When I work at the fuel center, I spend most of my time in a booth where the customers can’t touch me. The booth has windows on three sides; the windows are allegedly bulletproof. (I don’t need to see evidence of this with my own eyes, thank you.) Conversing is done through an intercom. Money, credit cards, and tobacco products are passed through a sliding drawer in the wall. The company I work for calls the booth “the kiosk.”

One afternoon I was outside the kiosk conditioning. Conditioning just means making sure the product displays look good. I pull items to the front of the display cases, turn items so the fronts are facing forward, and fill any empty slots. It’s an easy task, improves the look of the sales area, and gets me out of the kiosk. While I’m outside, I also look around for trash on the ground, empty paper towel dispensers, and problems with the pumps.

While I’m outside conditioning, I keep an eye out for customers who have approached the kiosk. When someone walks up to the kiosk, I have to stop what I’m doing, walk to the kiosk, unlock the door, go inside, make sure the door closes behind me, approach the window, and use the intercom to find out how I can help the customer. It would be a lot easier if I could do my outside work without customer interruption, but that’s never the way it works.

On the day in question, I glanced over to the kiosk and saw that a customer had approached the kiosk. This customer was very tall and hyper-feminine. At first I thought she was a drag queen. Maybe she was.

(While I’m not sure of this person’s biological sex—and it doesn’t matter to me anyway—I will use feminine pronouns because this person was definitely presenting in a way that our society reads as female.)

The customer was wearing high heels, jeggings printed to look like red snakeskin, and a pink bustier. Her long, thick, dark hair cascaded down her bare back. I wondered where this person was going dressed this way on a weekday afternoon. It didn’t much matter because her fashion choices were none of my business.

I returned to my kiosk sanctuary and approached my base of operations at the window where the drawer is. I used the intercom to say, Hi! How can I help you today?  

She said she needed $20 on pump 6. She had a few crumpled bills in her hand, but after looking at them she seemed to realize they wouldn’t be enough. That’s when she started digging in her cleavage. I don’t mean she reached daintily between her breasts and gently extracted a bill. No, she was rooting around in there, digging under her left breast, having a hard time finding what she needed. I honestly thought she might pop her boob out completely. Thankfully she did not.

She finally found the twenty dollar bill she wanted and put it in the drawer. I wasn’t disgusted so much as astounded. I had no real reason to be disgusted. Her boobs were probably cleaner than mine. Hers were probably lotioned, perfumed, and powdered. However, I have to admit I felt a little weird about touching money that had been stashed in such an intimate place.

I’m not saying I’ve never carried money in my bra. Ladies’ dressy clothes often lack pockets and a gal doesn’t always want to carry a purse.

The difference is that when I’ve carried money in my bra, I discretely removed the cash before I was ready to pay. I can attest to the fact that store clerks DO NOT want to know where your money has been. My customer could have counter her money in the car and when she realized she didn’t have enough for $20 on pump six, she could have gotten out her boob money before she approached the kiosk. I didn’t really need—or want—to see her pull her money out from under her breast. 

Image courtesy of https://www.pexels.com/photo/rolled-20-u-s-dollar-bill-164527/.