mission: conceivable...

good morning, Smock Monkey
your mission, should you choose to accept it...

i'm pretty sure that the western inventory smock is without a doubt the most useful disguise known to man. no other smock will do. starbucks' employees are recognizable as such from several miles away. not so with us. our smock, through it's pattented always-at-work technology, allows us the appearance of being ostensibly an employee of any business establishment in which we choose to stand.
it has its perks. i can't conjure a time in recent memory when i did not receive, while paying for cheap garbage at the mall food court, the coveted mall employee discount.
on the other hand, we get asked about 500 times a day (that's on average, mind you) by customers at whichever store we happen to be working in at the time, whether or not the pink flower thong comes in an extra wide, how much the the free paper at the till costs, or how many times we figure a person could flush the toilet if they use the safeway brand cleaner instead of 2000 flushes (which really only gives you 1998 flushes anyway in a desperate bid to screw the consumer...). and we tell them what we always tell them. "sorry, i don't actually work here. i'm just taking inventory." or, if we're feeling bolder, "the item you want is in aisle 3" (try it for yourself, it's almost invariably true, especially in stores without aisles, except when it's not.)
this is to be expected when we're running around counting things, grunting at our coworkers, swearing under our breath, breaking merchandise, and otherwise busying ourselves looking like employees.
but it's a whole different story when we're on a break.
like shopping during a rare lunch hour, for instance.
at one point, i was standing in a store, carrying a bag from another store, sipping on my large coke from the food court, and someone still came right up to me and asked me for a price. no word of a lie. i felt stupid by proximity for having to explain to this, the second person in as many minutes to do this to me, that i did not, in fact, work there.
nor did things improve when i went to the washrooms shortly before the end of the break, where, while waiting for a stall, i was approached by an older gent who asked me if he could use one of the stalls, or if i was cleaning them.

so i figure, i'm going to assassinate the prime minister.
i'll just walk in. a few people will ask me for directions, and instead of telling them that i don't work there, i''ll just direct them to check out some of the fine merchandise in aisle 3 and keep on walking. every once in a while i'll turn to a wall and pretend to check something, or fix something, or break something. i'll write the odd thing down. and then, suddenly, i'll be in his office, where i'll pull my WISard (glorified scanning calculator) from my front smock pocket like a malevolent mathematical kangaroo, blind him with the laser, clout him over the head with it like a wooden loon, and flee the building, stopping only momentarily to answer some question or another from the guards, who will no doubt want directions to the scene of the crime, leaving them fruitlessly searching aisle 3 as i make my brilliant getaway in a big, ugly white van.

later, eyewitnesses will all claim that it was an inside job, someone who worked for the government, maybe even for the prime minister himself. "after all, officer, he was wearing that smock."

and now, on to someone else with a similar problem. because, as we've all had the opportunity to be informed of late by our friend the media, one of the royal family is not a prince at all, but in fact, a frog. i mean, a nazi. ribbit.

i remember, in my youth, seeing children dressed on occasion as satan for the purposes of running around gathering candy on hallowe'en. little red horns. fuzzy pointed tails pinned to their bottoms. kinda cute, really, reducing the prince of darkness into a cuddly 6 year old lugging a pillowcase full of chocolate with an innocent grin.
fast forward to recently. a prince splashed all over the cover of tabloids and newspapers, apologizing profusely to the entire world as every possible corner of society takes personal offense to his latest "public spectacle". Gasp, a swastika! he must be channeling hitler in his alpha-bits! the bastard.

i thought it was a good costume, personally. and what could reduce the remaining tatters of dignity and validity from that once dreaded uniform than turning it into a costume, a farce, a masquarade of a shadow of the past?
but apparantly, we all want to hold on to our shadows so much that we instead cry like we've been wounded again, the entire world screaming and hollering in outrage at this boy, at his lack of respect, his lack of royal dignity and class, at the fact that he can't seem to take the past as cripplingly serious as everyone else wants to take it.
but come on. seriously. it's not like he wore it into a synagogue and gave a speech about burning jews. honestly. he wore it to a costume party. as a COSTUME. it makes him no more personally sympathetic to the nazi cause than it makes that 6 year old a messenger of satan every time he rings the doorbell and shouts trick or treat.
one newspaper article even went on to list this latest "embarrassment" right alongside drug use and getting into a fist fight with a photographer.
reality. perspective.

personally, i'm kinda hoping that he wears a western inventory smock to his next social event. we could use the employees.