Mall Maven
by Jeb Taylor
illustrations by Greg Moutafis
Working in the mall, you get to see how tacky, primitive, and unattractive humanity is. Over the summer, I applied for a job at The Sharper Image, thinking, “This is cool, I’ll wear a tie and play with toys in air-conditioning.” However, I was to be one of the first employees of a prototype kiosk type of thing in the Livingston Mall. This sounded okay because the Livingston Mall was closer to home and easier to get to than the store.
But then Brad White talked to me. He told me he was the District Manager for the Northeast Division of The Sharper Image, with control of outlets from Delaware to Massachusetts. He gave me his business card. He was short and bald, and he kept trying to speak authoritatively, even though I was a full foot taller than he was. Brad was overly enthusiastic about his job. You could tell by the way he walked around the store, making sure every bubbling translucent water tank was gurgling and every vibrating massaging thermal comfo-chair was jiggling. My boss Brad also wore as much Sharper Image paraphernalia on his person as possible. The faux-granite watch, the dalmation-spotted tie, the pen with a built-in alarm clock, and the Mephisto shoes (featuring several self-activating ventilation systems, which can be very handy).
“Customer satisfaction,” Brad began, “is one of the qualities which The Sharper Image was founded upon. When merchandising our unique and sometimes revolutionary products, we believe the customer comes first. Don’t you, Jim?”
I looked at Brad for a moment after he called me Jim. My full name is James, but this punk was trying to be buddy-buddy with me by calling me by a nickname. He never asked what my nickname was, or even if I had one, thus he failed to find out that Jeb is what I go by. However, this was my first day, and he was about 40 and a career Sharper Image man, as well as being my boss. Jim really isn’t all that bad, anyway.
“Yes,” I said, “I think that customer satisfaction comes first.”
Brad said nothing and looked at me.
“Really,” I said, “because, you know… when the – ”
“Jim, how do you feel about gel insoles? You like them? You ever hear of them? Well, I’ll tell you.”
Brad went on to tell me about the wonders of gel insoles, these plastic foot-shaped insoles filled with a blue squirty gel. They’re supposed to massage your feet. Brad advised me to say many things to people in the mall in order to get them to buy something. Next to the cart where I would be working, there would be some gel insole samples, which I was supposed to rave about to passersby.
“Hey, they massage your feet as you walk! You’ll smile all day, and no one will know why! Microwaveable!”
My friends made fun of me. After the first couple days of work, I met Keri. She was my new co-worker and she was enormous. I know it’s more polite to say “a little overweight” or that “she’s kind of a big girl,” but this woman was terrifying. She was only 20, but her ass was a yard wide, and whenever she sat on the stool by the cart, folds of flab would hang over, threatening to reach the floor. I usually feel kind of sorry for really grotesquely fat people like Keri, but every time she came to work she had a large bag of Burger King items or a box of Roy Rogers chicken in her hands. Even when she was supposed to be working and saying things like “Microwaveable!” she would sit/envelop the stool and devour anything that was fried or flame-broiled.
Most of the time, I was alone at the cart. When I didn’t have enough energy to actively sell gel products, I read or looked at things around me. There are people called mall-walkers. They come to the mall every day with the sole purpose of doing laps around the mall. They are mostly older people, but some of them have new athletic sneakers and fanny packs. Sometimes they come as couples and do the fast-walk for about half an hour. There was one mall-walker specimen that I saw almost every day. He was about 60 years old, thin, and relatively tall. His gray hair was greased back and thick glasses perched on his nose. He was neatly dressed, though his clothes were outdated by more than a decade. During the time he spent in the mall, which was probably more hours than my job, he would do laps just like the other mall-walkers, except this man was always scoping for change. His head swept side-to-side as he walked, covering all the ground. When he saw a gleaming treasure, he swooped upon it, even if it meant cutting off a woman and a baby carriage, or darting into a store to snatch a dime and then darting out. One day when I was bored, I threw a penny about 20 feet from me and waited for the old, greased man to pick it up. Sure enough, when coming around off his last lap, he spotted it and snagged it in one quick motion. After he passed me by, I threw another dime, this time about 10 feet from me. He grabbed this one, as well. Eventually, I was putting dimes right next to my stool, and he would always grab them without saying anything. I liken it to feeding pigeons or squirrels at a park bench, except this was an old, weird person, so I’m sure there must be a lesson or moral or irony or something to be found.
At the mall, I was surrounded by cheap stores, tacky people, and soulless music. I’m never going to get another job unless it’s something that I really want to do. Or my mother makes me.
