My rant from the other day has dredged up a fair few memories from when I was younger and started working in retail. Just a general reminder for anyone who’s forgotten or is new here, I’m hitting my 10 year anniversary in September.
When I started I was the tender age of 14.
Now I have always been tall for my age and because I was at a University reading level by 12 I also talked like someone who was a good four or five years older. Now though I’m re-reading books I read when I was 12, cos nostalgia and Meg Cabot popped out some real good reads. Also while my vocabulary is broad enough to still confuse Matt and some members of my family (not counting my 5 year old niece because that’s just cheating), most people my age have also improved their vocabularies.
So while once upon a time I was above average, now I’m just…meh?
But that’s besides the point. My point was this.
I don’t think that at 14 I looked like I was 18.
But for some reason, I still had weird middle-aged/old guys hitting on me.
Yes, you read that right.
STORY TIME!
One night I’m working the checkouts a few hours before close. Back in those days the late night shopping Monday to Friday had just become a thing for supermarkets so we were still pretty quiet.
I was serving this guy who was easily in his late forties to early fifties. I greet him as I do with any other customer which back in those days was awkwardly and with no confidence.
This might surprise you all to know but I was very shy and introverted. I’m still introverted but I’m far less shy.
So anyways. This guy whose groceries I have finished scanning and he has paid for, comments on my looks. I don’t remember exactly all of what he said because hello it ten years ago but I do remember these next few parts because these are the parts I retold at school the next day and countless family events.
Him: something something you’re pretty something creepy
Me: Thank you?
Him: You know if I was fifteen years younger I’d ask you out for dinner.
Me: *internally freaking the absolute fuck out because what the shit, right?*
Me: Yeah…so I’m fourteen.
Him: *laughs with absolutely no shame or awkwardness* oh well then if you were four years older and I was fifteen years younger.
By this point I have praying to whatever higher power there is that someone, anyone saves me from this situation right here. But no one else who is working knows that this is happening so I have to try and save myself.
Me: Yeah…so I don’t think my cop dad would really like that very much. He’s pretty protective. Like Liam Neesan protective.
Him: I reckon I could get him to like me.
At this point I think another customer came up to be served or one of the supervisors might’ve noticed that this guy was hanging around for a bit too long but something forced him to say goodbye and leave.
This was not the last time that this happened….Hell this wasn’t even the first time it happened.
I was shopping with my parents one day when I was 13 and while they were looking at something in one store I walked to the store next door. As I was going back to find my parents I was approached by some older guy, probably late twenties?
Just as a thing, if I didn’t look 18 at 14 then I sure as shit didn’t look 18 at 13….
So this guy is trying to chat me up and talking about how he hasn’t seen me around before.
Shocking. Really.
He keeps trying to hint at us doing something and I told him that I was with my parents which he didn’t find weird and kept pushing. Somehow I managed to slip it in there that I was 14 and I’m not sure if it was my age or the fact that mum and dad were coincidentally walking up behind me at that moment but he scampered off pretty quick.
By this current point in my life (being 24 not back when I was 14), I am fairly used to being creeped on. I don’t know if it’s worse when it’s guys actually close to my age or when they’re older…they just hit different levels of creep.
Like this one time when I went out with my best friends for a girl’s night and this guy at the bar took it upon himself to “teach me how to hug”. This asshole insulted my hugs. He said I didn’t know how to hug. And I’ve had a few drinks by this point so I’m like…bitch, I give great hugs, I am well known for my hugs, I just don’t tend to hug strangers at bars.
Whereas the old guys that come into my work to be creeps…totally different level of creep. Most of them stopped by the time I was about 22 because I developed a very serious case of “fuck you” face. Customer service am I right?
These guys creeped on all the female workers of a certain age. If it wasn’t me, it was the others. They’d ask for cigarettes and then watch my coworker bend to get them, and I’ve been told it’s been done to me when I wasn’t looking.
The thing is that while it’s still uncomfortable and inappropriate because we’re working and it’s sexual harassment, we’re also adults. Creeping on adults isn’t as frowned upon.
Creeping on literal children however!
Stahhhp!
Seriously. Why does this even have to be said?
So many of my female coworkers were put in the same uncomfortable positions that I was.
By the by, I’m not saying that my male coworkers haven’t been sexually harassed by customers at work. I have no doubt that it happens all over the place, just as far as I know none of my male coworkers were sexually harassed while being underage.
One last interaction I remember before I go. Had three guys come in one morning while I walking the self-serve registers and apparently they liked my sass because they invited me to come on a “trip” with them. Said they were going to New Zealand and that I could “hide in their luggage”.
I laughed them off at the time and told my supervisor about the newest weird interaction, but now I’m actually wondering if I had agreed, what would they have done.
Like I didn’t think they were serious at all but what if I had actually said yes to their weird ass proposition? Now if they were joking then why make the suggestion at all? We don’t know each other, we’re not friends. But if they were serious, still why make the suggestion?
I hear a lot of Karen’s and Ken’s complaining about self-serve registers and how they’re taking jobs away from people (they’re not but that’s not for now) but I actually feel like they would decrease the number of creepy interactions between customers and team members by a good 60%. That number may be a little off, I don’t do the math real good so I can’t be sure.
For now though I am going to finish eating a particularly big piece of lemon meringue pie and go to bed and leave you with this last message.
If two legally consenting adults with whatever age gap between them want to get it on…that’s all them. But when an almost 40 year old is telling an under 18 year old that age is just a number, well guess what. Jail is just a room and railway spikes are just pointy sticks.
Here’s some more photos of me being of legal age just because I like them.
S.J Smith Books 