In my previous life as a part-time assistant manager for a large entertainment retail chain, we had many frequent customers, as you can imagine, collecting their brand of movie/music. Some made us laugh, but most made us cry. Lots were dubbed with "celebrity" nicknames, plenty of them had multiple, and some of them even worked for us. For the debut post on this blog, I would like to share with you the story of "Creepy Tony".
I met Creepy Tony on one of the earliest days in my career at the store. He's an average looking guy, unassuming, a little on the heavy side who is probably in his mid-fifties-- around my dad's age. I believe that he was drawn in by the mouth watering scent of fresh meat. I quickly discovered that to some people the words "Hello, could I help you find anything today? No? OK, well, everything that's Used is Buy 3 get the 4th for free!" really meant "Hey, sexy, wanna have a quickie? Yeah? OK, well, you buy 3 and the 4th is free!" Another associate revealed to me that she had had quite a difficult time with him before. He had been bringing her flowers and chocolates to the store, and she'd required the assistance of her boyfriend to get him to stop. It took a bit of blatant ignoring and calm enforcing of "No, I don't want to meet your 'nephew' " to convince him that I was utterly uninterested and repulsed by his being. I refused to call him by his first name like he kept telling me to and kept our interactions to a bare minimum. Mostly I made the next-highest manager deal with him because he's one of my best friends... and a man. For the purposes of this blog, I shall refer to him as ObiWan. ObiWan, however, could not save me from his spine-tingling gaze when Creepy Tony would somehow locate me out in public buying toilet paper and whatnot. On those occassions, I simply muttered a "hi", made no eye contact, and got away from him as quickly as possible.
When we hired on new girls, I quickly warned them about him and pointed him out so that they could avoid him at all costs. This kept his presence in our store to a minimum for nearly three years. Then, I stepped down from management due to receiving more hours at my current job and one of my good friends was hired on in my place. I was not there enough to warn or protect her. We shall call her R.
During the month of October, staff are permitted to wear publicly presentable costumes on the weekends to draw attention to our store and gear up for Halloween. R and I are big costume fanatics; we had previously worked together at a Halloween costume store, so we knew that we had several coordinating outfits. One weekend, we decided on an Alice in Wonderland theme for the shift that we were sharing; it was a short day, so we were the only two staff on the schedule. I dressed as Alice and R was the Red Queen. If you've gone out of your house around Halloween in the past 25 years, you'll know that most young women's costumes are rather short. R and I both tend to wear stocking and petticoats with most of our costumes because they help to hide butts (true fact-- try it sometime, Skankerella's!), and accessories really are what make a costume great. As luck would have it, Creepy Tony chose that day for a visit. He stayed on the far-end of the store at the Listening Station where he had a great view of the entire store snickering and giggling to himself because, you know, we're ignorant girls and totally wouldn't notice-- not in a million fricking years. I can't tell you how long he stayed there or relate to you how happy we were when he finally left.
As the holiday season drew closer, I had to be at the other job more and more, so I had hardly any hours at the video store. Unfortunately, Creepy Tony had found a new victim in R and with it being the busy season for all mall merchants, the other employees were not able to help her out much in diverting his attention. He came in more and more often, usually standing at that Listening Station where he could watch her wherever she went, trying to get buddy-buddy with the guys on the staff so that he could move in closer. One day when the store was unusually quiet for the time of year, R wound up alone on the sales floor with Creepy Tony while ObiWan was in the office working on some much-neglected paper work. R got super-creep vibes that day and so put the sales counter between herself and Creepy Tony. He insisted on having a conversation with her while she had to nod and at least half-listen while she worked on whatever she could behind the counter. At some point during the tedious and nerve-wracking encounter, R reached up to rub one of her shoulders like most people do after sleeping poorly or having a crappy day under tons of stress. Creepy Tony took this gesture as an invitation to move himself around to the FORBIDDEN ZONE of the sales counter to begin rubbing her back without asking if it was OK. R froze in shock and horror while he rubbed away, asking, "Does that feel better? Does that feel good?" After a few minutes of this repulsive behavior, ObiWan stepped out of the office and was stopped in his tracks by the site of what was occurring on the opposite side of the store. He hurried up and got close enough to save her with a quick, "Hey, R, I need to show you something in the office right now!" We all seriously debated telling him that he wasn't allowed in the store any more, but it was the holiday season and everyone was rushing around worrying about a million other things. Creepy Tony even bought R the sweetest Christmas present. He presented it to her at the sales counter (and stayed on the correct side). It was a box of crackers. Yes, you heard me, a box of crackers. Who the hell thinks that crackers are a present for anyone other than a sick person who can't keep anything else down? Actually, I have just been enlightened, perhaps he somehow deep down realized that his presence made us all sick.
R quickly got a different job where she no longer had to work with the public and ended the socio-physical torment. Our problems with Creepy Tony died down when we told him that she had left, and, to my knowledge, he hasn't been bothering anyone else there. However, I do know that they just filled that position again with a nice, attractive girl who promptly greets people when they enter the store.
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