So I think I'll take the door and see that Gimbels' is showing

[austin_dern]

Good afternoon, sir, and did you find --- oh dear.

No, I don't know exactly the time. I'm not guessing ... the store opens at 10 am, and I've been right here seven hours, so ---

Well, yes, I wasn't right here every moment. Yes, lunch and bathroom breaks ---

I'm confident saying it's afternoon because we don't have Temporal Cole Slaw. No, and not Temporal --- look, if you want it to be the morning fine, have a good morning. I don't need one.

Sure, you can have two, they're small. Did you find everything you wanted in A T Moment's Department Store today?

Couldn't find any departments for sale. Yes ... that's ... a fine joke. Never gets any less funny. We haven't heard that joke made in --- nineteen -- days. No, they weren't days like today. They were good days.

No, don't swipe your card. Don't swipe it yet. ... It's not reading because you need the stripe down, and you have to use a credit or debit card, not a paper clip necklace. We're not being inflexible, it's just we couldn't get insurance for paper clip purchases. Right. And that's not the card reader, that's a courtesy phone left after the remodel in 1996 tore out the wiring because its cord was too tangled up to remove. No, you can't call 1996. Because it's after closing back then.

Yes, I guess a good morning is often part of a good day.

You can't swipe because I haven't rung anything up. No, it's not ... it's not that I'm unmotivated. You haven't given me anything to ring up. I did ask, you said you didn't find any --- It ... It ... I ... the insurance company wants us to ring up stuff before you pay for it, that's why. Sure, look around.

Good morning, did --- oh, dear. Afternoon. Whatever. You're buying ... a bird. A live bird. A live, irritated bird that's ... attacking ... it's A peahen, you say.

No, I can't ring her up. Because we don't sell peahens. I don't ... Yes, we have a pet department, but the pet department is just a tiny replica of the real store that we keep around because it's so cute. I know there's an adorable green collar around it. That doesn't mean it has peahens.

No, I don't know anywhere selling peahens. I don't think the Furry-ocious Pet Store next door has them. They don't sell anything more exotic than hamsters that do somersaults off the food dish.

I don't know. Maybe the paperclip lobby doesn't want them used at points-of-purchase.

No, I can't imagine how you found a peahen. No, it didn't came through a wormhole from a parallel universe or the 1930s when we had an exotic-animals department. Because wormholes don't work like that, that's why. No, even for birds. Look, no, I can't ... does it have a bar code? OK. Then I can't ring it up.

I give you my word as a Client Satisfaction Enhancer that you can take that peahen without paying us for her. No, I can't sell anything so she stops pecking you. Because we don't have any --- yes, why don't you check Furry-Ocious.

A what? A customer loyalty program? Yes, but I don't want to sign you up because I don't want you knowing how to find us.

You mean ... loyalty ... to you.

You want us to get a card expressing ... our loyalty to you ... as a customer.

First, I don't have the authority to make agreements on behalf of the whole department store. Second, you haven't given us any custom. You've just brought a peahen in to attack the obsolete courtesy phone. Third, you're stuffing your pockets full of ``Secret Sale'' coupons. No, the coupon gives you 10 to 40 percent off next weekend. It's not the dates that are the secret.

I think my bit about ``good morning'' was sarcasm.

Thank you. Right. Good bye, have a nice ... oh, here, take another Secret Sale coupon.

Thank goodness.

Oh, Eddy, hi, how's ... yes, I know who you mean. Maybe he went to Furry-Ocious, why? Seriously? Loss Retention thinks he swiped that peahen? How?

I didn't even know they put shoplift-detecting chips in peahens these days.

Trivia: Chicago's Fair department store rang up sales of 40,000 live frogs one season in the 1910s. Source: Service And Style: How The American Department Store Fashioned The Middle Class, Jan Whitaker.

Currently Reading: Conspiracy: How The Paranoid Style Flourishes And Where It Comes From, Daniel Pipes.

Comments

[chefmongoose.livejournal.com]

*giggles* Very amusing. :)

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

[lexomatic.livejournal.com]

Ooh, this is a good one. You don't have any grammar subversion (my parser usually jumps the track on those), and you have repeated callbacks to previous utterances (paperclips, insurance company, 1996 telephone, etc.). The variation in utterance length helps keep my eye from slipping.

The phrase "A T Moment's Department Store" reads like a typo. Some linking punctuation, like "A. T. Moment's" or "A.T.Moment's," might help.

"A live, irritated bird that's ... attacking ..." Later, we discover it's attacking the telephone. Should you mention the telephone the first time? If the monologue had visuals we could see it's a phone.

"Loss Retention" -- Did you mean Loss Prevention? That's the usual euphemistic name for the anti-theft department. Loss Retention would be, I dunno, clinging to a sense of regret.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Thank you, kindly. I appreciate the thoughts.

I hadn't noticed it but you're right; the voice of the sales clerk just didn't lend itself to any grammar salad.

My predilections towards British-style punctuation may have left ``A.T.Moment's'' looking wrong. Maybe that should have been typed in differently, consistency with my other writing notwithstanding.

Maybe it would be better explicitly attacking the phone first. But visuals would make the piece too concrete ... well, it would give the other half of the conversation, which would be a a problem.

I wanted with ``Loss Retention'' to sound like the corporate Department of Euphemisms had got a little bit carried away and had lost track of what it was trying to express. Maybe it's not far enough for the effect to come across.