-by Alan Allen
When someone comes up to you in Walmart and asks you where the light bulbs are, the first thing you have to ask yourself is, ”What am I wearing?”
I initially took issue with the lady who asked me this question, but in the long run I suppose it’s better to be mistaken for an employee than an actual customer. I’ve seen the “People of Walmart” web site, and I know what goes on in there. Most of those folks are one chromosome away from running a Ferris wheel. I have no intention of winding up on the "Employee of the Month" bulletin board, so whenever I leave the house, even if it’s just for a quick errand into town, I make sure that I’m not wearing anything that has a sequined teddy bear waving a holographic American flag emblazoned on the front, or worse- sweat pants and a dashiki.
Unless I’m visiting a friend in San Diego, and need to make a quick stop to buy a kite or shark repellant, I also avoid wearing sandals, baseball caps, sleeveless shirts or shpants. That’s my word for those odd “short-pants” concoctions that are neither. I take the same precautions when I fly. I wasn’t around during the golden age of air travel, when passengers actually dressed and acted like human beings for the occasion, but when they stumble across my body next to the black box, they’re not going to find my corpse wearing a T-shirt that says, “F.B.I. -Female Body Inspector”. I actually saw that shirt on a frat douche in Vegas once. The only thing worse than being stuck in an elevator with that guy, would be being stuck in an elevator with the girl who thought that that shirt was cute. While I’m not making the cover of Esquire, all in all I strive to look as good as I can without putting on a tie.
So there I was, dressed in my standard, “gotta get some stuff” garb. I wasn’t shelving anything or greeting anyone, just doing my best to weave through the throngs of humanity on my way to electronics, when I was approached by a lady who somehow felt that I was the best candidate to answer her query.
What got me is that whenever I need help finding anything, whether it’s a Starbucks in another city, or when I’m just looking for say…light bulbs, I do a bit of preemptive evaluation of my prospective counsel. I size up my mark and look for a clue as to whether or not this is the best person to help me out. Am I going to come away with the answer I was looking for? Or should I just go ask a lamp?
The way she asked wasn’t even phrased in a manner which might have suggested there was a possibility that I didn’t work there. She didn’t say, “Excuse me, you wouldn’t happen to know where I could find light bulbs would you?”, insinuating that maybe I had shopped there once before and at some point found the need to buy light bulbs myself. There was none of that. It was a direct question posed to a person who she was convinced worked at Walmart, as in, “Where are the light bulbs, sonny?”
This happened sometime last summer. During the following months I didn’t give it much thought aside from the occasional, brief mental replay as I tried to figure out my wardrobe problem. I pretty much forgot about the whole episode until a few weeks ago when I found myself reliving the incident once again. But this time the tables were turned.
I refuse to drink the shwag that hotels try to pass off as coffee. There’s a reason it’s free, so I’ve gotten into the habit of bringing my own French Press on the road with me whenever the band has a gig. For those of you unfamiliar with this device, it’s a coffee making method by which you steep the grounds in a glass pot, and then press them down with a screened plunger device. It lets the coffee have some quality play-time with the water, enabling it to achieve the properties of a mild hallucinogen.
One morning after my daily plunge, I realized that the generic coffee fixin’s tray in my hotel room had only two of those tiny creamer containers. I don’t get it. I have forty-seven pillows on my bed but barely enough half & half to fill a shot glass.
It’s 10 AM. I figure housekeeping has already started making their rounds, so I leave my room on a cream crusade, and immediately spot the gray, industrial monstrosity parked haphazardly in front of 227 down the hall. As I approached, I noticed the housekeeping lady person woman girl going into the room, so I called out to her. “Excuse me, do you have some extra cream by any chance?” She tilted her head and looked at me with the perplexed gaze of a puppy trying to comprehend “Drop the chalupa”, at which point I realized that her English may not have been up to snuff. ‘Remember your Spanish’ I said to myself. “Mas leche por favor?” My Spanish is bad, but at 10 in the morning I’m barely making sentences in any language. It was then that she turned to me and said, “I heard you the first time, but I’m not the housekeeper.” at which point she smiled, entered her room and closed the door.
!&#$*! I immediately remembered my Walmart experience, felt uncomfortably uncomfortable for a second, and then realized that mine was an innocent mistake. There was a reason that I didn’t say, “Excuse me, are you with housekeeping?” I just assumed she was the housekeeper because it was early, she was entering the room wearing a dark, uniform-like shirt, and the cart was right in front of her door. What am I supposed to think? All the signs were there. Unlike the lady in Walmart, I examined the details and circumstances of the scene. When I see a little girl wearing a tiara, I don’t say, “What monarchy are you a representative of your Majesty?” I look around. Do I see cake? A clown? Are there other sugar-jacked kids running around? I take all circumstances into account, evaluate the scenario and make an assumption accordingly. I scored a solid 10 on this part of the test. The woman at Walmart did not follow these rules and therefore got a big fat “D”.
So here’s my advice. Be careful when venturing out into the world. People are too quick to jump to conclusions without doing the required math. In the future, if the lady in room 227 doesn’t want to be mistaken for a maid, she shouldn’t wear a brown nylon blouse or be milling around the housekeeping cart in a hotel hallway at 10 AM. And when I’m out and about, just getting a few things from Walmart, I’ll return the favor and think twice about walking around with the mop I intend to purchase.
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