Making it Rain!

As you may or may not know, I work in retail…T-Mobile to be specific. You would not believe the people I come into contact with everyday. If you have never worked with “the public” you are probably a nicer person for it. I interact with a wide variety of people everyday. Some people are friendly and reasonable; others are flat out mean and ridiculous. Then there are the ones that can only be described as “crazy.” Let me give you two examples of crazy.

This day started like any other day. I was working the 12 – 8pm shift and everything was pretty much going as normal. That is until Tameka came into the store. She immediately waltzed up to my register and said she wanted to pay her bill. I told her the total (about $90), and she started pulling cash out of her purse. I kid you not; she pulled out 90 one-dollar bills! She piled them up on my desk one by one. I proceeded to say something to the extent of “That’s a lot of ones!” She then laughed out loud and said: “I’m about to make it rain up in here!” For those of you who don’t know what “make it rain” means, here is the Urban Dictionary definition: “When you're in da club with a stack, and you throw the money up in the air at the strippers. The effect is that it seems to be raining money.” The term has been popularized in several rap songs over the past several years. Anyway, so she picks up the stack of ones and throws them up into the air! We all started laughing pretty hard. She was jumping up and down and dancing all around the store. What she did next was what really shocked me. She picked up one of the one-dollar bills and reached across my desk and stuffed it down my pants!!! She then said something like: “YEAH!! WE PARTYING NOW!!” I have to say I was shocked. I completely froze up. I couldn’t move or say anything because I was in shock. She was laughing hysterically and so were my coworkers. I have to say that was the first time I have every been tipped for taking a bill payment.

The very next day I was again at the store. I had recovered from the previous day’s escapades, and was enjoying a fairly normal day. Around 2pm I received an email from one of the T-Mobile stores in Columbus. Apparently they had a man that was trying to fraudulently activate service with them with a stolen identity. An hour or so later, I got an email from another T-Mobile location saying that the same man tried to do the same at their store, and we should “be on the lookout for him.” Needless to say, about an hour later he walked through the front door. He was dressed in a ratty polo style shirt and black jeans. He of course came to my register. He told me that he wanted to sign up for service and get two Blackberry phones. He said he owned his own business and wanted to sign up under the business name. Since I already knew that he had stolen the identity of the business, I decided to have a little fun with him. I probed him with questions about his “business.” He told me that he owned his own recording studio in Columbus. He said that he just got done with shooting a video for Lil Wayne and P Diddy. I almost started laughing at him right then and there, but I was able to keep my composure. If that lie wasn’t enough… he kept going. “I also own my own construction company,” he said. I asked: “Oh yeah? What do you build?” “Boats” he said! At this point I had to cover my face and pretend to be scratching it to hide my laugh. I went on to say how cool it was that he had his own recording studio and boat construction company. But it gets even better folks. He then dropped the bombshell on me: “I’ll tell you where the money is at though… Storm Chasing! I chase Tornadoes and Hurricanes and make a killin doin that!” This time I laughed out loud right in front of him. I couldn’t help it! STORM CHASING!?!?!? Give me a break man! He didn’t catch the fact that I was amused by his ill-advised web of lies. Eventually I had enough fun with him, and I told him we couldn’t activate service for him without his tax papers. He was pretty discouraged by this and left for the Auburn T-Mobile.

So needless to say, everyday can be an adventure when working with the public. You meet some very colorful people to say the least. My trick for dealing with the bad ones is to enjoy the crazy ones!