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So today was an interesting day to say the least. I went to work on less than 5 hours of sleep and an entire pot of coffee. I was just this side of delirious and very, very hyper.

I started my day doing what Walmart calls CBL’s (Corrosive Brain Leakage) about the importance of selling you even more crap than you think you really need. You know… those annoying extended warranties on everything from your CDs to your riding lawnmowers, which I wasn’t aware we even sold riding lawn mowers until page 40 into the Walmart-approved voice automated computer teaching program. By the way you can’t click “next” without first hearing the entire message – I’ve tried. God forbid you fail the stupid test at the end and have to repeat the entire course.

After my brain forcibly clawed its way out of my head and ran screaming I was sent onto the floor back to my favorite register, Five. Five is neither by the perpetually opening and closing door which lets in the bitter cold air, nor is it near the ant-crawling Thirteen which is the only register you can buy tobacco at, and curiously enough it is also the only express lane. So back to Five. Wonderful, glorious Five.

I decided to practice my Walmart-approved cashier voice just in case anyone from Corporate decides to spend a weekend in our pathetic little mountain town and was just so unfortunate to come to our sad little palette burdened floors. Why is there a palate of paint by the babies clothing section, and why was there an exacto knife marked “Anna” left unaccompanied on top of a box in the candy aisle? Oh well.

About halfway through the day when I clocked back in from lunch I veered toward the bathroom when my manager stopped me to tell me something utterly important in which I immediately forgot because I was definitely on an important mission – paid bathroom breaks. But somehow along the way I got lost and I found myself standing at register five. My bladder was screaming, and my line was so long I couldn’t get away. I tried doing what another cashier had taught me. I imagined all of the mean evil customers being pushed down a flight of stairs followed by a slinky. Cause if you imagine killing them with a comedic slinky following them it’s that less morbid and maybe you’ll still land yourself a spot in heaven. It wasn’t working. Instead I tried something new. I decided to narrate my life as it was happening in a sarcastic fourteen-year-old self of mine buried somewhere under the depth of which is my sad existence. And this is what I came up with:

Oh good, for once a customer who doesn’t want to make eye contact - much less speak. Now I observe. I look at the family. It is an elderly couple with their middle aged children who looked like the people you hear about on the news – the inbred brother and sister inbreeding in their basement and they only come up for air once a month and that’s for the routine shopping trip at… you guessed it – Walmart.

All four of them had skin so pale you could not only see their translucent veins but also the blood pumping from within said veins. They all had the same deep sunken in large perfectly round eyes and the same pair of three-centimeter thick large round glasses. The son of the bunch was in his mid-40s and had a large bald patch with a semi-attempted comb-over which I’m sure he only did that so he would look good on his monthly outing outside of World of Warcraft. It didn’t help. Oh no, the daughter finally made eye contact. I smiled sweetly, to which she replied in the same manner. Her face pulled into a pointed grimace with a crooked sharp yellow-toothed grin. It was then that I realized they look like a family of voles!

“What hole did they crawl out of?” I thought. I smiled wide but inside I was dying of laughter. I began to imagine them with long sharp claws, and larger noses with small whiskers bristling out of each side. The longer I stared at them the more they became voles inside of my fantasy world. Break from the fantasy.

“Your total is-“ whatever the number the screen reads. They pay. I hand them their receipt. Smile! Next.

A little later on I get a lovely Spanish-speaking couple who buys $400 some odd dollars worth of furniture and groceries. Total. Pay. Receipt. Smile! Next.

About halfway into my next customer the little man comes back and asks me if I had taken off his discount for the table. I remember he had handed me a piece of cardboard with a barcode on it. Customers often hand me the barcode of large boxed items such as tables, so I had thought nothing of it. I fish the scrap out of the garbage and sure enough it says “20%” followed by a scrawled manager’s name and excuse why it’s discounted. I apologize and ask him to wait while I finish with this customer.

Total. Pay. Receipt. Smile!

I scan my brain for how I should approach this ordeal. I decide on simple. I start a refund for the table, pull the money out of my drawer and then stare…. dumbfounded.

“What’s twenty percent of $39?” I ask to myself out loud after saying it three times in my head and still unable to come up with an answer. I ask the little man who shrugs. I don’t even know if he understood me. I decide to ask the customer in front of me. He was roughly about 30 years of age and 200 pounds in weight. Not attractive, not unattractive. Yes, I think this as I ask him, but I would never admit it.

“What?”

“Do you know? Are you good at math?”

“What was it?” he asks.

“Twenty percent of 39.”

“Uh…. Hahah…. Yeah, I’m not good at math…. Ten percent of forty is….. four… so… nine?”

Nine doesn’t sound right. So the both of us whip out our cellphone calculators and commence to calculating. I pull up my tip calculator, type in 3900 and add a 20% tip. 780. So 3900 – 780 = 3120. It sounds good enough to me. I override the price, charge him $31.20 and take it out of his $41-something with tax. His grand total of savings came to $8-something. I ask the customer to sign a piece of paper that claims he had returned then bought the same exact table, and I proceed to laugh about how stupid we are to the man in front of me. I also manage to forget to give the little man the rest of his change. I had him $8, but not his 38 cents. He walks off.

I turn to the customer and joke with him.

“I’m a cashier, not a mathematician. If I were a mathematician I wouldn’t be working at Walmart.”

He rolls with laughter and says that I am the funniest cashier he’s ever met.

Six o clock rolls around and I hightail it the hell out of there. I’m not due back til 10:30 tomorrow morning, THANK GOD. I even get to sleep in!

Stay tuned for tomorrow’s chapter of… THE ADVENTURES of the underpaid and overworked exhausted sleep deprived cashier with an extraordinary sense of humor that WORKS FOR WALMART!!!