there are message boards for ex-employees of crazy eddie stores and they all recount the various code names eddie had for certain types of customers, and there were shorthand words for indicating the ways employees could screw customers over.

There was this one guy who looked exactly like James Murphy and I’d always call him James Murphy to myself. There was another guy that’d always come in and buy two gallons of milk. And we’d call him—get this—the milk man.

we had “the purple guy” at one of my old jobs, so named because he had a bizarre condition that turned most of the skin on his face a dark eggplant color. it was eventually amended to “the purple asshole” because he was pretty rude and unpleasant.

at cdepot in college park, we had:

rain man/crazy larry (baltimore/DC music institution, ya heard?)

jeff tweedy

sergeant stalker

biz markie (ACTUALLY BIZ MARKIE WHOSE ASSCRACK WAS ALWAYS A-HANGIN OUT)

“crazy Bible lady”

this woman who almost every single week would come into my restaurant by herself and read a Bible. she always ordered the exact same strange meal with about 5 different modifications (two different kinds of salad dressings, the glaze for her salmon on the side rather than cooked on, etc). she also made sure to point out that if the salmon finished cooking before she had finished her salad, you must THROW IT AWAY AND COOK HER A NEW ONE (if you are reading this, bitch, we just microwaved it for a few seconds). the most bizarre part, however, is when she finished her meal and without fail tipped you between one and two dollars. it always a random amount of change that never added up to anything sensible. it didn’t make her meal a solid $9.00 or anything. it’d end up being $9.37 or whatever. one day the tip would be 1.27, the next 1.52. WHY? WHY? i think it is some kind of secret Bible code that is telling me something about the coming apocalypse. or maybe i just did extra well that particular day and earned the extra 7 cents!

Ah we had TONS when my parents (co)ran the shop. We rarely if ever ask for names so the only thing we can use (to refer to our clients) is a nickname.

sea donkey

haha not a customer but a marketing rep for [1nsurance br0kerage] named Bruce Willis (not google-proofing because, seriously folks) aka “Die Hard” was just here.

We’ve got a temp worker that we started to call Charlie Brown, based on his round-headedness. One day, I was checking a local messageboard and found that not only did he post there, BUT HIS AVATAR WAS CHARLIE BROWN. I’m still not quite sure if he overheard us calling him that or if it was really just that obvious.

(hi dere, forget to logout spouse’s name.)

we have L and XL, a Russian mother and daughter, and the mother always asks for L or XL. Lately they are really on our shitlist because the daughter aske done of us to steal something for her.

can we get a link to the crazy eddie boards

“techno bits”, this guy who came in regularly and said “any techno bits lads?”, then never bought anything, really soul destroying, one of those customers you dread seeing and who comes to characterise ennui in a job. why did he even bother coming in twice a week for 18 months, I think I sold him one record once...every now and again I’d think “this is great, he has to like this” and then realise he never liked anything...