Encounters of a Beauty Advisor

On Rescues, Timely and:

The man who had bottles and cans to recycle had just brought me his last tote of cans, and he was going on about the new system we have for collecting recyclables.

“She said I needed this paper! I thought, 'gee, this is new!'” He was not the ripest berry on the vine, and was obviously nervous about the disruption in routine, so kept talking about it. “I didn't know about this, no one told me!” he laughed nervously, his voice rising.

“Right,” I said, trying to confirm counts in the totes and transfer them into the stockroom, “No one knows, it's completely new.” I nodded, trying to cut him short so he'd quit getting excited about the new way of things.

“Just the other day we didn't have a paper for this,” he went on.

“Yeah, we just started this yesterday,” I filled-out the paper saying how many cans he had, and had him sign it, handing it back. I lifted a tote to take it into the stockroom.

“Well-” the nice, excitable, little man was still grinning nervously with crooked teeth. I stopped to politely look at him while he spoke, “- I hope no one laughs if I take off my hat because I had my head shaved! -”

He did remove his hat, then, and I was trying to think of an appropriate response that would also excuse me, when a man passed behind him and caught my eye, saying,

“I'm sorry, excuse me - I wonder if you know – I'm looking for that sunscreen that's white, you put it on your nose and it might come in colors...” He smiled inquisitively.

“Ah,” I knew he was talking about zinc. “I can show you where that is.” I told the recycle man to go to the front register. He walked away. I led the zinc customer down aisle two.

After we walked halfway down, he muttered, “I was going to just wander around to find it, but realized as I passed you that it might be better if I asked. - At that particular moment.”

I glanced at him and he was smiling. I suppressed a laugh, still trying to come down from the fluster of the recycle man. “Thank you for that,” I said.

I showed him where the sunscreen was, and apparently we didn't have zinc any more. I made suggestions for where he could go for it, and he waved dismissively with a “thank you.”

I made sure to thank him for the rescue again, and now question whether he even really needed zinc.

#zinc #rescue #sunscreen #guy