This post was originally published January 9, 2015
A month into my new job at a department store in New York City, the store hired a group of seasonal employees for the holiday season. This batch of employees, mostly men from the ages of 18 to 25, were the "weirdest group" ever seen in the history of the store, as calculated by a long-time employee and coworker of mine, Randy. Most of the men were trying to earn money while in school, though some were trying to build a career in fashion or retail. Of the new hires on my floor, the men's floor, I got to know a few and found that they were kind, eager, and a little unfocused. Now take this description, imagine the opposite, and call that man Alex.
Alex was easily identifiable as separate from the rest: he was cold, focused, and hard to talk to. His body language was so tight and his presence felt so looming that several of my coworkers assumed he was part of the loss prevention or security team for the store (I'm sure that several customers thought this as well, and he very well may have prevented some theft because of it.) Often times he stood directly across from the entrance with his hands clasped in front of himself, greeting customers under his breath without a smile.
On a purely physical level, Alex stood out from the other employees because of his translucent white skin. On the entire mens floor of the store, I can count the white employees on my hands, so he stuck out enough because of this. But though he had fair skin, his hair color didn't match it at all: a deep, dark shade of red, very very similar to shades I've seen at the drugstore that blonde teenage girls use to revamp their looks. Without speaking to him, I immediately wondered if he was an alien, because I've read that their appearances can be slightly off from humans, especially in their eyes and hair. I scolded myself for judging him too quickly, before I had the chance to talk to him. Maybe he was just a little awkward, like myself. I wanted to give him a chance.
I tried to be nice to Alex, but when I introduced myself, my first impression was affirmed, as it always is. Alex's personality matched his appearance: when he spoke, the words came out of his mouth as though he had just learned them out of a handbook moments before. He didn't have a noticeable accent, but his speech was off in the way it is when English is the second language and a person's only just getting used to it. He annunciated hard from his cheeks and lips, like I do when I'm drunk and trying not to slur my words. A friend of mine who teaches dialects for stage and screen once told me that some foreign people work hard to cover their accents in order to be perceived as American, so I began to think that maybe this was Alex's motivation. I tried eagerly to identify his accent, but I really couldn't.
Mitchel, a coworker of mine, tried to casually ask him once, "So Alex, where are you from? What's your nationality?"
"I don't like to talk politics" said Alex. Then he walked away.
If it's true that Alex was trying to hide an accent, or an entire ethnic background, what else could he be hiding?
Alex became a fun topic of conversation for us bored employees in the slow parts of the day, and we traded stories about his strange behavior. Some started calling him Edward Cullen because his translucent skin and unnatural hair made him kind of look like the vampire from Twilight. My coworker Hunter liked to theorize that he was a robot or cyborg, because of how emotionless his interactions with other employees and customers were. Stories and theories about Alex made the day go by faster. One day I came rushing back from lunch to tell my coworkers about how I ran into Alex in the employee break room:
"He walks up to me, and I had my headphones on, which is like, you don't talk to someone when you have your headphones on, you know? And I didn't catch all of it, but he mumbled something like 'some pasta?' and like pointed to the pasta I was eating. I was like, 'Yeah... I made some pasta!' and then he like, walked away! Like, that was it, he just affirmed the fact that I was eating pasta! Didn't comment on it, didn't ask what kind it was or anything, he just like, pointed out that I was eating pasta! Is that like, small talk for him?"
"Maybe he wanted some!" said Mitchel, who likes to mess with me and joke around.
"Then why didn't he ask? I think he was just trying to make conversation and failing at it!" I said.
"You're so rude, this poor dude wants some of your pasta and you're down here making fun of him about it!" replied Mitchel.
No, of course Alex was not trying to ask for my pasta. I'm sure that he thought his pasta comment was how a normal exchange between coworkers off the clock goes--you know, like the kind that would be in an alien manual in the chapter called "Small Talk." After the moment was over, he walked to the employee computer, and sat there with his spine fully upright, typing and clicking things for at least ten minutes. Of course, I stopped watch the TV, and started watching Alex. I took a picture of him sitting there all fancy and showed it to my coworkers after I told the pasta story. They didn't see the intrigue in it, but I thought it was fascinating that on his lunch break, where most of us nap or yell at each other about sports or watch The View, Alex was sitting at the computer with the attentiveness of a real live nerd.
It's important to understand that working at a department store is the last place you'd find a nerd, which is why we were all confused about Alex working with us. Apart from the few employees who enjoy their job and are looking to make it in retail, most of my coworkers are slackers with dreams that absolutely do not involve selling shoes or denim in the basement of a department store. Some of my friends at work, including myself, are artists who are trying to figure out how to produce their work and make money from it. Some are in positions where the only good paying work they can find is in retail, and they need the money to support their families. The people I see clocking in and out at this department store are the cool kids of high school, the ones that partied and socialized and maybe peaked too early. No one quits a job on Wall Street and says, "I want to get into fashion! Are there any department stores hiring for part-time seasonal positions at $12 an hour?" This is allegedly exactly what Alex had done. We learned from Randy, who always has the inside scoop on the store, that Alex used to work in finance, with numbers. He had apparently quit because he wanted to take his career in a new direction: fashion. Or retail. I can't remember. Both are ridiculous.
Though I wanted to be sweet and kind and think of Alex as just misunderstood and maybe going through a rough time, the alien theory is what really lead the way in my mind. Adding proof to the theory was Alex's reply to the question, "where do you live?" In one of his more successful attempts at small talk, Alex asked me once out of the blue, "so, where do you live?"
"Brooklyn, in Bushwick. What about you?"
"Queens. But I hang out in Williamsburg a lot."
Williamsburg, stereotyped as the home of hipsters with wealthy parents, was an interesting place for Alex to be trying to associate himself with. I laughed to myself later about how he was so eager to prove that he wasn't defined by where he lay his head at night. Who answers the question "where do you live" with a clarification about where you hang out? I noted that this was another way that Alex was trying to edit the way he appears to others. Between this, his unnatural hair, and the covering of the accent, I was really getting the feeling that Alex was hiding something; hiding a part of himself.
Funny enough, I overheard him days later, talking to another coworker. I passed by their conversation and only heard the words:
"Queens, but I hang out in Williamsburg a lot."
Way to stick to the script, Alex.
So soon enough, the holiday season came to an end, and it was time for the company to get rid of seasonal positions. Everyone hired for seasonal hoped that they'd be asked to stay on for full time or part time, and Alex was no exception...
To be continued.