Ice cream girl, AKA diabolical spy

It was only a month after I’d been hired, working with my new coworkers on my manager’s day off. It was raining outside, discouraging anyone from stopping by to get an ice cream and discouraging all of us from working. 

Before making the decision to close up shop early, 2 customers hobbled into the store. And when I say hobbled, I mean fell, tripped, staggered and stumbled. The first, an obese man with sweat running down his balding scalp and shorts a little bit too short tripped cleanly over the rug but caught himself before meeting the floor. Lucky for him too; as I’ve mentioned, the floor can be deadly. The second to arrive in hot pursuit was a woman. She seemed to be straining her back from the weight she was carrying on her stomach that spilled out from the bottom of her shirt. Once both parties made it into the shop (after much ado), they joined hands. I caught sight of wedding bands on their fingers.

I stood behind the counter, unsure of how to approach these customers. This was unchartered territory; the stench of old alcohol reached me from several metres away if the fact that they were drunk hadn’t already been obvious to me. They leaned on each other for support, preventing their round bodies from tumbling to the floor. Gravity was not their friend that day.

The man approached me at the counter with my eyebrows raised, telepathically pleading my coworker, Jan, to get her butt out of the back room. He craned his neck to look in the freezer, but made his decision quickly.“I’ll have the rum and raisin!” he slurred, as if he needed more booze, in confectionary form or otherwise.

“What size?” I inquired.

He looked behind him to his wife, who hurumphed her way forward (there's really no other way of putting it). “Well, get on with it! Get the large, whatever, I don’t care!” Like a child granted his first Christmas wish, he squealed a squeal that I’d be ashamed to imitate. Still, his eyes searched the board of prices, scurtinizing the numbers. “Do those include tax?” he asked. 

“No sir, they don’t,” I said.

He grumbled, staring at me until I realized that he was expecting me to make him his ice cream. Obediently, I grabbed my scoop.

“Aye, where do you get rum and raisin ice cream in the store?” he asked.

I withdrew, put off by his question. “I’m sorry sir, I have no idea. I didn’t even know this flavour existed until I started working here,” I chuckled nervously.

“What?!” he cried, “C’mon sweetie, I won’t tell no one. Just let me know where ya get it.” 

“I really don’t know, I’m sorry.”

His wife then stepped forward, looking at me as if I had told them I like to spit in customers’ ice cream and rub it on the floor. “Aye, she’s just trying to promote her business!”

Despite the fact that it was plainly clear that it was not I who owned the business, her husband seemed to accept this logic. He grimaced at me through the freezer, as if intimidating me into giving up my information. The information that I did not have. Internally, I wondered why they were speaking like pirates. Saying nothing, I topped off the lasts of the humongous ice cream and rung up the bill. The man grumbled his way through the transaction, blaming the price on me and escorted his behind from the store. Again, he tripped over the bright pink mat that lay against the white of the floor.

Once their masses were no longer visible from the fog that hung in front of the store, I cocked my head in wonderment.

I guess some people just really like their rum and raisin.