Tom Working at the Mall
My mom and Tom’s mom would be so proud: We both quit our jobs at Microsoft and now we’re working at the mall! Of course, our moms are telling everyone something like this, “I’m so proud of my son, he just opened up a new store for his growing iPhone repair business.” But the reality is, at the very instant I’m typing this blog, I’m working in the Orland Square Mall in Orland Park, IL. There’s a perfume kiosk behind me, a Gap to my left, and some really weird dude at a cart in front of me selling a fake cigarette product. (I can’t actually confirm that he’s weird because I haven’t met him. However, I can’t imagine that 11 straight hours of ingesting nicotine through a fake cigarette is the kind of job sought by stable minded individuals).
It turns out that working in the mall isn’t quite as exciting as it’s portrayed to be in Mall Rats, but it does have its moments. For example, yesterday, Tom witnessed a shoplifter being nabbed by H&M employees escalate all the way to a full blown fist fight. In the end, the cops arrived, handcuffed the thief, and hauled her away. Today I had a guy come up to me and tell me he was famous. He said all he has to do is walk down the street and women throw themselves at him. Yeah, I’m pretty sure he wasn’t quite stable either. I felt I was witnessing the budding of a fake cigarette salesman before my very eyes.
I’ve been drinking too much coffee and diet coke, sitting for hours on end, and I’ve eaten Pandora Express, Ruby Tuesdays twice, Subway, Taco Bell, and just yesterday I discovered the joys of a soft and chewy Wetzel’s Pretzel. Needless to say, I can’t imagine this job being a good long term investment in a sleek figure.
Then there’s the middle schoolers. I’ve decided that the silver lining in a cataclysmic environmental disaster that destroys all humankind would be that there would be no more middle schoolers.
One thing that would apparently not end with the destruction of humankind is the Sprint commercial running on the TV in front of me. Every 60 seconds or so, there’s a catchy little beat that starts up and then for the next 30 seconds there’s an ad for the Palm Pre/Pixie. It is an endless and horrible loop that I’m sure Satan has been studying and decided is a good addition to Hell.
Oh yeah, and in all of this, we’ve managed to fix a few iPhones for people. It’s not blazing fast sales just yet, but we’re definitely headed in the right direction. We have more and more people stop by every day to ask about our service and we get a lot of, “Oh, my son/husband/wife/friend has a cracked screen on their iPhone. I’ll tell them about you.” So let’s hope those leads start showing up at the Orland Square Mall one of these days soon. After all, it’s a great place to come and hang out.
