More Reasons To Hate The French

I deceived you all in my last post. I emphatically stated that I'm not a name caller. That is a blatant untruth.

While working at Kroger's as a checker they imported a front end supervisor from another store. Chantal, a married woman from France in her late 40's, came to reign supreme over all us lowly service employees. Decades of unfettered sunbathing and habitual chain smoking left her resembling apiece of wrinkly prune fruit leather stuffed into a black polyester vest with matching slacks. From the getgo she proved an unworthy leader drunk with power and matched with a pissy demeanor. I likened her to a mini-Napoleon replete with accent, ridiculous uniform, and short man syndrome.

Chantal's husband piloted planes for Continental and frequently traveled out of town for lengthy periods leaving Chantal all by her lonesome. The moment she started working at our store she set her sights on my boyfriend. Granted, he did look a lot older than his 22 years, and at the age of 17 I shouldn't have been dating a balding man 5 years older than me that my Mother openly despised and called, "The Troll", but that's how the situation was. Every time I turned around, I caught Chantal sidling up to Troll, telling him how lonely she felt in her big house with her husband gone and if he could come over and help her "fix things". She even seductively invited him to go out and eat ice cream with her as if they were 12. I half expected her to ask him to couple skate with her at the roller skating rink too. Troll kept turning her down but Chantal persisted. In hindsight I should have let her have Troll. He turned out to be a former altar boy gone bad. Very, very bad, but I'm a territorial creature who takes revenge instead of peeing on things.

I liked to put crazy stickers from the grocery products on my name tag. My favorites included: Special, Fat Free, %90 Lean, Rump Roast, Juicy, Buy One Get One Free, Cupcake. I liked a festive name tag, Okay? It inspired my plan of action against Chantal. I got the sticky label off a loaf of bread, cut the section I wanted, applied double sided tape and stuck it next to her name on the gigundo employee chart displayed next to the customer service booth.

Everybody noticed it immediately and started laughing and so it came to pass that the name posted there was how Chantal henceforth was known at Kroger's all the rest of her employed days there. Crusty French Baguette.