The metal gate was down that sealed the entrance to the store from the mall. The lights were out except for the tiny security lights in the showroom. And I was sitting in the office /stockroom finishing up the weekly financial report that I had to drop in a mailbox on the way home. The locked bank deposit bag was sitting there ready to go as well. It was about 10 o'clock and I had finished up a bit earlier than usual.
Being promoted to assistant manager of the shoe store meant a rise in my salary, but it also meant having to open the store in the mornings and close it up at night as well as doing the weekly report. In effect, more work. Oh well, I guess that's how you got ahead in this company.
Someone was knocking on the back door which led into the corridor which ran behind the stores of the mall. I walked back to it and said loudly, "Who's there?" You had to be loud because it was a close fitting steel door. I wasn't expecting anyone so I wanted to make sure of who it was before opening the door. Probably mall security, but you never know.
"It's Linda," came back the muffled reply.
Linda? Why would the boss' wife be at the store an hour after closing? "Hold on," I called out. I unlocked the heavy door and swung it open. Linda was standing there with a manila envelope in her hand. "Butch finished the employee reports at home and forgot to bring them in today. They have to go out with the financial report his evening, so he asked me to drop them by."
Butch was about 20 years older than I was and a nice guy, but very conservative and boring as hell. The only thing he ever talked about was the Atlanta Falcons and how the store was doing as compared with previous years. "Why didn't he bring them himself?"
Linda had stepped inside, and I closed the door behind her and locked it. 3He's out with his bowling team again. He won't be home until midnight or so."
Oh yeah, Butch also talked about his bowling team. Like I said, boring.
"I read the reportsâI read yours, I hope you don't mind."
Well, I did kind of mind. Every six months, Butch had to assess the employees and write short report on them, which went to head quarters. I guessed if people at headquarters read them then they weren't
too
privateâI mean Linda was the boss' wife. But then again I saw her once or twice a week. I decided it wasn't a particularly big deal. I was pretty sure my report was good. Butch had told me that he had written good reports for me on the previous two.
"No, I don't mind. What did it say?"
"Well, it was positiveâButch praised your attention to detail, your creative ideas, and â and this I found interestingâyour handling of customer relations when someone came back to complain or return a d pair of shoes. Hold onâhere it is--" and she pulled out a sheet of paper from the envelope. "David shows a remarkable ability to satisfy the customer, particularly the more difficult middle-aged women who sometimes come in with an aggressive attitude. David usually causes them to leave with a smile on their face. He has very good interpersonal skills, is attentive to the needs of the customer and seems to always propose a solution that satisfies the customer while keeping to company policy."
"Yeah, that's meâkeep the customer satisfied," I joked.
"What is it you do to keep the customer satisfiedâparticularly these middle-aged women? If you read this with a slightly different tone it could sound very sexual. 'David usually causes them to leave with a smile on their face'" she read in a sultry voice. "Ooooooh, yeah."
"It's nothing like that," I said, a bit embarrassed. We were back at the desk and I sat down I the chair. Linda, disconcertingly, sat down on the edge of the desk right in front of me, her knees just inches from me. I just try to make them happy with the shoes they've already got or to propose a new pair that they'll like."
"And what do you tell them to make them happy with the shoes they've got?"
"It dependsâI try to tell them how good they make them look or how much younger they seem when they wear themâwithout being too obvious, of course."
"And what do you say to a woman who brings back a pair of 'fuck-me' pumps and says 'I didn't get fucked'?"
"