Chapter 8: Soil (4/21)
An Angry Customer Throws a Bag of Dirt at My Head
By now, everyone—under intense pressure from social media—has trapped themselves inside their homes for over a month. A few of them, with their children inside. So many mothers, of which there are very few in a big blue city like Boston, have resorted to teaching their own children.
An adorable (French-Canadian?) mom and her child are exploring the seed-starting aisle, and she starts to tell me about how she’s taken to home-schooling since the schools have all been closed. And she’s quite enjoying teaching her daughter: about the circle of life, how things grow from the ground, why they sprout, &c. It’s quite touching in a way.
Then there is the other side of the coin.
We are one month into the mass psychosis, and it’s becoming very easy to tell who is losing their minds and who isn’t. And it’s also becoming an albatross on us, the staff (who all clearly know this thing is a farce), but have to bite our lip. (We still have a few more weeks until the mob on social media forces our staff to “mask up”).
But there are already people starting to go mad. I’ve read enough books about propaganda to know it takes about two months to brainwash the public. You must bombard them with the lie and fear nonstop, but then, after about two months, no matter what you tell them to the contrary, they’re stuck.
They’ve snapped and they’ll never snap back.
So here’s the story:
We’re running low on soils and seed-starting and the rest and it’s Saturday morning (we get our shipment on Tuesdays).
It’s early, and I don’t think I’ve really had my coffee yet, but in walks a (obviously very liberal, aka short-haired) young grandmother and her young child.
The boy has a mask on.
Previously, when a masked child and their parent walks into the store, I would immediately go to the back or go for a walk because the image enraged me. It’s so clearly child abuse and so disgusting to see. (Fast-forward 16 months later and the entire country is force-masking children).
ANYway, it was early so my team member had not arrived yet, so I had to stay at the register, and this particular duo was annoying. The young boy, he must have been 4 or 5, was clearly excited to be in the hardware store… most young boys are, there is so much to see and touch and wonder about.
“Don’t touch that!” she barks, “Get away from there!” she blurts.
She eventually finds a bag of loose soil she wants to buy. She pays for the soil and I hand her the change. BUT they hang around, as he’s clearly enthralled by the place but I’m starting to get nervous, because I’m getting really enraged about this.
My internal monologue was: “Don’t say anything, they’ll leave soon.” They wandered towards the key station which is chock-full of shiny objects and plastic doo-dads.
“Thank you for coming in!” I say in hopes of having them exit as quickly as possible.
“Don’t touch those get six feet away!” she screams and actually slaps something out of the boy’s hand.
“That mask does your child no good at all ma’am.” I blurt-murmured.
Oops.
“WHAT DID YOU SAY?!?!” The woman was shrieking behind her mask.
“The disease shows no signs of infecting young children ma’am!” (I had not missed an episode of Laura Ingraham since this madness set in.)
“YOU CAN’T TELL ME WHAT TO DO WITH MY CHILD!!!!!” she screams at the top of her lungs and she physically chucks the bag of potting soil at me, and then throws her change at me for good measure. She grabs her son and runs out the door.
A customer mentions that I, having been attacked by a bag of potting soil, could file assault charges.
Regardless, it was still a big mistake, and I genuinely felt pretty bad about it.
But it’s about an hour later now, and there is a line to get people rung up and out the door. We put up one of those totally useless plexi-glass things (we’ll run out of Plexi in Chapter 13) but no one is really freaking out about the masks yet. I had one with me, but for the most part, the people of South Boston weren’t avid CNN watchers and mostly read the conservative Boston Herald newspaper, but some others were different.
Like this next chap who walked in.
“You yelled at my Mother-In-Law!” he screams. “We are just abiding by the guidelines from the GOVERNOR!!” I immediately feel bad for the guy and profusely apologize, because he’s obviously having to do this to save face with his wife and her mother. But then again he’s also wearing a mask like a moron so I don’t feel that bad for him.
“We demand our money back!!!” He yells.
I gladly help him to get his money back (even though without a receipt I know I’m gonna hear about this).
“What’s your name!?!! I’m going to call YOUR BOSS!!!” He is red with anger.
I said: “My name is Frank.”
“OK, FRANK!!” He screams and huffs away, stomping down the street.
There is still a line (who all watched this go down), and the next customer, a maskless dude (obviously based), steps up, smiles, and shakes his head.
And I tell him: “My name’s not Frank.
… but I was being frank.”
PS: I finally ordered a mask.
Next week we sell out of… What else?
