was showing out one of our stragglers, a woman who worked in the food court, and who would often come in before closing to plumb the depths of Chestertons in hopes of finding a bargain.

It pained me enormously, still, when these women thought they’d found one, too, because I knew there was no such thing to be had at Chestertons. And she did this fairly often, usually Sunday, and this particular one I was more tired than usual. It had been busier than expected, so we were even more deliberately under-staffed than usual.

And I mean under-staffed, not short-staffed. We had lots of staff, they just weren’t being given shifts because of the wage vs costs formula. Or so went Gwen’s excuse, anyway.

Also, the mall had recently increased its Saturday and Sunday hours by an extra hour. So now we were open until 7:00 p.m. on Saturday and 6:00 p.m. on Sunday.

I know I keep saying this or that was the beginning of the end, but it was probably the mall extending its shopping hours by an extra hour on Sunday that led to the beginning of the beginning of the end. I had already done a complete 180 on my support for Sunday shopping (a million years ago, it seemed like) but all this particular extension seemed to do was ruin Sunday dinner, the old-fashioned kind, for those, like Anna, who partook. Sure, Sunday dinner is neither here nor there to me, a heathen six days of Sunday – plus Sunday – but my secular humanism was no match for Red Emma and John Knox who had bonded in my head over this one.

But just as I was showing our straggler out the door, a middle-aged woman showed up to it, a bit breathless, and absolutely expecting to be let in to Chestertons.

HER, HUGS, PCPL.

“I’m sorry, we’re closed.”

I wasn’t sorry, but we weren’t supposed to tell customers, clients, guests, whatever the hell we were calling shoppers that day, week, month, that we were closed, or even closing, but I always did, prefacing it with a “sorry”.

You’d be amazed, or maybe you wouldn’t, by how little effect it had on some customers to say, “I’m sorry, we’re closing”, so I always went with, “I’m sorry, we’re closed”. And even then I had customers who would brazen it out for a further ten, fifteen, twenty minutes, ½ hour, hour.

One night, working with Gwen, a couple of women came in at 8:30 and didn’t leave until 9:45, so a full 45 minutes after the store was closed to other shoppers. Laughing and carrying on like the completely oblivious assholes they were. Oh how I hated those two assholes. And Gwen, why, a person would never have guessed in a million years after watching her cater to these two assholes, that after they left without buying anything, she would break a cardinal rule at Chestertons, and tell me the pile of castoffs they’d left behind in the fitting room could wait until morning.

Of course, Anna was due in for 9:00 a.m. with one of the Caitlyns, so maybe a person who paid more attention to the schedule would have guessed it.

By the way, when the directive came down from HQ that we were to start calling customers “guests”, client having never caught on, I decided to start calling “guests” shoppers. That’s because Target Canada employees were also instructed to call shoppers “guests”, that is until Target Canada went tits up, leaving behind a lot of empty real estate where all the Zellers stores used to live. I learned about the “guests” thing in an Ottawa Citizen column by a journalist-turned-retail-clerk.

The CEO of Target Canada then received a “walk-away” package worth over $60 million. And that “walk-away” package divided by 17,600 is what 17,600 former employees were to receive.

I’m not sure how much more blatant the fraud has to get before we smash the state, but you’d best not go to the mall on a Saturday afternoon if you’re hoping it’ll be any time soon.

When I asked Gwen what the problem was with Target Canada that it pulled up stakes so soon after launching, she said that when they opened the doors, cus-cli-guests were disappointed to note that the barely-there product line seemed over-priced compared to the Target stores in the states. And even though she conceded that Target Canada was a management disaster from start to finish, she took the opportunity to complain once again about the teeny tiny raise we sales associates had been given by the government of Ontario.

Indeed, the minimum wage had gone up by 25 cents again.

Anyway, if I was closing with Gwen I’d be careful about saying “we’re closed”, because if she heard me she’d practically lie down in front of the doors to keep the stragglers in the store.

“Oh no, it’s perfectly fine, we’ll stay open as long as you want us to, take your time, don’t worry about it, we’re here to serve you for as long as you need us to be, shop away, have you seen our Christmas sweaters, they’re so fun this year, and our business casual suit, purple! So fu-, exciting!”

By this time, whenever Gwen said “fun”, which she did more often the worse the outlook was for Chestertons, I would mentally substitute it for another word starting with “f”, past tense, and followed by “up”. The more “fun” an item to Gwen, the more “f”, past tense, followed by “up” to me.

Also, while life had been going on inside Chestertons, life had been going on outside Chestertons, too. And ending, life had been ending.

Being at the front of Chestertons was a lot like being in a display window because it’s a pedestrian mall, and people were walking by all day long, going to and from buses. And occasionally someone would walk by, look in, and recognize me from a previous life. One of those people was a friend from university days with whom I had another friend in common. That’s why we were friends, because of our mutual friend, and even though this friend lived in Ottawa, we only ever got together when our mutual friend came to town for a visit from out west.

We needed our mutual friend buffer.

“Katie!”

“Hey, Jennifer!”

“Are you working here?”

“Oh, I wouldn’t go that far, although I’m sure as hell not shopping here. Oh, having blurted that out, we are having a promotion on sweaters.”

“Ugh, no. I hate this store.”

“Yeah, me too. What’s up? Where’re you lawyering these days?”

“Ind-Aboriginal Affairs. I hate it.”

“I bet. I picture Ind-Aboriginal Affairs as a giant warehouse stacked to the rafters with treaties that no one can read now because the weight of them has flattened out all the ink and it’s just straight lines.”

“Yup, pretty much. That may even be the government’s strategy for getting out of resolving anything. Hey, I’m really glad I ran into you here because I wasn’t sure if you’d heard the news about Jackie.”

“What, no, I don’t-”

“Oh hey, maybe, you know, you’re at work-”

“Tell me, what news about Jackie.”

“She’s, not well.”

“Aw shit. Breast cancer?”

“Oh dear. No, it’s worse than breast cancer. Oh, Katie, I’m so sorry to have- Hey, I’m going out west to see her before- Okay, you know her father-”

“Buttons.”

“Right, Buttons. Well it turns out it wasn’t Mad Cow from meat or whatever. He had a disease, Jacob something, and there was a 50% chance that Jackie would inherit it. And she did.”

“Oh my God.”

“Yeah, Katie, I’m sorry. You know, it’s funny. She had this plan for us, that we’d all live together again when we were old, like we had in university. I think she knew the last time she was here, remember? You said she seemed depressed. Well maybe it was the beginning of the disease. Her friends out west are looking after her now but she’s gone already, Katie. It’s so quick. It’s like she described it with Buttons. Out of his mind, raving, then vacant, staring. Let me know if you want to come out to see her before she dies. It’s late into it, though.  She won’t know us or anything. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.”

And over the next little while I’d hear more about the situation out west, and I remembered how Jackie had contacted me on Facebook late one night. She seemed sad, talking about how beautiful we’d been, how no sexcapade the night before was too raunchy or humiliating to not laugh about the next morning.

She’d grown up in a small town above a hair salon and was so determined to keep her skin pearly white and wrinkle free that she wore long gloves and a wide brimmed straw hat when she picked tobacco in the summers. Her father, Buttons, had left the family when she was young, her mother never forgiving him. Even when he was dying she cursed him, telling Jackie that he deserved it. Crazy in that way that some people are who never get over anything, but they had lived with Jackie’s grandparents, so her childhood was okay. Every day from when she was a young girl she’d learn a new word from the dictionary. And then she studied languages at university and got jobs that allowed her to take sabbaticals and travel all over the world spending every cent she made at whatever job she was doing, her means to an end.

Buttons she came to know while we were at university, hunting him down and insisting he pay her tuition, which he did, not knowing she had a scholarship. We laughed about that.

I can’t remember now how we became friends, but she thought I was fine entertainment, a fatherless girl like her but with none of the street smarts, so sheltered from life I’d been all my life, out in the big city discovering fun.

She was the most exotic person I’d ever met. Still is.

Later she married a man to give him citizenship and then left him to make his own way here. She loved men and had lots of affairs but stayed that single girlfriend who keeps in touch with all her other girlfriends, no matter our situation.

Her Master’s thesis was on The Story of O.

She had a hard time believing I would last as a married mother at home with three children, or that I should last, so when I told her about Steverino she was delighted.

I agonized about whether or not to go and see her but in the end I decided she wouldn’t want me to, she’d want me to remember her the way she was, outrageous, worldly, exotic.

Also, money, because that’s a reality most of us have to face, too, a reality that really brings out the Red Emma in me. How is it fair that some people can afford to visit a dying friend and some people have to make hard choices (can I afford to visit a dying friend?) and some people have so little they don’t even have hard choices to make?

Anyway, the moral of this story is that my fabulous friend thought working at Chestertons, me working at Chestertons, was the most ridiculous, but also sell-out, thing I’d ever done – and not in a good way – and she was right.

What the hell was I doing?

As an aside, too, having a brilliant and beautiful friend die of a disease that left her ranting incoherently and staring vacant-eyed at nothing lessened my fear of cancer, let me tell you.

I like to learn from everything.

Geez Louise, that was heavier than I thought it was going to be, although I don’t know why I thought a brilliant and beautiful friend dying of Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease was going to make for light writing… so yay, back to quitting my sales associate job at Chestertons.

I was closing with Anna because it was Sunday and Chestertons was still at it, hoping she’d get demoralized and quit. I’d say it was her seniority that Chestertons didn’t like, but also, Anna was, how shall I put it, moving more and more pounds away from her days as Miss Portugal, and they were looking to downsize in more ways than one.

Fatist, is the word.

But again, too bad so sad for Chestertons, Anna didn’t get demoralized any more than she got humiliated, she just got irked.

“Too many closing shifts at night and then opening shifts in the morning. It’s like when my son was a baby. That’s when I found out his father had that disease with the voices. All the time people telling him what to do so he could never listen to me. So the garbage was always there. I look out the window, there goes the truck. I turn around, there stays the garbage. Still in our apartment. But it’s not his fault. God made him that way, crazy like He makes some people. This Chestertons needs me too much with all these new girls we hire now. That’s why I’m always a keyholder. It’s not good for my sleep. Even Miss Portugal needs her beauty sleep. You know I got prize money, too. But it’s a poor country so I just had a pedicure. Then I come to Canada. I thought maybe one beach but there’s snow on all of them. Now God found me a beach so I can live there without my crazy husband and his voices. God can see I did my best. The priest says so anyway. I don’t know how he knows.”

The only problem closing with Anna was that she wanted the store in perfect condition for the morning. Everything had to be clipboard folded, stacked and racked to Chestertons specifications, whatever they were that month, swiffering, vacuuming, bathroom check for signs of elderly customer usage, garbage detail, and then the daily report, deposit, etc.

The garbage was easy because everything, no matter what it was, just went into a great big clear plastic bag. Then it was dragged down the back hall that snaked down behind a bunch of mall stores to the garbage bins for pickup. Sometimes I’d run into salespeople from the exercise wear store, the jewelry store, the fancy chocolates store, the coffee machines store with its pods of individual servings of coffee.

The bags were clear to ensure we weren’t smuggling ladieswear to accomplices hanging out by the mall garbage bins for resale on the black market. That’s what Gwen said, anyway, although there wasn’t a single closing night when I couldn’t have put any number of items into a clear plastic bag and humped it down the hall to an accomplice hanging out by the mall garbage bins.

Gwen never checked the garbage or hung around while we took it out. She was always in the back in her little cubby office tallying up sales, checking the conversion rate and getting ready to send the nightly email to Rita.

But back to quitting.

Usually a customer’s response when I’d tell them we were closed was to pretend she’d never heard of such a thing, a store closing time.

“Oh my goodness, you’re closed? Already? I thought you stayed open past six o’clock on Sunday evenings now!”

“No, we used to close at five o’clock on Sunday evenings but now we stay open until six. It’s six o’clock now so we’re closed.”

“Oh, okay, I just want to do one more round of the store. I’ll be quick. Do you have any pants in navy? Not jeans or dress pants. I want a nice navy casual pant that I can wear to anything anywhere.”

Gwen hated our customers, honestly, she did. But she’d bite off her own lips before admitting it, especially to me, and would not only stay open for an asshole like that, she’d encourage her to greater heights of assholery by acting like we didn’t close ever, just for her, the most special person in the universe.

I, on the other hand, didn’t hate our customers at all. I just wanted them to stop shopping so Chestertons would be forced to close and I wouldn’t have to make the decision to quit.

Okay, that was a total lie. I hated our customers, of course I did. I hate all customers. I hate me when I’m a customer. Customers are entitled assholes.

Yes, indeed, it was long past quitting time for me. And yet, in spite of an article a friend had sent me pointing out that the only benefit to a part-time minimum wage job in retail is that it’s easy to quit, I kept at it, shift after shift.

It’s something we should learn in kindergarten, quitting, instead of being taught to keep at it.

Steverino, who wished I would either stay working at Chestertons, or quit, but make up my mind one way or the other, suggested I start talking union.

“Just drop it into conversation once every shift, ‘union’. No context necessary.”

“I guess. I can’t imagine how a union could happen at Chestertons, Chestertons Local 123. It doesn’t matter enough to have a union. It doesn’t matter at all. I mean, it could close tomorrow and what difference would it make? Anyone working there now would just work somewhere else. We wouldn’t even have to leave the mall. Someone’s always hiring. And it’s not like Chestertons’ customers need its clothes to survive. Christ, most of them can’t see to the backs of their closets as it is. It’s the complaint I hear most often at the cash actually, ‘I don’t know why I’m buying this shirt, I’m pretty sure I already have it. It’s at the back of my closet’. And now that big new department store is going to be opening across the hall. Why shop at Chestertons when you can get more and better crap cheaper across the hall?”

“Hey, you should apply there when it opens!”

“Hm, maybe. You have to be bilingual, though.”

“You’ve got your Bs!”

Anyway, the customer I was showing out the door when SHE showed up wasn’t a typical Chestertons customer, a typical Chestertons customer being the type to deliberately show up a few minutes before closing so she could have the store to herself and shop at her leisure, chatting to us between demands for assistance as if we were all in on her after hours quest for consumer satisfaction together.

This customer was someone even Gwen would shoo out the door, which left me feeling compromised about shooing her out myself.

I’d tried to tell her before that there were no bargains at Chestertons but her English wasn’t very good and she just kept smiling and nodding and holding up items for me to check the price.

The markdowns were done by hand in red pen, on each individual price tag, something we’d come in at 7:00 a.m. to do, and then after a month we’d add a sign over the racks, the shelves, and on the tables, advertising a thirty percent reduction on the markdown, causing every second customer to ask the following question for as long as the sale was on.

“Is it thirty percent off the original price or thirty percent off the markdown price?”

“It’s thirty percent off the markdown price.”

“But the markdown is only five dollars off the original price! That’s not thirty percent!”

“That’s correct. But the thirty percent comes off the markdown price, not the original price.”

“I don’t understand. It says here that the original price of this tee-shirt is $109.50. The markdown is only to $104.99. That’s not even five dollars off! That’s still not thirty percent!”

“Once again you are correct. But the thirty percent comes off the $104.99, not $109.50.”

“Oh, okay. So it’s $50.00 now?”

“Let me get the calculator.”

But then from somewhere in the store Anna would shout, “$73.49!”

“It’s $73.49.”

“You didn’t do it on the calculator.”

“That’s okay, Anna can do it in her head.”

“So is that the final price? $73.49? With tax, too?”

And then from somewhere in the store Anna would shout, “No, madam. The tax comes after. The price you pay is $83.05! It’s a good price! It will look good on you! You should buy it!”

Once an item was marked down it stayed in the sale section with a higher percentage off sign going up every month until we reached 70%. After a month of being at 70% the items that were still unsold were boxed up and sent to the Chestertons outlet near Toronto, where the prices would be jacked up again because shoppers assume they’re getting deals at outlet stores.

I’m sorry. But I’m telling you this for your own good.

Markdowns were almost always just $5 off the original price, but in red pen they look like so much more than that. The original prices were high, too, you might even say unconscionable. I certainly would. And did. They were unconscionable relative even to the cost of similar items in a department store, but, as it took me a while to figure out, because retail is a tricky business, Chestertons had its own brand and with that came the customer with brand loyalty.

That’s why I didn’t get the significance of it when different customers would swear to me, up, down and sideways, that they’d seen this or that item at another store, and for less.

They were always particularly upset about the “and for less” part, too. But I didn’t get why it mattered so much to them that they’d seen the same item somewhere else because I didn’t get it, even though Gwen kept telling me that Chestertons had its own unique brand of clothing. 

Once I understood I still didn’t care but at least I knew why it mattered to them.

Anyway, this particular customer, the one I was about to usher out of the store, had tried to return a pair of jeans once, so worn they were frayed at the hem, that hadn’t even come from our store, so I was also kind of tired of her bargain hunting between 5:30 and 6:00 on Sundays. 

By the way, and in the profiling vein, if Gwen noticed a customer like the one I was about to usher out of the store at all it would be to sound the shoplifter alarm.

“Katie? Mrs. Hingham was in the store today, looking over the markdowns.”

“Who?”

“Katie? Mrs. Hingham? From the SHOP? She took the LIFT? She was in the MARKDOWNS?”

“You mean that older lady with the husband who sits in the dressing room while she shops?”

“No, Katie! Mrs. Hing-”

“Kidding. On it.”

So back to this poor undeserving profiled customer I was ushering, no, shooing out of the store.

“Oh oh, so sorry, so sorry. I go now. Sale tomorrow?”

“Yes, the sale will still be on tomorrow.” I said while making shooing motions towards the door, which is awful, but as previously noted, that’s what retail does, makes awful people of us all.

I planned to lock the door as soon as she was on the other side of it.

Anna pretended to check the clock on the computer. “Yeah, it’s six o’clock. We’re closed.” But she had already closed one cash register and was tallying up the cash haul.

“So sure sale on tomorrow?”

“Yes, I’m sure. Don’t worry. If you wait a little longer it will be an even better sale.”

“Better sale tomorrow?”

“Probably the same sale, but you never know.”

Rookie mistake, discussing sale details with a customer whose English wasn’t the best as I was trying to usher her out of the store.

“Okay I come tomorrow. Better sale you said, yes?”

“No. Same sale. Tomorrow. Goodbye.”

And just as I was bending down to unlock one of the doors, Anna having locked them between the time it took for her to glance at the clock and see that it was 6:00 and me showing out our last customer, SHE arrived, the real Chestertons customer.

“Oh no, you’re not closing! I want to buy a shirt!”

I was sort of halfway to standing, the customer I had shooed out already out of sight down the hall, but I had taken in enough of this customer to know she was it, that this was it, quit or die.

“I’m sorry, we’re closed.”

I think I even managed a sorry face when I said it, like it was unavoidable that we were closing and not just me deciding, nope. You’re not getting in, not with me in charge of lockup and Anna out of earshot, counting the cash.

“Aw c’mon, it’s just six o’clock now! Let me in! I know what I want!”

“Look, we just want to go home. So no, we’re closed.”

“Oh my God, I can’t believe you’re doing this to me! You’ve just lost a sale! And I’m going to call your head office the minute I get home! You’re going to be sorry! I hope you get fired for this!”

But by then she was yelling at my back through the glass, which almost tempted me to turn and tell her she was seriously deluded if she thought Chestertons would fire me, when Chestertons didn’t even fire Lindsay and she stole several thousand dollars.

And so Anna and I closed the store, Anna none the wiser, and we left the mall and waited on either side of Rideau Street for our respective buses.

The bus took ages but I didn’t mind. I just took the time to go over it in my mind, what had happened, and what would happen when I came in on Tuesday, which was when my next shift was scheduled.

There was no doubt in my mind that she would contact HQ, and that Gwen would be talking to me about it on Tuesday morning.

Once the bus came I got settled in and resumed reading Ladder of Years by Anne Tyler. It’s a story about a woman who walks away from her selfish and demanding family, literally, just walks away from them on a beach holiday and heads to the next town where she starts a new life. It requires a certain suspension of disbelief but I’ve always been drawn to books where people, but especially female people, walk away from one life and start another one down the road. I like the reminder that we’re free, our lives belong to us, and we can use them however we want.

And yes, I know how irresponsible that sounds.

I like the tidiness of it.

Of course, it’s Anne Tyler, so the character goes back to her old life, the wiser (I guess?) for knowing that… well… I’m always disappointed when a character goes back now. For sure I felt quite differently as a kid, so I get it, the sadness kids feel when someone in their life goes down the road to start a new one.

When I got home I told Steverino what had happened and he sort of downplayed it, you know, like people do when they don’t enjoy stories about women walking away from one life and starting another one down the road.

“Don’t worry, she won’t contact HQ.”

“Oh, but she will, you don’t know they type. She most definitely will. But I’m not worried. I want her to contact HQ.”

“Why?”

“Because when Gwen sits me down to talk about what happened, I’m going to tell her it’s all true, whatever SHE said, and I quit, that Chestertons doesn’t deserve me.”

“Ooh, the passive aggressive quit. I like it. Then you should just go down the hall and get another job at… uh… another mall store.”

“Um, no, no I shouldn’t. But yes, the passive aggressive quit.”

“So, you’re just-”

“Yup.”

And there was sort of an awkward silence which I did not fill with justifications for quitting my job, which wasn’t a real job, anyway, dammit. It was on-call day labour, the sort of work Carl and Jake are stuck doing, which isn’t fair, either.

So not out loud, I mean, I didn’t fill the awkward silence with justifications out loud. But if Steverino could have heard inside my head he’d have had to cover his ears, the justifications were so noisy.

I didn’t want another part-time, minimum wage, job at the mall, dammit.

YOU go down the hall and get another job, Steverino.

But by then he was already onboard the quittin’ train because he’s awesome and was reminding me that this was how I’d wanted to live life, work a bit here, work a bit there, not work a bit anywhere.

The Dr. Seuss Freedom 85 plan.

So Monday I wrote on a yellow sticky note, “Please be advised that this is my two weeks’ notice. I have enjoyed working at Chestertons but it’s time for me to move on.” Then I folded it into quarters and put in my 6” x 8” purse for Quittin’ Day on Tuesday.

My sister-in-law, who I called on Monday night to impart the good news, was surprisingly unprofessional about it all for someone who’s normally a pillar of society.

“Just quit. Don’t give them two weeks’ notice. People have to start just quitting these stupid jobs. I’m mad I ever shopped at Chestertons now.”

“You shopped at Chestertons?”

“Well yes, the heritage fit in their pants-”

“Hah! They’ve discontinued the heritage fit in the pants!”

“Oh thank God. Now I don’t have to shop there anymore. Just quit.”

But I wanted to be professional in a way that Chestertons wasn’t and give MY two weeks’ notice.

I wanted be take passive aggressive quitting to new heights.

So Tuesday morning I went in to work, it was a mid-morning to mid-afternoon shift, and nobody was acting like anything was up. Gwen wasn’t there, though, so I started to wonder if this really would be quittin’ day after all.

Still, I knew, I just knew, that SHE would have complained to HQ about me not letting her in to shop when she’d showed up at closing AND EVERYTHING.

Then Carol, who’d opened that morning, asked me to come to the back with her while Anna and Ruth, who tended to get the mid-morning to mid-after noon shifts because they were good at sales and that was when most of the big ones happened, stayed on the floor.

“Let’s sit down. There’s something I need to discuss with you.”

“Sure.”

“So, okay, there’s been a complaint. A customer told HQ yesterday morning that on Sunday, she was told by, uh, a person who matches your description, and also it was just you and Anna working, that, we were closed, and that it wasn’t 6:00 yet, that she still had a minute.”

“So, 5:59?”

“Well, she didn’t say that. She said she got to the door, just before 6:00, and that the store was still open but you were closing the door, early. So she asked if she could come in and buy a shirt, and you said no, that we were closed. Is that true?”

“No.”

“Oh. So you didn’t say we were closed?”

“Yes.”

“C’mon, Katie. Help me out here. Nothing’s going to happen. I just need to kno- Hey, was Anna involved? Because I asked her what happened and she deni-”

“Anna had nothing to do with it. She didn’t hear anything and I didn’t tell her. No, the customer is lying about what time it was. It was 6:00. And I was showing another customer out. Because it was 6:00. Anna had started counting the cash. Because it was 6:00. So SHE’s a liar, but it’s okay, because I quit.”

“Oh for, Jesus phuck, Katie. Don’t be like that. This isn’t a big-”

“No, it isn’t a big deal, you’re right, Carol. But it’s always going to be something, isn’t it, because our customers are horrible people and you know it.”

“I do NOT think our customers are horrible people.”

“Get off it, Carol.”

“Okay, I do. But people are horrible. So what? Don’t quit. That’s stupid. You’re so sensitive. Jesus phuck. Stop being such a drama queen.”

“I’m not being a drama queen, I’m being passive aggressive. And I’m not really quitting because of some bitchfaced lyingass shithead customer. I’m quitting because I can’t do this stupid bullshit job anymore. No offence. Seriously, here’s my two weeks’ notice.”

And I unlocked my locker, took out my 6” x 8” purse, opened it, took out the folded up yellow sticky, and handed it to Carol.

“Are you serious? This is your two weeks’ notice?”

“Unfold it.”

And she did.

“Hah! Jesus phuck, okay, this is hilarious. I’ll put it on the computer screen for Gwen to see when she comes in tomorrow.”

Then she smothered me in a hug.

I’m pretty sure it was the most unexpected hug I’ve ever received in my life, and totally worth quitting for.

“Jesus phuck. You’re like a stick. Hasn’t anybody ever hugged you before? But you know what? You’re right to quit. You suck at this job.”

“Yeah, I guess I probably can’t count on Gwen for much of a reference.”

“Oh cut the drama. You can so. She doesn’t give a shit. She’ll be glad you’re quitting. But don’t make her your reference. Make me your reference. I’ll make up whatever bullshit you want. Chief of Sales and Marketing, Director of Customer Service, Head of Information Management. Not that anybody will check your references anyway. So are you going back to government?”

“No, I don’t have anyth-”

“Jesus phuck! You’re quitting a job and you don’t have another job to go to? Wow. What a wonderful world you live in. La di dah. I guess you shit money. What a special little snowflake. No job. Jesus phuck. What a wonderful, wonderful world. You. Must. Live. In.”

The thing is, and I didn’t want to press my luck with Carol and risk a shitty reference if I did decide to get a job down the hall, but I do live in a wonderful world. A wonderful downsized world of lowered expectations and a thousand regrets thanks to no selective memory eraser. But there’s nothing I can’t get over whether other people can or not. Sure, I’ve made some rash and impulsive decisions and left some injured parties in my wake, but that’s how some of us make our lives happen, and other people’s lives happen, and those who get happened upon are as responsible for their lives as I am for mine.

And so it was, one shift’s worth of people trying to get me to change my mind, but not really, because when I left it would mean more hours for them. I wanted to tell my customers, Marion, Nancy and Mary, but I never got a chance, the odds of them coming in that one shift being pretty slim.

Oh well, Marion needed to move on from Chestertons. And Nancy and Mary were old. Old people are used to other people leaving them. I remember once visiting my mother at her seniors’ residence in the Sault, going down to dinner, and one of her table mates, the nice one, wasn’t there.

“Where’s Bev?”

“Dead.”

“Dea- Oh my God, that’s- She was so- Shi- Jesu-”

“I told you that on the phone. I think it’s ham tonight.”

“You didn’t tell me Bev died!”

“Well she did. She went in to the hospital and she died. Do you eat ham or are you going to need a sandwich? They’ll make you a sandwich if you don’t eat ham.”

I can’t tell you how stressful it was, finding out that Bev had died. She was the only nice one at the table. If I’d known she was dead I’d never have planned to stay for a full week.

But back to the end of this book.

Gwen didn’t seem at all upset by my two weeks’ notice, which I found a little surprising until I found out why.

“I appreciate you staying on until Black Friday, Katie.”

“What?”

“Not quitting until after Black Friday. I appreciate it.”

“I’m not quitting until after Black Friday?”

“No, you aren’t. Isn’t that why you gave two weeks’ notice? So that Black Friday would be your last day?”

Jesus phuck.

So by giving two weeks’ notice, I’d basically committed to working Black Friday AND allowed Gwen to screw me over by removing me from the schedule for every shift before it. So the handful of shifts I was counting on getting, I didn’t get. And I was of two minds about that because 1) it confirmed to me that retail is the worst, but 2) it meant I avoided a few shifts of goodbyes.

Still, it meant I had a lot of time to worrying about saying goodbye to Gwen, which was going to be awkward given how it was between us, our relationship having never rebalanced after the scam, not to mention my two #FailToTheMax performance evaluations.

But it turned out that Black Friday was a good day to make my last because, of course, it was too busy for anything other than a quick hug goodbye, and a jibe that I’d be back, I wouldn’t be able to stay away.

I was a runner, although not much of one, and then it was time to go. I went to the back, got all my gear, and headed back through the store to the table where Carol took a second to check my 6” x 8” purse one last time and give me one last hug goodbye.

And just as I was about to leave I saw Gwen leave the fitting rooms and start making her way to the back. She glanced at me, I think, but by the time I got my hand up to wave goodbye, it was to the back of her head.

In like a whimper, out like a… whimper.

An hour or so later, settled in on the bus, I took out my book, A Complicated Kindness, by Miriam Toews. It’s a story about-

Oh never mind.

I’m sure you’ve had quite enough of Miriam Toews for one book.