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The people we fancy in shops. And Libraries.

14:23 / 10.12.03

Okay, please forgive me if I just cut and paste this from the ‘office party’ thread across the way, but there really is no need to reword it, so: I say..

I’m thinking of starting a...thread about the people who work in shops that we’re secretly in love with. It’d allow those of us who office-less to post and make such things seem much more poetic and wistful than the dodgy obsessions you could interpret them as. It could run and run as well, being updated according to how charmingly you’ve been shortchanged or whether the greengrocers across town has stolen your custom by deploying a rosy-cheeked tousle-haired Cornish lad wearing gloves with the fingers cut off.

(*Ahem* Which sometimes happens, so I’m led to believe)

When I worked in a shop I was very aware of my responsibility in this, of the role I was playing in the community as ‘young fella with a ready smile who sits by till but wears his uniform in slightly rebellious manner’, and since then I’ve noticed that every town has one. Nobody ever actually goes out with people who work in shops (except people who work in bookshops, but they are A Breed Apart, and don’t they just know it), but surely everybody crushes on them.

Er, or is it just me?

And I believe Reid has a story about a librarian he’d like to share...

14:40 / 10.12.03

There is something about shopworkers isn't there. Never managed to figure it out but the attraction is there.

And it doesn't matter how you go about it: scope out the checkout girls and queue at the cutest's till (no matter the length of queue); or constant visits to the shop she (or he) works in, always timing it so they are there; or, eventually asking them out for a drink or timing a visit just before their lunch break and offering them lunch.

I've done it all, especially the first one, but how do you make food shopping more fun? Is it the uniforms, the fact that you can't see their legs because of the counter (which leads to saucy thoughts that maybe they're bottomless [Probably just me on that one eh?]), the welcoming smile that sad loonies like myself mistake for huan kindness and interaction, or a cunning corporate plan to get suckers like me into their shops and spending my money? Who knows...

Oh and don't get me started on bar maids

The resistable rise of Reidcourchie

14:40 / 10.12.03

Well as I said I'm not sure if it's the librarian with the funky hair or all the books that's doing it for me.

15:35 / 10.12.03

Adamswish - Speaking as a former shopworker... it’s the smile. That’s all it takes, just launch a few well-directed dazzling smiles and you can go from the villages’ own Neurotic Boy Outsider to Housewives’ Choice in one extraordinarily unlikely step. That’s all well and good as long as everyone secretly knows that that’s all it is: just the right way to treat your customers, but it’s a real drag when people start hanging around at closing time. This is not the kind of weirdy/criminal behaviour I’m thinking of for this here thread. I say: You can crush but don’t lurk.

So, in that spirit, I hereby send out an arrow of purest love to the girl in the health food shop down the bottom of the hill, who has a smile that could melt solid rock thru plate steel, which she is not slow to use at each and every opportunity, And! She has long henna-ed hair And! She has nice hands and a neck like Audrey Hepburn.

And! It’s doing me the power of good because now I go to the health food shop to buy, like, really healthy things on a regular basis.

Scrambled Password Bogus Email

16:17 / 10.12.03

Yeah, right, you get the health food shop.

Mine just had to work in the off-license, huh?

*sigh*

16:43 / 10.12.03

mine was the boy at the cd shop. I'd just recently started making it a habit to go in there, once a month, twice a week, whatever. he was there, all the time. he had a round boyish face and truly mussy hair, like he just woke up out of bed. and his smile! it was the sweetest, most angelic smile ever, toothy and sincere.

the routine in the shop was that some people work the cash, some work the floor, and he was always behind the counter. one day, though, he came down to help me find a cd I wanted. I followed him down the aisle, and that's when I saw it - the finest set of boy buns I have ever seen in my entire life. just so! I swear my jaw dropped and my knees got weak, my breath caught in my chest and it was all I could do not to throw myself on them. I mean him.

by this time I was on a first name basis with him, and he always had a gleaming smile for me. it wasn't long before I screwed up enough courage to give him my number...and run straight out of the door. I ran to my car and sat, giggling, for about 10 minutes after.

we went out on one date, and I kissed him, for ages, my hand sliding down the firmest, finest chest ever. we never went out again.

RIP, crush.

16:45 / 10.12.03

I also dated lots of boys I met when I worked at the bookstore, even almost married one of them. but those stories don't make me hot to recall

16:56 / 10.12.03

I work in an off-licence, and all I get are winos... Well, that's not entirely true. In fact my manager slapped me last week (in a nice way) because I was grinning like a loon at one of the customers... Then they go and buy cheap white wine and I no longer respect them.

My votes for Central London:
1) The blonde boy who works in the bookshop in Bloomsbury they used for Black Books.
2) One of the guys on Camden High Street with the Golf Sale signs. Not the skinhead. Or the one who looks like he has leprosy. The one with the goatee.
3) The cutie with the bed-hair in Virgin in Camden (although he's not as cute as the one who used to work in Tower before the Man shut it down).

17:39 / 10.12.03

Reminds me of the day I had spent nearly eight solid hours talking while training people to use their new tills, so my throat was a littel worn out. I was nearly finished when a rather foxy middle aged lady walked up to the till. Everyone stopped to serve her, but she just stood there and purred "No, do go on, I want to hear that one talking some more..."
I don't think I've ever been so instantly aroused before in my life.

Red Cross Iodized Salt

18:18 / 10.12.03

Round about here is where a link to "Nation In Love With Girl From Record Store" should go...but it no longer appears to be in The Onion's archives.

One of the things you notice in NYC is that bars almost exclusively hire pretty aspiring model / actresses in their early twenties. All of them seem to have interesting hair, piercing / tattoos and a penchant for sleeveless cropped t-shirts /tops. I can think of at least one that three of my friends have simultaneously been in love with, but I've never known any of these crushes to lead anywhere (except, perhaps, to alcoholism).

20:05 / 10.12.03

There's a lovely mussed and slightly emo angelic boy at The coffee shop in old ellicott city. Entirely not my type (as he has not long hair and is not effeminate, dark, or gothy in the least), but he still makes me smile and dump money in the tip jar. Even when he forgets my sandwiches, because he's just so cute in his apologeticness once he realises this.

i have no idea why I'm bothering to post this.

20:23 / 10.12.03

Bedhead-"Nobody ever actually goes out with people who work in shops "
-Im going out with someone who works in a shop. But then do I count, working in the same shop as we do?

I also had a crush on a guy in the Warner Village shop (*cringe*) who was lovely and slightly rugged and gorgeous and mysterious and slightly dazed. But he waited til I had my man to ask me out. Typical bloody shopworkers.

ONLY NICE THINGS

21:03 / 10.12.03

It's terribly nice that reidcourchiw has a friend. Hello there.

Older-school Barbeloids will recall the crush I had for the better part of six months on Borders Employee, who worked in the Ocford Street branch of Borders. Eventually, having taken a day off work to met an ex-partner, only to be told that said ex-partner did not want to see me anymore (socially, that is), I found myself speaking to Borders Employee, and the moment that happened the whole edifice of crushery collapsed.

Lovely ears, mind.

21:07 / 10.12.03

librarians. I have a thing for librarrians (watch out our lady...) something about all that ready access to information, books and other treats...

21:34 / 10.12.03

‘Bop - when I worked in a shop it was perfectly acceptable to go out with co-workers. In fact, it was encouraged. I just have a personal hang-up that says it’s okay to flirt with the customers but not to actually go anywhere with them, that shopworkers should be distant, unattainable stars, who just happen to sit behind tills. Like the chauffeur in Sabrina, only hotter.

And since starting the thread, I felt compelled to march down the hill and buy some walnuts, and was rewarded with my weekly dose of that utterly dazzling smile.

Hello Haus. Yes, poor Reid made the mistake of once posting something vaguely nice to me so I’ve been clinging to him in a very irritating way since. I’ll try to stand on my own two feet from now on, and thrill to his scorching wit from afar.

22:12 / 10.12.03

Its great, cause for our big leaving-party with free bar all night in posh hotel all for free-ness, theres a big sign saying "sorry, no partners" but my friend who I work with (who is also damned hot) and me can both bring our parters cause they work there too. Arent we clever? Not to mention sexy..

Scrambled Password Bogus Email

00:02 / 11.12.03

Woah, hold up, it's Haus.

In a Conversation thread.

Wait, are you Viggo Mortensen? Is this some kind of Peter Jackson orchestrated publicity?

ONLY NICE THINGS

05:57 / 11.12.03

Oddly enough, yes, Money $hot, to both qurestions. Actually, I mistakenly believed that Reid had invited Bed Head onto the board; people's Barbepigones are a source of endless fascination. I think a degree of stalking is a very healthy process for a young man.

I'm reading B-lith at the moment but having little time to contribute - by the time I've finished voting on the moderator actions I'm timed out, and that's probably a more useful contribution than actually saying anything.

Mind you, with 19 moderator actions overnight, I think I may have to give that a swerve this am if I want to keep my job...

The resistable rise of Reidcourchie

07:31 / 11.12.03

Ah, Bed...bless.

However I suspect you need someone a little less prone to foot in mouthness, may I suggest....Haus. Though s/he is demanding, s/he requires a lot of attention or simply doesn't post.

10:20 / 11.12.03

I can't think of any shopworkers or librarians that I fancy, so am just going to quote some Douglas Coupland, and pretend that I fancy the woman wearing White Shoulders who stamps my book at the library, even if I don't really know what White Shoulders is:

"Everybody has a 'gripping stranger' in their lives, Andy, a stranger who unwittingly possesses a bizarre hold over you. Maybe it's the kid in cut-offs who mows your lawn or the woman wearing White Shoulders who stamps your book at the library - a stranger who, if you were to come home and find a message from them on your answering machine saying, 'Drop everything. I love you. Come away with me now to Florida,' you'd follow them."

12:13 / 11.12.03

There's a young lady who works at a newish used book place quite near my apartment. I go in there probably once a week to look at art books which I never,ever buy them (even used, they're still too expensive). Aside from being a lovely sharde of near-gothly pale (but not, you know, blue), what's most attractive about her is her voice - it's probably one of the sexiest voices I've ever heard.

However, when that voice unexpectedly started to chat me up about a book I was buying, I was kind of tonguetied and didn't know what to say, because she was remarking about a blurb by Pauline Kael on the back of it, and I, at that point, had no idea about film. So I totally blew that one. Now that I have a little more knowledge about film and am actually single, I'm tempted to make a go at it, but I'm not sure she even works there any more (a less appealing person is usually there when I drop in lately) and I believe she made fun of me once for paying too much for a book of Tolstoy short stories. Those damn superior booksellers!

13:02 / 11.12.03

Remember that Onion story from a while ago - "Nation declares love for girl in record shop" .. that was so great.

Naming no names, there's a certain record shop in a certain midlands city, and all the people who work there are so unbelievably cool looking and slinky-of-hip that I'm sure they must operate some kind of scary policy of only hiring people who fit their photogenic hipster requirements..

Of course, in *that* shop the staff never speak to you, in marked contrast to the certain other record shops run by less attractive people, who are apt to make canny comments on your purchases, offer you a cup of tea while you're browsing and regale you with anecdotes about going to see Hawkwind..

If only the two species could be merged!

13:19 / 11.12.03

scary policy of only hiring people who fit their photogenic hipster requirements..
There's a cafe in Edinburgh which actually does this... one of my friends applied and he had to state his height / weight ratio (or something similarly specific) on the application.

As for people in record shops- I remember hearing a song somewhere called I'm In Love (With The Girl At The Virgin Manchester Megastore Checkout Desk), with a line in it to the effect of "She sells records... that's something special". The song was quite poor, as far as I remember, but the sentiment was good.

13:25 / 11.12.03

Ah, Bed...bless. - An attitude like that isn’t likely to discourage me from lighting candles for you, Reidcourchie. I’ll try not to stand so close from now on though.

So anyway, running the risk of turning this into some kind of horrid Bedhead crush thread, some idle banter from May Tricks in last nights Lateshift somehow reminded me of someone who worked in Forbidden Planet in Nottingham a couple of years ago. Nottingham is of course, home to Page 45, officially the greatest comic shop in the whole world, and so nobody in their right mind visits Forbidden Planet in this town. BUT, a couple of years ago they had a cashier who made it worthwhile occasionally swinging by. A heavenly vision of auburn-haired loveliness, the most intriguing/confuing thing of all was that I found it completely impossible to work out whether s/he was a boy or a girl. And there just isn’t a polite way to find out. At least not if you’re going to maintain the cashier/customer divide that I think is so damned important.

Not that it matters/is any of my business. S/he was either a fantastically feminine boy, or a thrillingly mannish girl, and utterly captivating either way as s/he totalled up your comics in a deep, low voice. It’s not the kind of experience one gets too often in yer average comic shop, and it made it totally worth braving the usual horrors of FP for, back in the day.

This person doesn’t work there any more. These days I say Yah boo sucks to Forbidden Planet.

The resistable rise of Reidcourchie

14:06 / 11.12.03

There's a Forbidden Planet in Nottingham?

If however you head across Market Square and down the little alley that my Nottingham resident friend swears blindly does the best cheese and chips ever to the Wetherspoon's pub there (I know, I know) you will find not only a tolerably decorated Wetherspoon's a rarity in itself but a lovely young woman with gorgeous dreds who tends the bar. While she comes across as lovely and is a vision to behold, she sadly is not a very good bar person.

I'd like to thank Barbelith for turning me into one huge hormone this week. I'm off for a shower.

21:00 / 11.12.03

Ah, yes, the Grey Eyed Girl with Black Hair at the Cafe, who carries her own fully charged stormcloud of excitement with her...and her grey eyed twin brother who works at the fast food place across the street. People regularly forget what they were going to order. Entire rooms rearrange themselves like iron filings when the twins go by.

The Return Of Rothkoid

12:38 / 12.12.03

Actually, there was a girl who used to work in an avant-garde Australian composers' store in The Rocks who I was just about to ask out, years ago... until she mentioned her partner in passing.

It was probably incredibly obvious that I was interested, and she was just allowing a graceful ejector-seat. Nice.

12:45 / 12.12.03

I'm In Love With The Girl At The Manchester Virgin Megastore Checkout Desk

Our Lady of The Two Towers

14:20 / 12.12.03

Squirmelia I can't think of any shopworkers or librarians that I fancy

< sob! >

15:09 / 12.12.03

"No, do go on, I want to hear that one talking some more..."

Wow. You win.

I've worked in retail for the last ten years, and have heard too many complaints about unwanted romantic attention from my co-workers to even think that way at a fellow shopworker. I've had the love drummed right out of me.

On the other hand, I have had more than a few crushes on regular customers, so there is hope!