This post was originally published January 12, 2015
The status of his Alex's job was an ever present rumor in the days after the holiday season. First we heard he was staying on for full time, the news of which caused Randy to start rallying a protest. Then, we heard he was let go, along with the majority of the seasonals. Though Alex and many of the other seasonal employees I had become acquainted with were not going to be staying, no one was quite sure when they were officially leaving.
From speaking to some of my seasonal friends, it started to look like most of the seasonal employees would just fade away, and a select few would stay. Ricky, a soft spoken queer latino who was "into leather" (obviously a friend of mine) told me he was officially let go, but was somehow still on the schedule for the next week despite the news. I imagined that this meant his schedule would just become less and less until it was no more, and then he would be done. I am realizing now that that is not how exiting a job works.
So one day last week, I come into work as normal, do a few returns, then walked over to the men's designer section to put away a shirt, where I notice Charlie and Tasha, administrative/human resources employees, standing at the cash register, as if they were looking for something. Still not fully awake and not wanting to be annoying, I dropped off the shirt and walked away, only slightly interested in why Charlie and Tasha would be up on our floor. A few returns and customer interactions later, I went downstairs to the basement below the basement (where HR and Alterations are) to check for a customer if the alterations woman was in that day. As I walked down, I noticed a huffing and puffing Alex racing up past me on the stairs, focused on his heavy breathing and footwork. He was dressed in his street clothes (a professional-looking wool coat and scarf) and was holding what looked like paperwork. Still groggy, I didn't think much of it, but I did excitedly hope that maybe he'd just been down there to sign some exit paperwork. I thought that maybe today was the abrupt end date of all seasonal employees.
Alex's manic state flying up the stairs didn't cause any alert to me, because by then I'd come to know that Alex can often be stressed, sweaty, and intolerable. I'd often run into him on the floor during a busy day, and he'd ask me a question about helping a customer and eagerly try to get me to solve the problem for him, rather than deal with it on his own. From the beginning Alex always had a weird affect, so seeing him huffing and puffing up the stairs didn't really register as strange to me. I thought that maybe he was just really focused on working out his glutes.
After I checked on the alterations, I went up the stairs, and on my way back to my section of the store, I noticed Alex with his phone out, hovering over Hunter in the shoe section. The tableau told a very obvious story; I didn't need to hear what they were saying to understand that Alex had asked for Hunter's number, and Hunter was giving it to him. This is where I perked up to the situation. I woke up to what was happening.
After finishing up with the alterations customer, I hurried back to shoes to ask Hunter about his exchange with Alex:
"That was so weird! So he comes up to me, and he's like shaking, and he says, 'You're name's Hunter right?' and then he goes, 'Can I have your contact info?'"
"Did you give it to him?"
"Yeah! I don't know, he was shaking! I thought about giving him a random number but I didn't! He clarified what my name was twice, though. He kept saying, "Hunter? It's Hunter, right?"
So we did some digging, and my suspicions were correct. Alex had been called down to HR to be fired. For the second time.
Due to an error on the part of management, seasonal employees were formally fired about a week prior, but their employee information remained active and present on the scheduling service. So despite being fired, the seasonal employees were being scheduled shifts, and allowed (by the computer) to pick up extra shifts, and they were coming in for them. Essentially, they were coming in to a job that they had been fired from. On this day, Alex had come into work, and left unemployed. So when I ran into Charlie and Tasha earlier in the men's designer section, they had been looking for Alex so that they could tell him to put down the merchandise, stop working immediately, and come down to HR.
We all wish we could have been a fly on the wall when Alex was told "I know the schedule says you're working today, but you actually aren't employed here anymore." We know it happened in an office, presumably with at least three managers present. We know Alex left very riled up because of how shaky he was when asking for Hunter's "contact information" (which by the way is exactly how an alien would ask for someone's number). And we also know that we are supposed to contact security if we ever see him at the store again.
Did Alex cuss out our managers? Did he threaten them with violence? Is he building a case for a lawsuit? We all have our theories about what went on in that office. We mostly agree that he raised his voice, and may have said something unkind to management. But since no one will tell us what happened (for legal reasons or something like that) we're mostly curious about what he needed Hunter's phone number for. The leading theory is that he wants someone "on the inside" to collect intel for him, so that he can build up some sort of a case against the store. I liked to joke that it was a last ditch effort to make a friend out of this experience. Maybe someone he can go out to Williamsburg with when he's not in Queens.
I want to be able to feel sorry for Alex about his mishap, to be able to say here's a dude who came into work like nothing was wrong, and then was told he has no job anymore, effective immediately, and that's sad. But I'm not sad about it. No one is. Alex could've easily asked why he was being scheduled even though he'd been fired. He could've easily asked a manager to be more clear about his status as an employee. But above all, he could've been a decent person to begin with.
We marvel at the fact that Alex made it through an interview, and was hired in the first place. Whether it was customers or coworkers, every single person Alex talked to got a creepy, scary vibe from him. Just yesterday one of my coworkers, a shy young Indian girl, said to me, "Oh, I thought I was the only person who thought he was creepy!" So even the nicest, most unshakable of employees had a problem with him. Another coworker told me a story about how one time he told an older black woman trying to buy a sweater that she couldn't
He just said "you can't buy that" to her and ended the conversation. And these are just stories from the people I talked with--there's plenty of other employees who had contact with Alex, and I'm sure that these people all have their own Alex stories as well. The fact is that this guy was never cut out for the retail world. In fact, he's just not cut out for the world in general.
As I sit here writing this, I wonder where he is now, and what new shenanigans he'll get up to next. I imagine him sitting in his one-bedroom apartment in Queens (NOT Williamsburg) crunching numbers on a calculator to pass the time, sitting with perfect posture at a barren desk. The room is lit by one overhead light bulb, dangling from a string. He grinds a few numbers, then pauses. He picks up his phone and scrolls to the address book entry of "HUNTER." He types out "Hello" then deletes it. He types out "Hey," but deletes that as well. He closes the phone and looks over to his trashcan and sees his old department store nametag, the lightbulb reflecting off the surface. He says to himself "I'll get you. I'll get you one day."