Love and a ladder

I was wandering around Old Navy, mesh shopping bags slung over my shoulder and a stack of Old Navy credit card applications in my other hand. My walkie-talkie headset was awkwardly positioned in my ear and I self-consciously wandered the store, looking for customers to offer the store credit card to -- something I entirely did NOT want to do. (An FYI -- retail employees want to ask you about signing up for their credit cards as much as you want to be asked. Please don't be an asshole to them, as most of the time when they're asking you, it's because their manager is hanging over their shoulder demanding they ask.)

It was my first day on the job. I was wondering if this was really a good idea, but it was a job, and it was a job willing to work around my school schedule. And the discount wasn't bad. So I opted to suck it up. If I had known then what I would later know -- the tales of horror I have from working at Old Navy would make you physically ill -- maybe I would have dropped all my Old Navy trappings and run, but thankfully, I stuck it out a little bit.

While I was meandering the store hoping to not be noticed, a soccer mom stopped me in the men's department looking for a specific size in jeans. Running through the "points of customer service" drilled into my head in training, I looked up the size on the computer and saw that we had that size in "upstock" -- that is, in the compartments above the racks. I went to hunt down one of the gigantic rolling ladders, and upon spotting one, I tried to move it. It went nowhere.

Trying to not embarrass myself too much in front of the soccer mom, I pulled again. The ladder scree-d in protest across the floor. That's when I spotted him.

He was hiding behind a rack of clothes, watching me and snickering. His headset and name tag gave him away as an employee, but he was trying to go unnoticed, clearly entertained by the new girl's inability to hit a brake lever. I looked at him in desperation, my eyes meeting his as I silently pleaded him to get me out of the situation. Still laughing at me, he came around, kicked the brake lever, and said to me (in front of the customer), "Yeah, the brake gets stuck sometimes. You gotta get a little violent!"

I quickly thanked him and took care of the task at hand. I hunted him down a little later and extended my hand. "I'm How2," I said. "I hope you don't remember me as the chick too retarded to operate a ladder."

He smiled and introduced himself as A. His big brown eyes were still laughing at me as he said, "I don't know, I will probably know you as the retarded chick now."

"So the lever gets stuck a lot?"

"No. It works just fine." He smiled a shit-eating grin and walked away.

At the time, I thought he was kind of an asshole. A few years later, he'd become my husband.