Mike, Who Was Not Greek, But Italian
Waldenbooks has Secret Shoppers; professional staff who dress as if they were customers and walk into stores to test their clerks. The standard Secret Shopper M.O. is to ask for a book that is in stock (the clerk should lead you to the book), ask for a book that is out of stock (the clerk should offer to special order it), and buy the book that is in stock.
What you are not supposed to do is to look at the driver's license, wink roueishly at the customer, and smirk "That is the prettiest driver's license I have ever seen. And you're a very pretty lady."
Yes, Mike was the only guy in Waldenbooks history to get fired for hitting on the Secret Shopper.
As it turns out, he got saved at the last minute by his boss, who went to bat for him and begged the district manager to keep him on board. And it's not like a better-looking guy couldn't have gotten away with it; it might be possible for such words to come off as a charming wink, but not when it was Mike.
Mike was a hobbit.
It's a cliché, but it's true. Everyone who met him, within minutes, called him "Mike The Hobbit." He was short, and had a big pot belly and oversized feet, and his fat seemed to pool at the bottom of his neck, pushing up against his throat, which sagged like a bullfrog's. He looked, in many ways, like Jabba the Hutt but with worse skin.
It didn't help that he had no dress sense, so he always wore tight white shirts with straining buttons; little tufts of belly hair and pale skin were visible in the little half-moons of open space between the taut buttonholes.
Mike wore thick square glasses, and his smile was little more than a crease. When he was happy, his entire face pulled up into one squinchy grin, which both radiated happiness and creepiness as his eyes and mouth disappeared into the soft folds of fat that were stuffed around his face. He was eternally affable, as he was a born-again Christian - the sort who regarded any unhappiness as a betrayal of God's Eternal Love.
He was genuinely a nice guy. It was hard to hate him, because you could ask him to do anything, and, well, he'd do it. And he would cheerfully debate any topic, even the ones he was radically opposed to, because his saving grace was that he really liked people and hated the sin, not the sinner.
And he was desperate to get laid.
Not that he would ever want such a physical thing as sex, of course - for Mike, it was about finding the perfect girlfriend. He talked continually about finding the woman for him, and she'd be Christian, and upright, and a virgin.
"A virgin?" I asked, incredulous. I had never said it within Mike's earshot, but I frequently referred to myself as the opposite of Captain Kirk: I would not go where no man had gone before. After a few bad experiences, I wanted a woman who had been deflowered, and knew how to fuck proudly and without shame.
And Mike was twenty-six. I was of the opinion that if you hadn't lost it by twenty-five, you either didn't want to or you were so psychologically marred that you would be useless in a long-term relationship. So I was a little taken aback.
"Yeah," he said, grinning foolishly. "After all, what better gift can a man give to his wife on their wedding night than his virginity?"
The words were out of my mouth before I could stop them. "A guy who knows what he's doing?"
Mike just laughed. "Ah, Ferrett," he said. "You're so funny...."
Mike was not the brightest cup in the shop, either. Bob the Manager had to cover for him on more than one occasion, because Mike had the habit of removing the weekend's cash deposits from the locked safe, putting them on the counter, and then strolling off to the bank empty-handed, leaving approximately two thousand dollars in cash unattended on the counter.
After the fifth time this happened, Bob had to write him up.
Mike hit on every woman, asking them questions that were distinctly creepy. "Do you like astrology? " he asked a woman who was perusing a magazine. "Because it's not right. Jesus is the answer, Jesus." The woman began to back away. "He has love for you - and so do I!" She bolted out the door, dropping the magazine on the floor. Mike picked it up and leapt out the door, waving it at her.
"He'll forgive you, lady! He'll forgive yooooooouuuuuu!!!"
But by far, the best moment was when we were at the counter, and I was joking around with a regular customer who bought science fiction on a regular basis. Mike liked science fiction, but he wasn't too well-acquainted with it; at one point, he informed me that "Back to the Future" was the first time anyone had considered the concept of time travel.
"Oh, I've never read that book," Mike said.
"That's because you're a cretin," the customer replied, grinning wildly. He was joking, of course, but there was enough bite in it that it cracked everyone else at the store up, just because who would say such a thing? But Mike was confused.
"What's a cretin?"
The customers in line began to giggle.
"No, don't laugh!" he protested. "Tell me! What's a cretin? I don't know!" I tried to inform him, but I was doubled over with laughter. Undaunted, Mike left the counter - and his customer - to go to the big display dictionary, flipping through its pages to find the answer.
"Cretin," he muttered. "Cretin. Ah, here it is - CRETAN. 'Person or object pertaining to the Isle of Crete'." Mike paused, confused.
"But I'm not Greek - I'm Italian!"
We couldn't work for another fifteen minutes.