In honor of the most popular thing I’ll have ever written (and that’s not saying much) turning TEN FREAKING YEARS OLD, let’s celebrate with an embarrassing story from today, of all days Black Friday.

So, as you aught to know by now, I do, in fact, work retail as my primary job. I will never and shall never name the RETAIL ESTABLISHMENT where I earn my bread. There are things you will never know about me, and that’s not one because it’s not hard to figure out. ANYWAY…

Of course today is what used to be known as the biggest shopping day of the year. To be honest, it was absolutely, ridiculously, insane, three years ago. But the panini press happened and we all know how that went.

So, at RETAIL ESTABLISHMENT Black Friday is a dulled down event spread out over multiple days throughout the month of November. They first started changing aspects of it because people started getting hurt fighting over cheap and cheaply made towels and washcloths. But then the world was hit by, it was struck by The ‘Rona.

Today, the actual Friday in question was a very VERY mild shadow of what it used to be. The Store was busy, but not insanely so, there were not wall to wall people, and honestly the deals weren’t that amazing.

I was myself at one point working on some merchandise maintenance, and had to take a secure item to the registers. As I was doing so, I decided I needed to leave my portable printing device in a secure location so as to protect it from being picked up by co-worker thieves who don’t like to hunt for their own equipment.

So I did something I assumed was going to be a great idea.

Some need to know information: as one often sees in all retail locations, we have many large cardboard displays called “PDQs”. My research tells me those letters stand for “pretty darn quick” or “product displayed quickly” which are both kind of hilarious and accurate.

I have often thought that the people who design these doodads absolutely earn every dime they get because I’ve seen some seriously clever PDQs.

Back to the story, I looked around and saw a perfume giftset PDQ and thought, that’s a PERFECT a place to hide my printer. It had a little top on it that the printer could sit right down in.

So, moving right along, a customer’s perfume in hand, I gently tossed my printer into its tiny hiding place.

Have you ever done something and expected the sound of it happening to occur and it took a split second longer to make the sound? Well, I didn’t immediately hear the printer thump onto what I assumed was a sturdy cardboard platform. I did, however, hear, a split second later, a thump like the sound of a printer that had traveled the length of essentially a cardboard rectangle prism only to thunk onto a hard plastic pallet.

The full height of this PDQ display is roughly four feet. I’m not good with measurements. But it would be entirely too difficult to reach by hand. So, without missing a beat, I continued to the register area of the store, took (what I now remember was) Guess Men’s Body Spray up and placed it behind the register.

Between the happening of the incident, walking up to the front, and back, I contemplated how I would manage to retrieve the printer. Despite knowing at least two very tall co-workers who would help, I knew I’d rather risk death than embarrassment and a friendly joshing from either of them.

Of course the only solution was absolutely fantastic and honestly I’m proud of myself for thinking of it. i kneeled in the floor. And removed items out of my way, a few perfume gift sets (I think it was “Lucky You” ironically). I whipped out my technically “illegal” in the store box cutter, and then proceeded to poorly cut a trap door in what was, in fact, a hollow PDQ. My yeeted printer was sitting comfortably right there. I reached in and rescued it from us cardboard well of despair.

Unless some cheeky TURD happened by and decides to look back at the security cameras to see what the heck happened, I’m clear of any nonsense.

Now, I would have been significantly more embarrassing by my own sheer stupidity in the moment had I not been having stomach issues all day. I also didn’t let myself think of anything but a solution, and not how completely bonkers and probably hilarious it would have looked, had someone been recording me, and witnessed my momentary pause when I realized what had actually happened.

Of course this embarrassment is much healthier for me than the constant feeling of embarrassment that I have when I think I’ve said something that makes me sound dumb. Of course, that’s because I think everyone already thinks I’m dumb anyway.

Hey, I have a question.

Why do ducks have feathers?

To cover their butt QUACKS.

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