the cocaine incident

Since my old job has since passed, I can no longer get in trouble because of this anecdote. I used to work in a certain chocolate shop, with an excellent team and very nice products. Including one item I dubbed “the crack cocaine of the chocolate world” because it was addictive, and rich white people seemed to love it (especially rich white girls.)  It was of course one of my favourites. This became a line I

used frequently, occasionally getting a chuckle or an unsale – much to the discomfort of my coworkers.

Well one day I said it to a tall, blonde woman in her mid 30s/early 40s. She carried herself with the swagger of a defensive middle class mother, and as she quickly nipped in to get the chocolates I politely served her. I said the thing to her and she stared at me blankly, she hurried away and my older co worker chastised me for it, however no one could take it seriously because of a combination of the relief from the awkwardness and the ridiculousness of the situation. However she caught us laughing through the window, and assumed we were laughing at her and not me. She marched back inside, stared me down solidly and asked me, her voice almost shaking as she spoke. “why did you say that?” I froze, considering what answer would pass the riddle that was this situation. “because their addictive …” she continued, unsatisfied. “But what if there were kids in here?” she asked, there weren’t. I can’t remember what I replied to that one. I think that was the point where I curbed my tongue and instead of giving her the verbal dual she was after, one that could have gotten me sacked, I apologised quietly. Now my older co-worker was considerably angry, one of the younger co-workers warned me she was ‘plucking feathers.’ She excused herself, I froze shell shocked and fantasised about having my own shop where I could say whatever I liked to the staff and customers with no one to tell me otherwise, and I remember a slight rush, like when your cold suddenly gets cleared up through a big sneeze. I assumed it was the last time I would hear about this.

However the next shift at work I get dragged into a side room by my manager, a woman trying her hardest to be sympathetic towards me despite me not making it easy. She informed me that I had been formally complained about and she wanted me to convey my side of the story. There were a few inaccuracies such as my height, and the fact that according to her retelling I didn’t apologise (my younger coworkers vouched for me that I did in fact say sorry) and I Freudian slipped that I apologised for her sake not mine – a fact my manager encouraged me not to reference. After this I emailed thorntons to apologise and explain that I thought it was suitable because “they make jokes like that before the watershed,” the accepted the apology and I was put under a twitchy kind of watch. This was made incredibly hilarious by the fact that only weeks later a customer asked for the phrase “Crystal Meth” written on a chocolate plaque, a joke between her and a friend called Crystal which made me receive a sharp look and a hint of dazed confusion from my manager.

Jump to six months later and my first reintroduction to the older co-worker, who was in charge and had been forceably removed from any of my shifts in case she let her fury out on me. She was a passive aggressive woman, there was something Umbridge-like about the way she carried herself. That smile that was retail code for “I’d sell you out to an angry mob for a pack of mints and the satisfaction of knowing your out of my life.” I noticed at first that I was kept on tasks that had me sent to the back storage, restocking shelves far away from human contact. It got to the point where I’d completed her trials and she seemed, unsatisfied by the fact those tasks had been done. Later when she was out of earshot one of the student aged people working there admitted to having been put on “matt watch” to make sure I didn’t do anything stupid. She also arranged with the other girls on the shift to try and protect me from menial tasks, by giving me the sample tray and making an effort to keep me away from the sample island (where people would be stranded on the other side of the shop alone.)

From now on its always an in joke, with my manager giving me three jumbo bags of sample Viennese truffles as a leaving present and some co-workers even mouthing the words “you mean the cocaine ones” when I discuss Viennese truffles. And that ladies and gentlemen is how I managed to get a complaint against me from an obsessive woman in retail.