I work in a grocery store, doing a variety of tasks. On this particular day i was working the register during a particularly busy time. Most people waiting in line are quiet, not this time. About five people deep in the line is a potentially homeless woman with a deep voice and german accent. She has a grocery cart like many others with a few items in it. She has a large purse sitting in the child seat of the cart and is holding an empty plastic bag and a poster that on one side looks like a nice band poster. Well designed, very colorful and on the other is something scrawled in large handwriting that she is holding up and loudly asking people questions and making seemingly random statements. About babies about work about a lot of things all very loudly sounding like Nico from The Velvet Underground and/or Marlene Deitrich. It is quite disturbing. The other shoppers already traumatized by working themselves, by traffic, by parking, by struggling to figure out what is for dinner and then havin to find the ingredients. Are now standing in line near an apparently schizophrenic very didactic woman with a worrying accent. Some are stiff with fear.
I have no issues with the mentally ill or handicapped and generally respects their struggle just to live an average life. So when she gets to the front of the line, after basically ranting for the last five or six minutes, I ask the usual questions, "Are you ready to check out?, Did you find everything you need?" type things. Suddenly the woman is completely lucid, "Yes I am, and yes I did. Thank you for asking." Then, "Don't touch my bag, I need it to pay you." She only has two or three largely unremarkable items in the basket, totalling less than ten dollars. She flops out a few bills and proceeds to make them scatter on the counter but near her. I reach to start organizing the bills, "Don't touch the money until I am finished counting thank you." She counts out the exact change picks up her handbag and steps back. "May I count it?" I ask. "Now yes... you are a very nice man." And with that I bagged the groceries put them back in her cart and when she turned around she continued her rant almost at the point that she had left off....
Work is strange, indeed.