I went out last night with a friend, and a guy she goes to school with that I was meeting for the first time. It wasn't a date, she had just invited him to come hang out with us, but I got the feeling there were slight alterior motives because the entire night felt date-ish in a twisted 3-person-date kind of way. This guy though...he was so great. Really cute, insanely sweet, completely my type. All night I kept thinking about how genuinely nice a guy he was, and when he picked up the bill at dinner without a second thought, that clenched it completely. I need to marry him. Alas, he still has a girlfriend, but perhaps when (notice the "when" and not "if") he doesn't, I'll attempt to jump all over that. At first I was having evil thoughts about seducing him (he was staring and smiling at me all night) but then the morals kicked in.

We went to Spike & Mike's Sick and Twisted Festival of Animation, and it was pretty sick and twisted alright. Afterwards we smoked up and went to eat, which wasn't as fun as the earlier part of the night actually. I've come to realize that when I'm stoned and around people I don't know really well, I feel sort of uncomfortable. Plus my girlfriend who was with us was annoying me the entire night, and it just got worse and worse as time went on. By the end of the pseudo-date I was thinking, for the love of God someone please shut her up. She just wouldn't stop talking, she was hounding this poor guy with question after question but the thing is, I know she's just like that. It's her personality and it can't be helped. She's insanely outgoing and talkative in a slightly overbearing and intimidating way, but more bonus points for Mr. Perfect - he handled it so well, answered all of her questions and didn't show any signs of finding her annoying (and if he was in fact annoyed, which if he was I wouldn't blame him for a second, he's obviously mature and polite enough to hide it really well). It wasn't even that she was babbling non-stop as if she were on speed, it was what she was babbling about. I swear to God that she mentioned her ex-boyfriend at least 25 times...at least. During the car ride home (I had to drive, again, of course - grrr) I noted one particular conversation between them where in the span of 5 minutes she either said her ex's name, "my ex", "my ex-boyfriend", "my boyfriend" or "my friend" (in the context of a story she was telling that I knew, and knew that the "friend" was the ex) at least 10 times. It was so, so bad, and this is coming from me. I still have ex issues, and even I noticed what a fatal mistake she was making. I could tell she was flirting with him because she's my best friend and I know how she flirts, and yet she was making the stupidest mistake ever.

So everytime she mentioned her ex I'd cringe and just pray she'd shut up fast. It really screamed a message to me though, so I suppose that even if this guy went home last night thinking, "those girls were kinda weird", at least I'm aware now that she is so not over her ex, and as much as she says she hates him and doesn't give a shit he's in the UK now...she's lying to herself. She couldn't even manage a decent conversation with another guy without relating every situation, every personality trait, every dislike and like of his to her ex-boyfriend's by saying, "Yeah, my ex really liked that too" or "Do you ski? Have you been to Whistler? Oh my God I used to go every single year with my ex and we'd bla bla bla blal bla balblablaal..." The very last cartoon in Spike & Mike's is this one to the song "Fuck Her Gently" by Tenacious D, and since she'd "gone to Spike & Mike's for the last five years with her ex blablabla" she had to warn us loudly that when the song came on she was going to bawl and then went on about how he used to sing it to her every single day. It was the most unnecessary drama queen moment I could think of anyone making in that situation. It seriously got the point where I almost dragged her to the washroom to slap some fucking sense into her.

Anyway we got really stoned after and I felt like a moron, not because I was acting really crazy or anything...it was sort of the opposite, because I felt uncomfortable I was trying really hard to still be normal and sound smart even though I really can't be smart when I'm stoned. I'm the exact opposite when I'm stoned, I can barely formulate sentences that stay on topic or make sense at all, and I think that made me feel self-conscious because I didn't want him thinking I was stupid...even though he was being pretty funny and making some stupid comments himself. It was really just a stoned paranoia moment, I'm sure he didn't notice a thing...but by this point I'd had enough of my friend's incessant nattering, and was also annoyed that being the kind of girl she is, she was making herself the center of attention at all times and interrupting me...so I started to feel a little out of place, but all in all it was a decent night and I'd love to see him again, preferably without her and without illegal drug activity.

In other news, I had to work this morning (after sleeping for about 4 hours). The day went by completely normally and fine, until just before I was about to leave, this Asian dad and two kids came in and wanted to return something they'd bought earlier that a) had been on sale, in which case it's never exchangable or returnable b) was an item that is non-exchangable and non-returnable in any circumstance anyway for hygeneic reasons mostly c) wasn't defective d) had already been used in the pool, in which case we cannot do a return unless it has a real defect and e) I'd stamped "FINAL SALE" right across their receipt. To make a long story short, there were serious language and cultural barriers going on and I was being super nice and understanding about it until they started getting hostile and it came down to the father telling his kids in Chinese to tell me I had tricked them and that I was evil. I'm not even joking. The kids must have been maybe 5 and 7 years old...and they told me to my face, "It was a trick, you tricked us! You're evil!". This is after a good 5 minutes of trying to explain over and over why I couldn't do a return, and that I totally understood what he was saying and that he could talk to my manager if he wanted, who is in Tuesday morning, gave him her business card, everything, and they just didn't get it. J was here while all of this was going on and after I was at my wits end and couldn't be nice anymore, I just looked at her helplessly and she said very bluntly (she's good at that), "Sir, it's a final sale, we can't do a return, I'm sorry". Then the phone rang and she picked it up, and at that point the kids told me I was evil. Not in a laughing kind of way like a little kid would say, "You're evil!", this was like...he was dead serious and meant it, it was a dark sneer, "You're evil, you're going to hell" kind of sentiment.

I almost burst out laughing at first because I was entirely shocked but then I just looked straight at this kid and said in a bitchy voice, "Excuse me?" and then there were a few moments of dead silence. The three of them didn't say a word. Then I said, "In what way did I trick you?" and again, they didn't say a word. A minute or two after that they stormed out and J and I were just like, what the fuck. It's kind of fun when things like that happen because in a sense it's amusing, but in another sense it's really not because you never want to make people angry and also it's really frustrating for us to deal with people that really don't understand the language. I think that was the true problem of this entire scenario, they just did not understand the concept. A native speaker of English would have understood the fact that it'd been used, we couldn't re-sell it if someone's worn it, that it was a business policy - the kids kept saying to me, "Can't you just not tell your manager?" and "Well we can just take a different one and you can not say anything to anybody okay". Arrgh. I'm not racist at all but sometime it's just so hard to deal with cultural differences like that. And then people get pissed and think I'm evil. Ah, the many joys of retail.

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