I Caught Every Word
When I was in high school, I was working retail in the women’s department of Marshall’s. One day, my boss sends me to clean up lingerie, because corporate says we have to hang everything on fragile plastic hangers and people never put stuff back.
So I’m sitting on the floor when this young Hispanic couple and their three kids (oldest was maybe 6) come into the department.
The kids are ducking around the aisles, giggling and making hand puppets out of the little disposable nylons they got from the shoe department, but they’re not being rude, messing anything up, or running into people so I don’t care.
While they’re doing this, their mother is looking at undergarments, asking her man what he thinks, and he’s telling her all sorts of dirty things in Spanish. The most tame comment was “Mmm, those would look good on you….but they’d look better coming off.” or something along those lines.
I’m trying to look like I’m ignoring them, because he obviously doesn’t think the girl kneeling on the floor understands. As they made their selections, the oldest girl came up to me with her nylon puppet and asked (in English) “What are you doing?” and I responded,
“Oh, I’m just picking up all the clothes on the floor so they don’t get dirty.” at this point, the mother looks at the girl and says to her, in Spanish, “Don’t bother the nice lady, she’s working.” Without thinking, I said to her in English, “Oh no, it’s really no bother! She’s okay”
The look on the Mother’s face when she realized I caught every dirty word. They booked it out of the section soon afterwards.
That’s one of a few of those moments I had at that job. But my personal favorite.