Free beer with every job application!

The man with the crazy gray hair, disheveled plaid shirt and thread-bare jeans stops at the service counter of the uppity, organic grocery store where I’ve just been given the title of “Front End Team Lead”. It’s a good job, though I struggle a bit with the kind of people who can spend a hundred dollars on two bags of groceries; seems a bit absurd really, since my grocery budget for an entire month is barely more than that. And I can’t help but to giggle a little bit when people pay fifteen dollars a pound for sweet cherries I used buy at roadside stands in my hometown for five.

The smell of patchouli touches my nose a few too many times in a day.

I would like to help some of the women spend some of their grocery money on bras.

Back to the crazy haired man.

I gave him the application, because looks can be deceiving; he could be a highly qualified chef or a wine connoisseur. He smelled a bit like he liked wine. About a half hour later, he returned to the desk application in one hand, bottle of beer in the other. A high quality IPA, the kind of bottle we sell for five dollars. Each. It was empty. He no longer smelled like wine, instead his breath stank of hops.

“Here you go honey.”

He breathed on me. Momentarily I was jealous that he had enjoyed a cold one in the middle of the day, then I remembered I hate IPA’s. Slamming the bottle, still dewy on the outside with a little foam left on the bottom onto the marble counter top, he grinned.

“That was good. Here’s your bottle back.”

Stunned, I looked at the cashier standing next to me.

“Did he pay you for that beer?”

“Nope.”

I checked the other registers, no one had sold a single bottle of that particular beer in the last two hours. This man, whose application stated his qualifications as “Award winning poet” and a lead role in a film for which he got paid $150 enjoyed a free beer while filling out a job application. All at once I wondered if he was a) already drunk, allowing him to think this was okay b) terribly gutsy and only filling out job applications to fulfill the requirements of his unemployment benefits/social security or 3) the man of my dreams.

I decided he was much too old and underemployed for my liking and informed the store manager of what had just happened.

“Call him, Liz. Invite him in, and ask him to pay for the beer.”