Coworkers: Part 55 - Cymon

     Picture a horseshoe. Upside down, out of luck. Place a round ball bearing on the top of the horseshoe. Drench the tips of the horseshoe in midnight black ink. Draw a puzzled face on that ball bearing head. Finally, a name.
     Cymon.
     Cymon was a quintessential gym-rat. Lot of the crew had gym memberships. All drank, clubbed, or partied instead. One could get healthy later in life. Cymon, however, worked out nightly. Wasn't musclebound, but he kept his arms flexed in that horseshoe. Even when walking, those arms didn't swing. Instead, his torso swiveled from side to side. Cymon's look. Flair. For whatever reason, when Cymon swaggered by, I thought of Popeye.
     Like all new hires, Cymon was assigned register duty. He immediately killed the check stamp pads.
     Customer handed over a check. Clerk turned it over and stamped the backside with the bank deposit routing info. Any two year old could master this. Cymon could not. We'd walk up, his hands were stained in black ink. Which he transferred to the counter, the cash register, his clothes, face, all the bags (nice surprise for the next cashier).
     "What the hell are you doing?"
     "It's the ink! It won't stay in the pad. It does seem to migrate, doesn't it?"
     He'd then hurry off to the bathroom.
     That nice, brand new, white bathroom.
     Permanent black ink.
     The Boss lost his mind.
     After a week, only managers were permitted to touch the stamp pad. Managers loved trotting up to the front every five minutes.
     Next, Cymon wrecked the doors. Manual doors, not automatic. Cymon shoved manfully. Door jumped off its hinges. Three different times. We managed to fix one accident ourselves. Other two times, locksmith.
     "Terribly faulty, aren't they?"
     Then, Cymon harassed the girls, or rather, Mandy. He became blotto obsessed with her, and trailed behind like a lovesick puppy, cooing in his lilting Commonwealth accent, "Oh, Mandy. Whatever shall we do about us?"
     There was no us. Mandy lived with her boyfriend, they planned to get married. Cymon was told that. Repeatedly. Mandy snapped at him endlessly, but her boy bashing technique was amateurish. Missy or Trina would have cut him with a few single syllables.
     Store infatuations were common. James for Pat, Trina for Todd, Pat for John, were only a few. Cymon merely upheld the tradition. Even shot down in flames, he remained undiscouraged and stood next to her, like a creepy bodyguard. Accomplishing nothing. No store assignments, no Mandy leg. The Boss eventually modified the schedule so they wouldn't work together. Then he reconsidered, and fired Cymon.
     Cymon refused to die. He hired on at another Blockbuster Music location in the mid-cities, and became their Import expert.
     After that, I don't know.

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