Thoughtless Thinking!

This story originates from my first three years in the working world.I was working in a small town store that sold stereos, television sets, pianos, organs, and appliances. I had been married quite recently and could not afford to do much after work. The store only had a few people working there. The boss, myself and another saleslady made up the sales staff, and there were two bookkeepers who looked after the cash transactions and any credit arrangements with customers. One of the bookkeepers was in her 70's. She was an aged spinster and the boss kept her employed for sentimental reasons. She had been with the store for 35 years after all. The other bookkeeper was a young girl in her early twenties. (She did a lot of the routine work under the direction of the more senior staff member. She did most of the routine work under the direction of the older lady. The senior person dealt with paying invoices from our wholesalers, and in payment delinquencies from customers. She did most of the details of bookkeeping under the day to day direction of the older lady. They had a severe personality clash between them, but most of the time that did not affect their work. The younger girl just loved to catch the older ladies mistakes, and often I heard all about the latest fiasco over lunch.

On Monday morning when we first arrived, we tended to BS about our weekend happenings.  Since I was recently married and cash was tight, my wife and I mostly just hung out with friends. The old lady apparently had a taste for scotch, or at least that is what I had been told. She usually just went to church on Sundays, and hung around drinking 'tea' with her friends. The other sales associate was a woman around 55 years old who spent most of her weekend cooking for her family and extended family. The boss never come in until 10:00 AM which is why we were able to shoot the breeze every Monday from 9:00 till 9:30 or so.

That leaves the younger office girl Cathy. She was young, on the prowl, and her weekends were spent frequenting the local watering holes as she looked for guys. Her ultimate objective was to find a guy to marry. Because all of the rest of us could only talk about the same stuff we talked about last week, invariably, the conversation on Monday tended to center on Cathy's latest exploits. She had a way of dramatizing the mundane, so if nothing else, her stories were more interesting than – 'I cooked dinner for my family'. She was not ugly, but not exactly the prettiest girl in the world either, so her trials and vexations were many. All of the rest of the staff had a different opinion though. We all felt her problem was her attitude. This is best typified by the following story.

The day after one particular weekend, Cathy was once again discussing her weekend. Par for the course, she had been out on the town with her closest friends. She was whining that her Saturday evening was a bust because she did not get to dance at all. She mentioned that this guy had come up to their table just as they got there, and had asked one of her friends to dance and was turned down. He asked each of the other girls at the table, and they all turned him down too, including Cathy. Over the next hour, she had watched him ask other girls in the club, who all turned him down, so he left. She then went on about how stupid he was.  I asked her why it was stupid, because from my point of view it looked like he just wanted to dance.

She said that once one of the girls at her table said no, then all the other girls just had to say no. Otherwise they would look desperate. Perplexed by this attitude, I asked her to elaborate more.  She said that after being turned down by all the women at our table, he then proceeded to ask other women at other tables, and they of course had to turn him down too. When I asked why, she said that it would have made them seem needy. Like they would just dance with anybody else's leavings.

In an effort to truly understand what to me was a twisted point of view, I asked her some more questions. I asked him if he was someone that women would not want to be caught dead with because he had warts on his face or something. She said that he was actually quite good looking, and she had been hoping for weeks that he would ask her to dance. So I asked if she knew why the first girl had turned him down. She said that they had just gotten there, and that that she did not feel like dancing yet. So I asked her if the guy would have asked her (Cathy) first would she have danced with him. She said that she had wanted him to ask her for weeks, so of course she would have said yes.  My eyes were now crossing trying to follow this distorted logic.

At this point I decided to summarize what I had heard to make sure that I got it right. I said, you really wanted to dance with him, but he happened to ask the other girl first. You knew she turned him down, not because she would not dance with him at all, but just because she did not feel like dancing at that particular point in time. She agreed with that. I suggested that she ended up having a crappy evening because she had turned down the one guy who asked her to dance with him. She said, yes, sometimes you can be unlucky.

Being young and foolish and certain that I could solve anything, I decided that I could convince her that her reasoning was faulty, so I persisted. So I asked her to put herself in the place of the guy. I said if you were a guy, who at the table would you have approached to dance first? She said that she supposed she would have approached the same girl that he did, because she was cuter, even though her personality was not as good as hers (Cathy's). So I asked if she had ever actually talked to the guy other than to turn him down, and she said no. So I said that she had never given him the opportunity to talk to her because she had refused to dance with him. How was he supposed to know that she had a better personality? She gave me a look that told me that she now classified my as mentally challenged. “Weren't you listening to me? I already told you why I could not dance with him!”, she said.  At that point I dropped the conversation. It was clearly pointless.

A week or two later, I noticed that Cathy was moping around for a couple of days. So I cajoled her into telling me what her problem was. She said that the guy she really liked had shown up with a new girlfriend on his arm, and they danced all night. She said that the girl was not that good looking, and was not even a good dancer. I said, too bad you messed up your chance. Again she looked at me like I was a moron. “How many times do I have to tell you that I couldn't!”, she said.  A year later, the guy apparently married the girl, and Cathy moped around for weeks. Believe it or not, other than refuse to dance with him, she had never spoken to the guy!

I left that store shortly afterwards but stayed in the city. A friend of mind took my place and worked there for another ten years before he too went on to greener pastures. At the time he left, Cathy had been promoted to senior bookkeeper after the older lady died. She was, however, still unmarried with no steady boyfriend. She was still prowling the bars with her friends on the weekend. She still had not found her prince charming.

I guess she never changed!


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