Boundaries

Duh?? But I thought...A few days ago, my mother and I went into a health food store. Actually, my mother had wanted to put something in the car first, so I went in myself. I was startled and literally taken aback when this thin, wiry little blonde guy, jumped in front of me and yelled "WHAT ARE YOU LOOKING FOR TODAY??". Now, I knew exactly what I went in there for, but the shock of having this person almost knock me over when I came in the door made my mind go blank.
"Ummm, I'm just looking today," I said.
He said, again, as though he had a mega phone; "OKAY, THAT's FINE!!"

I quietly stepped in the isles thinking, "He's gonna scare my mom the same way when she comes in."

Sure enough, a minute later, I heard the door come open, followed by the same yell. My mother said the same thing to him that I did. We searched the isles together and I found myself hoping that I would not have to ask this incredibly enthusiastic guy any questions. Somehow, I felt that I would get a life story with each. When the front door came open a third time, this young man was at the back of the store, and he ran down an isle quick as a flash to take his place at the front, and shout out the same question. At this point, the clerk behind the register was asking me if I'd been in there before, followed immediately by...

"Yeah, you look kinda familiar."

This creeped me out. I have a phenomenal memory myself, and can easily remember someone as seeing them before, even if it was only once before, and even if it was some time ago. What creeped me out was the fact that he had not allowed me to answer his question, and was suddenly talking to me like he'd known me his whole life. This guy did not really look to me like someone who was at work that day...not working with the public, anyway. His hair was messy and disheveled, and I could tell he'd not shaved in several days. Turns out, I could not find the Turmeric and I decided to ask this young guy where it was. I got the feeling that the clerk behind the register may have been his dad because when I said what I was looking for, he looked at the clerk behind the register like,

"What do I say to that?"

So, the clerk helped me, while the young, blonde guy made another run for the door to "greet" another customer, a lady... also by herself. So, mom and I then got a history of Turmeric and everything that it's good for, and each kind the store had. The clerk then went to the back of the store to find another bottle, which turned out to be expired. By this time, all I wanted was to leave, so I tried to ease the clerk over to the register as he was talking. He felt the need to tell me that another shipment of the expired turmeric would be coming in today... he said that when I saw the truck pull up, that meant that it was here. I was not sure why it was that he thought we would actually wait for a truck. It was almost as though he thought he'd done something wrong and needed to fix it. When he finally got around to ringing me up, the blonde guy was ringing up someone else at the register on the other side of me. Rather than paying attention to my transaction, this clerk had to pay more attention to what this young blonde guy was doing. Now, I was literally in the middle of the blonde guy shouting at the customer and the clerk shouting at him because he was not charging her the right price for her item. The clerk failed to tell me that his credit card machine was not working correctly. I hit enter, and nothing happened. The clerk didn't say a word to me. After a minute, he said to me that needed to hit enter again because it did not go through. I did not want to hit enter again because what it I was charged twice? I followed his direction and then was told that my pin was not correct. I figured out that this happened because his machine did not pick up all the numbers. After another minute it was suddenly like the machine came to life... It began to make all this noise.

"ahhh, there we go, he said; see, when it does that, it means it went through"... as though I should have known that the whole time. He then realized he'd forgotten to give me one of their cards to keep track of my purchases. He asked me two more times if I wanted him to call me when that OTHER Turmeric came in.

"Thanks, I said, but we'll check back."

Now, as you can imagine, by this time, my actual thoughts were "Dear God, all I wanna do is GET OUTTA HERE!!". Finally, the clerk bagged my two purchased items. This also really bugged me because one item was in a small, glass bottle. He grabbed both items and let them hit the countertop when they went into the bag. I was shocked that I did not end up with a broken glass bottle. My preference would've been for him to place the glass bottle in a separate bag and place it gently into the first bag. To me, this was just another customer service skill that this clerk seemed completely unaware of. Mom and I waked out of the store and I turned and looked at her...

"I know, she said; we're never going in there again."

Well, I'm happy to say that I was not charged twice for my items, but I've wondered how many other people might've made that same decision about going into that store. What a paradox, ya know?... such a willingness to be thorough and helpful, but so much energy, a person ends up feeling as though they've been hit by a truck. Oh goodness!