Behind Turkey's Back

Several months ago, when Turkey realized I had been working for him for over a year, he gave me an "anniversary" gift from the store where his partner works. It was a very nice gift, but completely impractical for me, my home, and my lifestyle. For example, it was over 20 cumbersome lbs of dead weight, and I walk about a mile to get home. The office manager was kind enough to hide it among other boxes in his office for me, while I figured out what to do.

Immediately upon receiving it I (thanked Turkey) knew I wanted to return/exchange it, but had to sort out how to go about that. Didn't want to show up with it at the store and have the partner find out. Because Turkey is not the type to just want me to be happy - he's the type to want me to be happy because of something he did. He would not take it well to find out I went to the store.

At first I kept calling the store, asking for the partner, and then hanging up when an employee would say, "Sure, please hold a moment." Because that meant I couldn't take a taxi and take the thing there to exchange. After about a week of this I was fed up, and tired of prank-calling the store. Next I thought about putting an ad on Craigslist to hire someone to do this for me. When I talked about it with a friend, she said she'd go.

Last week we finally made it happen. I gave her $20 for a cab and directions on how to get there and how to get back home, and called for the freight elevator. Oh, before getting the freight elevator I brought her into Turkey's office to show her a picture of his partner. "Avoid this guy. We don't want him finding out and telling Turkey." An hour later I got a text. "He was the only one there, but didn't bat an eye. Smelled like cat piss though." Well alrighty. I wrote back thanking her, and added that they don't have a cat.

Today was our holiday lunch. Turkey handed out gifts to the four of us. We were given more stuff from his Partner's store. I genuinely liked the cashmere infinity scarf, but not the color. WASP didn't want to trade with me, but that was okay. I saw in Turkey's calendar that he was picking his partner up at 5 pm and decided today would be my adventure to his store.

They closed at 6 pm. I get out of work at 5:30, but left about 15 minutes early. The bus was 18 minutes late. I arrived at the store seven minutes before they closed, with the scarf and the store credit my friend gave me.

You know how in movies, sometimes a character will dramatically peak around a corner to see what's beyond the wall? That was totally me. Even though I had visualized this going smoothly (what? it works for Olympic athletes!), you just never know - maybe Turkey would be meeting his partner at the store for some reason.

But no - that did not happen. I found a nice lady and told her, "I want to exchange one thing for a different color, and have a store credit that I'd like to use to buy something for that exact price." I was totally prepared. This is a high-end store. They are used to people spending four hours there trying to decide what to buy. Not me. It turned out both items were even on the same table.

Start to finish, it was 13 minutes. Two of them were wasted finding someone to help me, and six were wasted trying to make the scanner/computer work. I spent more time waiting for the bus! It's a really lovely store, and I'd love to take my time wandering around touching everything (some time when they're not about to close), but the fact that my boss's partner works there kind of ruins it for me. I have such a difficult relationship with Turkey that I don't want to worry about having to deal with his partner. So handling everything at once and getting out of there quickly makes me very happy.