Mike Sterling's Progressive RuinWhere legends live since 1969

I keep rememering another employee every couple of minutes to add to that list.

§ May 25th, 2020 § Filed under how the sausage is made, sterling silver comics § 3 Comments

So first, a correction/addendum to a previous post.

I was talking to my former boss Ralph, who owned the comic shop I used to work at, the other day, and he had a bone to pick with me. “I was reading your blog, and you co-opted my story!” he admonished me, and I was genuinely didn’t know what he meant. And he told me it was that story about the Superboy Annual #1 some folks were trying to sell. “That happened to me, not you!” he chided me.

Now first, Ralph was just giving me a bad time…he wasn’t really mad. Ralph’s a friend, and we’ve known each other pretty close to 40 years now, and if anyone has the right to give me a ration of shit, it’s Ralph.

Second…I honestly wasn’t trying to steal Ralph’s sauce in my story, or really in any story I tell about my days in servitude at the previous place of employment. In the case of the Superboy comic story, I believe I was in fact the person who took that initial call, as stated. But the rest of the related events did in fact directly involve Ralph. I was merely a Concerned Onlooker, watching and thinking “this will make a good story on my blog once those are a thing a decade from now.”

When I write about happenings at the old job, I tend to use an editorial “we,” as in “all us guys and the occasional gal who were at the shop.” I think my thinking in how I tell these stories is that what is happening and who is doing it is the point of the tale, over to whom these events are happening. In my head I know this stuff happened to Ralph, or to Rob, or Dorian, or Corey, or Aaron, or Dave, or Rachel, or Sean, or Timmy, or Damian, or Nathan, or the other Nathan, or Shirley, or one of the Joshes, or Greg, or someone else I’m probably forgetting, or even me.

I mean, there are specific events that happen to specific people at the shop. The lady who gave a withering “I’m very disappointed” when we didn’t have an issue of Stray Toasters…that happened to me. When the shop was visited by lady wrestlers in full regalia…I’d say that’s a thing that happened to “us.” Sometimes I don’t remember who was there at the time when things happened…like I don’t remember which fellow employee was with me when the lady selling a cleaning product door-to-door demonstrated how safe and non-toxic it was by removing the nozzle and licking the tube that dropped down into the bottle.

But in the case of the Superboy story, that was definitely Ralph who had to deal with those folks. When I said “we” in that story, that meant “Ralph, who was dealing with them directly, and me, who was listening to Ralph dealing with them while I was restocking, I don’t know, West Coast Avengers or something.” I’ll try to be a little clearer about these things in the future, and give credit where credit is due.

In current store news…so far, things are going swimmingly. Customers are happy to shop in the store again (while practiciing proper health safety, of course) and I finally had some reasonable days of business after two months of scrambling to make sales. Well, okay, Sunday was a bit slowish, and I expect Monday, a holiday, may be a little slow as well. Or it may be hugely busy because it’s a holiday…who knows. People are still being cautious about venturing into the diseased outdoors, so it may be a while before my business..or anyone’s business, is back to normal. I’m just glad I was able ride out the shutdown, but there are still plenty of challenges to come.