Tales of Retail, Whoah, Whoah, Oh Whoah!

Working at #151 Borders Books, Music & Cafe in Oklahoma City meant helping customers in different areas of the store. Right next to the music department, where I usually worked, was the computer books section. I knew little about computers in that run up to Y2K, and I haven’t picked up much knowledge about them since, but occasionally I had to venture over to that area to find a book. (A sidebar: on Y2K-eve, one of our managers, a big, Viking-looking apocalyptic Christian dude, told me he had brought a loaded gun in his car, in case there was “trouble” on the way home.)

In the music department, we received a box of promotional items for a Tom Jones “Best of” CD compilation. It wasn’t unusual. We got posters and CDs often, and sometimes stickers, things like that with regularity. In the Jones box, there were some big 3-D pins of the album cover, with a picture of the hunky man himself and his name in bold letters. They were kind of fun and cheesy, so I decided to wear that pin at work every day. I would become the ambassador for Tom Jones Nation.

One day, a young East-Indian man came to the music department desk for help finding a computer book. I gave some good customer service and we found the book rather quickly. He grabbed my hand and shook it. “Thank you,” he said, then, after seeing the pin on my shirt, he added, “Thank you, Tom Jones.”