Mumbles
Originally Written: May 6, 2008
Mumbles is one of the customers from Brooklyn. He’s in his fifties or sixties. I mean, he could be in his forties or thirties, with alcohol aging him an extra decade or two, but I doubt it. Though, I wouldn’t be surprised. Mumbles falls into a small but significant category of bettors—the drunks.
As in the man is always drunk. Daytime, nightime. Sundays, whatever. Pissed drunk. I’m not sure if his distinct way of incoherent speech is reinforced by a disease or stroke or lisp or whatever but I definitely know the drinking is a huge part of it.
Can’t understand a word he says. He’s always mumbling and he’s always shaking. Can’t call him Shaker though, that’s someone else. So he’s Mumbles. And I never know what the hell he is betting.
He is an angry drunk, as well. Not the ‘I love you, man’ variety. More like the ‘I hate you man, and I’m going to kill you, and sue your company.’ Literally. The last few weeks now he’s been telling me and the other clerks to expect subpoenas anytime soon. His lawsuit? He’s suing the company for calling security and ejecting him from the branch. He was ejected because he was, that’s right, drunk, and the disorderly that usually goes with it. We’re not holding our breaths for the subpoenas. If we’re holding our breaths at all, it’s because that smell of whiskey is getting to us.
Once I had just punched in and was counting my money to start the night shift. He flipped out on me because I couldn’t take his bet, saying I was too lazy to work. This was like five seconds into starting my shift. The rest of the night, he stood on the other side of the glass, cursing me out and screaming at me and telling the other customers, over and over again, that I was a ‘communist’ and a ‘disgrace to this country.’ He really let me have it. For four hours. Didn’t let up for even a bit.
The next day we were fine, he even tipped me a few bucks. You’ll see that this is a recurring theme in the customer-employee relationship. Instant forgiveness. Though in Mumbles’ case, the brain cells in charge of remembering that Monday probably didn’t make it to Tuesday. But for the rest, they forgive out of necessity.
The customers aren’t just the lifeblood of the corporation— they’re the lifeblood of the culture. But maybe more poignant is this relationship between the customers and us, the employees. In many ways, it’s like an unhappy marriage. The hostility between us is thick. There is passive-aggressiveness, and aggressive-aggressiveness. There is constant bickering, frequent arguing, and occasional fighting. There is accusations of communism. But at the end of the day, we’re still there for each other. We need their money. They need us to push the buttons on the machine.
