Henry's

I was in Henry's the other day, wearing a hunter green shirt I got from the Roar & Snore team training event we had at work a few days back. It says Wild Animal park on the breast (it's from last season) and has a very large picture of a cheetah on the back. So there's the back story.

I walked through the produce, heading towards the tangelos. The price was four pounds for a dollar, which is reasonable for organic fruit, and the last ones I bought were particularly sweet, so I made a special trip back out for more. On my way towards the check-out stand, I noticed an older woman dropping a box of strawberries. She looked embarrassed and didn't immediately make an attempt to reach down and get them. I wasn't sure if she had a bad back or what, so I reached down and picked them up. I told her she ought to put the box on the loading cart an employee had left behind. I went to walk away and she stopped me.

"Do you know which is a good box to buy?" she asked me.

"Ummm, I'm not sure, I usually just grab the reddest ones," I said kinda laughing.

She looked at me like I had offended her, or not met some kind of certain expectations. She opened her mouth as if to start saying something and stopped, looking quite puzzled.

"Don't you..." she mumbled and trailed off.

I realized what the confusion was.

"Oh, I'm sorry ma'am, I don't work here," I said as politely as I could. And I turned around and left, sure now that she could see the very large cheetah on my back.

When I turned around I was face to face with a portly man, with thick glasses resting on equally thick skin.

"Are you going to be stocking any more pitted prunes?" he asked me.

"Uhhh..." I said, about to break the news to him, too.

"He doesn't work here," the elderly woman now behind me said, informing him of the news.

The man looked down at my shirt, looked up at me, standing there with an oddly apologetic look on my face and kept walking.

I continued to the check-out stand and bought my tangelos. The checker asked me if I worked at the Park, and we chatted a bit about that as I paid.