HOLY FUCK I hope I can type this out without punching out my monitor. Seriously. I love my job, I do. But if there is one aspect of it that I can say I hate in its entirety, it's piercing. Yes, it's fast money and it takes no brains. I'm not talking about the complictaed stuff like ear projects and whatnot, I mean cranking out endless navels and tongues. I can do it with my eyes closed. The bad news is, I have to do it on people, people who seem to be of below average intelligence, below average social skills and below average ability to pay attention. The worst offenders, I have decided, are chicks who get their noses pierced. This is the new dipshit of the dipshits, the reigning queen of the slackjaws and assholes. After the last two days, I have determined I have no bigger nightmare than a chick with a nose ring.
DAY 1: I pierced this girl's nose the week prior. When I asked her what kind of jewelry she wanted, she said, "Something that doesn't look like I got my nose pierced." Well, that would be...not piercing your nose! How about that, sparky? She was concerned about her office not permitting it. Meanwhile, she has ratty-ass hair with purple streaks in it. She already looks like she spent the night in a dumpster, I doubt they'd even notice a tiny nose stud. So, I do the piercing, and give her the instructions. She stares at me as I talk, blank-eyed, her lips moving ever so slightly, as if she were listening to some puzzling code she must decipher. Occasionally she would slowly repeat something I had said, only screwing it up. I say, "No alcohol or peroxide on your piercing." She would nod and frown hard and slowly utter, "No alcohol...then peroxide." She was not a foreigner, either, so it's not like there was a freakin' language barrier, just an intellectual one. So I finally got her out of there after repeating myself for ten minutes.
Yesterday at work just before open, I see the same girl standing on the sidewalk, staring at me intently through the front window, as if she's trying to read something from afar. She finally comes in the shop, and I see the inflamed, red, bubbled-up wound where her nose piercing should have been. "Do you remember me?" She asks. Ugh, how could I forget? "You pierced my nose, and um. Um...I'm having an....emergency?" She squinches up her face and turns to show me. I'll say. She looked like she got shot in the side of the nose with a nail gun.
"So what happened?" I asked.
She sighs, rolls her eyes and looks as if she's attempting to think of a word. "So....um...it got all crusted to my nose? On the inside? And, um, I couldn't get it out? So, um, I stuck some wire cutters up there? And, um, I cut it off? And, then, um. Um, I couldn't get the piece out? So, um, I was panicking? And, um, I wanted to put my retainer in? So, um, I couldn't? So, um, I stuck this little piece in there? And, um, I wanna put in my retainer now?" She squinches up her face again, like a dog flinching from a rolled-up newspaper.
I take a deep breath. "So, let me see if I understand this. You got some crusty boogers on the jewelry in your nose. And your solution to that was to stick wire cutters up there and snip off half the jewelry?" She nodded, looking suddenly pleased with her resourcefulness.
"You do know," I continued, not really caring at this point if she could tell I was talking down to her, "That your body can't stick to metal, it's impossible. You had boogers and maybe some blood on there."
She started to nod her head, then caught herself, and started shaking her head no. I sighed and said, "Come on," going back to the piercing room. There was no point in having a discussion, it was time to help her out with the jewelry and get her out of the shop. "So," I asked, more out of need for a laugh than anything, "Why didn't you just come here to have us look at it if you were worried?" She giggled and shrugged. And why not? Shoving a tool up your nose is always preferrable to seeking professional help with a problem, isn't it?
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DAY 2: I don't think I've ever come so close to punching someone in the face at work, at least not this week. A girl comes in looking for a nose stud. I show her the studs, she chooses one and I say, "Okay, come on back, I'll put it in for you." When someone buys jewelry from us, we put it in at no charge. She waves me away, "It's cool, I got it." I have learned that this is code for 'I am about to make the next twenty minutes of your life a living hell.' I run her credit card, hand her the baggie, and she holds it up in front of her. She frowns, staring at the bag, and I know the games are about to begin.
"Do you have a shorter one than this?" She asks. "Last time I got one, it was shorter."
"I can bend it for you if you like," I reply...hence the reason we put it in for you, dumbass. I go back to the piercing room, take the jewelry and begin adjusting it. She takes it, sticks it in her nose and then asks if we have thinner posts. I tell her we do, the one she has is an 18 gauge, we also have 20, which is thinner. She asks for one with a blue stone and I get it, bend it to her liking, and she pulls the first one out of her nose and inserts the new one.
"Oh, I like that much better."
"Do you want to put that on the same card?" I ask.
She freezes in surprise. "Oh, no, I'm taking this one."
"I know," I said, holding up the first stud in its plastic bag. "But you put this in your nose. We can't resell it. This is now your jewelry. I either have to throw it out, or it goes with you. But you can't just try on jewelry, see what you like and throw out the rest."
"But I don't want that one. I want this one, I'm buying this one."
I could feel that vein at the side of my neck beginning to throb. "I can't resell this to somebody. This has been up your nose. I wouldn't sell you a piece of jewelry that had been in someone else's body. These aren't shoes, we don't let people just try them on, it doesn't work that way. These things cost us money."
She huffed and cocked her hip out, making that googly-eyed mall face girls make when they have to wait too long in line at the food court. "Well, I'm only paying for this one, so...I don't know what to tell you," she finished, the end of the sentence dripping with disdain.
I could feel my left fist clench up at my side. I'm not a lefty, but I could have landed the perfect left hook to the side of her face from where I stood. Every ounce of strength I had channeled down to my forearm to keep it from moving.
"Fine," I sighed in defeat, and turned away to head back to the counter. This wasn't worth arguing. It would only end up with me holding her down, tearing the new stud out of her nose, shoving the old one down her thorat, and then using her head to open the front dorr before I tossed her face-first onto the curb.
"Well, I guess I know for next time," She snipped at my back, and my jaw tightened.
"Better not be a next time," I growled, and watched as she went out the door, muttering something about how stupid I was. She had no idea that she just missed a skull fracture by the slim margin of realization that I prefer staying out of jail.
