Zel-kun’s Words

I am suddenly reminded of a very special moment when I worked at Wal-Mart, the place I commonly refer to as ‘The Cursed Land of Blue Vests.” And I say this with more heartfelt meaning than I say a lot of things. Wal-Mart is a cursed place, where damned souls wander aimlessly. I have talked with many of the ‘associates’ there (that’s what they’re called, associates), and fully half of them have a tale of woe that leaves them devastated and wearing the blue vest of shame. People that owned their own businesses, laid off mill workers (it may not seem glamorous, but mill workers make some nice dough), and still others that found themselves on the wrong end of a lawsuit and lost everything.

Ironically enough, I’ve met some of my best friends while working there. Comraderie through shared misery, I suppose. It was also easy to make friends, because the people I wanted to associate with stuck out like sore thumbs. Wal-Mart is a bastion of ignorance, an intelligent person is extremely obvious.

This story is about a particular conversation with the Big H.

Bit of background on the Big H:

The Big H’s real name is John. But that’s my name, with an H added. So I started calling him the Big H, or H for short. H loves music, all music. He is an encyclopedia of music. If you name a song, he’ll tell you the band, the year it was made, and the album it premiered on. He’s also a very strange sort with an even stranger sense of humor. Naturally, we got along just fine.

I was connecting a television in electronics (which is where I worked), which meant I had my arm wedged behind an immovable plastic barrier, feeling around for the coaxial cable, power cable, and outlet. I was about ten feet in the air on a ladder, with my head behind the television. Usually, when I’m in the air, I have another associate on the ground, not really to hold the ladder, but to field questions. It doesn’t matter how high you are, or how occupied you may be, a customer will call out to you or tap you on the shoulder. Today, I had H at the bottom of the ladder.

I was fumbling around with the power cable, feeling around for the outlet that I knew was there. My arm twisted the wrong way and I dropped the cable. “Ah,” I said in irritation.

“You okay up there, didn’t get electrocuted, did you?” H asks.

“No, no. You’d know when I’m electrocuted. I’d probably say the same thing, but it’d be slightly more panicked and definitely louder.” It was at this moment that I found the power cable again, and unfortunately for me, one of the contacts found the outlet. Obviously, it was the contact my finger touched, sending a brief jolt of electricity through me in the instant is took me to remove my finger, “Ah!” I exclaimed.

“You mean like that?” He asks, feigning curiosity.

“Yes… like that,” I muttered.

It took at least ten minutes to get H to stop laughing.

Fun times.

Zel-kun out.