NTKOG #35: The kind of girl who flirts outrageously with men in order to parlay feminine wiles into fun cash and prizes.
I am: always up for engaging strangers in conversation, that much is true, but…
I am not: so hard up for complimentary pens and coffee that I’m prepared to whore out my personality for them. I mean, unless it’s like a really nice pen?
The Scene: The bagel place across the street from work. I ran out of cereal earlier this week and have been too busy writing my murder mystery party (tomorrow!!!) to buy another box, so it’s been bagels ahoy-hoy this week. My standard order is an everything with scallion cream cheese — ah, single life and its engraved invitation to indulge in eminently unkissable food! — but two days ago I was in a whimsical mood and picked up a triple chocolate-chip. Don’t judge.
There is a cashier in the Finagle I go to who is always very sweet to me, but I can’t tell whether it’s flirtation or not. He looks a little bit like Wayne Brady, but more of a warm glowy mocha skin tone, and some sort of facial hair situation. So yesterday I walk in and decide to figure out once and for all if he’s flirting — and see if I can get anything out of the bargain
I sashay in and basically set the place on fire with my radiance. There is no one behind me in line, so we chat — me, glowingly — about the abominable delight that is a dessert-for-breakfast bagel, which segues into my joking about
drinking beer cream floats for breakfast during undergraduate, which turns into a discussion of the Cambridge bar scene.
At one point in the exchange, I make a joke, and when he laughs, he reaches out and touches my forearm, lightly. I figure I’m set. We’ve already rung up the exchange, but I look at the coffee machine behind him. (Yes, I’ve become an occasional coffee drinker.)
TKOG: Oh, I forgot, I was going to get a coffee! [starts slowly reaching toward purse without breaking eye contact]
Enchanted Cashier: Oh, don’t worry about it.
He turns around and filled up a cup of coffe, then stops for a moment in front of the bakery display and wraps up a chocolate chip cookie. I glance behind me to see whether another customer has come in. No one has.
EC: Here, something sweet.
TKOG: Oh — wha — thank you, but I already bought breakfast.
EC: Come on, no one says no to a cookie. And now you won’t have to get a chocolate chip bagel tomorrow.
TKOG: Wow, you just saved me a lot of embarrassment in the morning. Of course, now I don’t have an excuse for beer and ice cream during my lunch break…
And then — AND THEN, you guys — I winked. A full-fledged movie-style wink. He smiled, I thanked him again, and I walked out of the store. Then totally, totally ate the cookie for lunch. ’cause, hey, free cookie!
The Verdict: Okay, don’t get all on my case about exploiting the dude for free coffee and baked goods. I mean, coffee is cheap as free and they always end up chopping up cookies for samples halfway through the day. Let us choose not to look at this as a case of an employee abusing the system, and instead look at it as a case of TKOG getting some free, quality baked goods. Score!
(Can you tell I feel guilty that he abused the system? Sadly, as much as I thoroughly enjoyed the exchange, I felt too guilty afterwards to fully endorse the experience. Flirting outrageously with guys behind cash registers, on the other hand: two thumbs up. Though of course some might say I was always that kind of girl.)
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Very happy now, thank you kindly
mmm…free cookies. My favorite guilty breakfast, that I sometimes eat for dinner too, is chocolate chip pancakes.
omg, yes, LOVE chocolate chip pancakes! I love them with fresh in-season blueberries mixed in, too. Drool.
Ahh, perhaps, like me, he can’t resist a woman who likes to indulge in tasty food?
Hm, maybe. I know I love nothing more than to see a man really enjoying food. Weirdly potent mental-physical connection, I guess.
Movie style wink, huh? That must be some cookie! Who knows what he might give you the next time you go in ;)
haha, I’ve been experimenting with the idea of becoming an active winker. A very strange walk of life to enter, but with results like these, I might have to keep going for it. Surely if I wink enough, the world will be mine for the taking…
“ah, single life and its engraved invitation to indulge in eminently unkissable food!”
Haha, I know exactly what you mean! I’ve been eating all kinds of things that would have meant no kisses from TKOG: ketchup, lettuce, fish, milk. (Garlic and onions are like the classic things, but I don’t think those affected you so much actually.)
Sadly, I also feel disappointed after thoroughly cleaning my mouth, or putting on some tantalizing lip balm. Like, what’s the point…
Oh darling, I feel that I in some ways mistreated you. It’s true that there are many, many foods that automatically preclude one’s lips touching TKOG’s. What can I say? My whims are as stringently enforced as they are arbitrary.
At least now, I guess, you can enjoy fish-lettuce-ketchup sandwiches. (Vom.)
Ok, fish I can see (I make a mean fish curry, but it does mean having the house smelling of fish curry for the next 3 days), lettuce I can see (it’s not icky, but there’s something just wrong about a “food” with negative calories [you do more work eating and digesting lettuce than you can derive from a mixture of cellulose and water]), but ketchup and milk!?
Garlic and onions I can also see both ways (I like the tastes, even second-hand, and if I’ve been eating them so probably has the other party)…
BTW, nicely done with the charm, babe. You’re such a charmer when you don’t even mean to be, I can hardly imagine what you’d be like on a targeted NTKOG mission.