My Hardware Expert Job

In my senior year of high-school, I got a job at a department store because the manager was a good friend of my dad. I was assigned to the hardware department and the toy department, and my job was (ostensibly) to answer questions from consumers. I knew, and know, absolutely nothing about tools. I was not good at this job. Fortunately, it was actually quite rare that anybody actually asked me a question. I spent almost all of my evening shifts just wandering around my departments, "keeping an eye out for shoplifters" (never found a one) and, as I was told to do, "keeping the stock nice" (this involved making sure all the products were lined up perfectly on the shelves). I did this for hours at a time (at $ 4.25 a pop), punctuated only by a 15-minute break. I think I was quite good at this part of the job.

Three events stand out in my memory. First, I used my store credit account to purchase my first ever Compact Disk: The Cure's Staring at the Sea. Second, one night I dashed off in the middle of my shift because I received a startling call from my best friend: he had been arrested at the site of his own job (a grocery store) because he had been doing "whippets", which apparently involved sucking the compressed air out of whipped cream aerosol cans. After finding several empty cans, the grocery store's manager set up secret video cameras and my friend was caught in the diabolical sting. Third, I almost got fired because I had just discovered the joy of role-playing games and kept calling in "sick" on Sunday afternoons.

So the bottom line is this: if you have a question about hardware, don't ask me. If you need someone to wander around a store for hours at a time doing little, I'm your guy.