Tuesday, August 01, 2006

Okay, that's just nasty!

About 8 years ago, when I first became a manager with Dillards, I was placed at the absolutely scummiest store in Phoenix as a men's area manager. I had 30 associates working for me, 20 of which were young guys, who cracked me up with their jokes and their gross sense of humor.
One of my associates, Mike, was particularly deranged. He always found the perfect occasion to demean his fellow employees and make everyone laugh at their expense.
One day, Mike walked into my office carrying what appeared to be a wet t-shirt. "Lara," he says, "I found this wet shirt on the floor in the fitting room, it still has tags on it, but it's wet. I don't know why." He hands it to me so I can try to figure out if it's just water, so we can let it dry and put it back on the selling floor. I stick my nose really close to it and start sniffing it.
After three or four sniffs, I say "it smells weird, I don't know kind of like chlorine or bleach...." Mike just looks at me and starts busting out laughing, his face turning all red, having a hard time catching his breath.
I just cannot figure out why he is laughing so hard. He finally calms down and tells me: "well, you know what smells like bleach..." and does an obscene hand gesture, closed fist moving up and down... Yes, it's exactly what you think. I stuck my nose in some guys' bodily excretions.
From that day on, everytime my associates found clothes with stains on them, they would put them on my desk with a note:
"Lara, can you please smell this and let us know what it is."