TMI

The thing about working in a small enclosed environment is that you learn, very quickly, about everyone's lives. Whether you want to or not, you learn about so-and-so's divorce and how she's been dating around ever since, but vows to never marry again. You learn about child custody battles and how the court is a no-good-stinking-rotten-son-of-a-gun. You learn that the small crush you had on the host when you first started is invalid because he's actually a minor. So you now avert your eyes everytime he walks into work.

You tend to learn a whole lot about things you never wanted to know.

This past Thursday, I lost all respect for my manager, T. I mean, the respect that I lost was a very thin line to begin with..but regardless, there's none left after this past truck day. We three retail girls, and T, always unload the truck every Thursday morning. We crank up the music in the stock room and belt out lyrics to trashy songs just loud enough that we might be heard by the outside shopping world. We don't care.

But then, as we are stacking boxes higher than most of us can reach and become swiftly enclosed in cardboard squares, as we work our box cutters through tape, secrets come out.

T (as always) starts the conversation by asking us uncomfortably personal questions. She is our manager and seems to be interested only in hearing us spill our guts until we are left wracked and heaving from personal discomfort. The one woman, N, has no problem telling us about how she and her second husband have this agreement called a "Hall Pass". Am I the only one on the planet who does not know what this means? Or maybe it's just a married couple's term? T is all over it.

Apparently, if a couple agrees on a hall pass, they are allowing each of them to sleep with one person without the other one knowing about it. So...N informed us about her little one night pass and how her husband knows nothing about it. T asked if N's husband has used his pass yet. N replies that she doesn't want to know anything about it.

T then goes on to describe what she would do to this 23 year old she's been "crushing on" if her husband would allow her a hall pass.

Okay, cougar.

Obviously, the users of these passes let their morals fly out the window. N just says that she gets bored with her husband after a while.

I try not to act shocked. As I cut through my stash of boxes, my cheeks burn and I know I'm being eerily silent. T will want me to add to the conversation. I will myself to keep silent because who knows what will come spewing out this time? The situation is already uncomfortable enough without me adding my awkward two-cents to a subject I don't know (and don't want) to know anything about.

So I do what I do. I avert my eyes, will my cheeks to stop burning (for some inexplicable reason?), and re-direct the conversation.

"So, J, are we going to eat that cake before the fruit flies get it, or what?"

YES. SAVED BY T's BIRTHDAY! Someone made her a cake that morning. Not only did I get to lean on the cake for an excuse to exit complete awkwardness, but I also got to SHOVE MY MOUTH FULL OF IT!

Saved by food, once again.