Sunday, January 18, 2009

"Sanitize your hands please."


Blog note: Sorry for all the posts about work. I haven't started school yet so I haven't had anything else more interesting happening to me.

"Excuse me?"

"Yes?" I reply, I just finished restocking tins of cashews and got up hearing the sound of a customer.

"Do you have hand sanitizer?" a short, freckle faced woman snorted with a few items in her hands.

"Oh, yeah, it's down aisle 3, all the way at the end, we also--"

"No." she cut me off like I was an idiot babbling on about how the sky ought to be peach scented.

"Do you have sanitizer for yourself?"

"What?"

"You've been handling money and things all day. Your hands must be covered in germs. Please sanitize your hands before you ring up my things."

Now, I've never had this happen before. I believe I am a pretty clean person. I carry hand sanitizer around in my purse, I wash my hands for a full minute after relieving myself, and I have been known for having the compulsive urge to buy lemongrass scented shampoo. And damn it, I sanitize my hands very often with GermX when I'm at work.

As I fought the urge to shove my germ infested fingers into her nose, I pump some of the heavy rubbing alcohol scented liquid into my hands and tell the woman I'm ready to ring up her things.

She looks at me like I had just put my hands in a toilet bowl to get them wet, and replies,

"Can't I just ring them up myself?"

"No. I don't think--"

She ignores my comment and does so anyway. I try to stop her but she wraps her arm around the cash register to the little box that scans things. She ends up buying only one item because that's the only one I'd allow her to scan.

I open a plastic bag for her to drop her thing into and she ignores it and grabs her own. She refuses the receipt because I touched it and put my deadly disease ridden instruments (my hands) on it and leaves the store.

For a second I think, OH MY GOD, what's wrong with me?
Do I have a disease?
Did one of my body parts fall off without me knowing it?
or
Do I just smell bad?

I roll my eyes and sniff the air and smell the sweet scent of lemongrass and think, despite it all,

"Damn, I smell good today."

1 comment:

-J.M.Williams said...

......maybe she was racist.....
J/K... If I were you, would do the good Christian thing, and that is to chase her down and give her the finger..... or not
-J.Williams