Picture Me Curtsying Like A Woman

I went to work this evening (oh ya, I haven't mentioned that I have a temporary Christmas job at a Walgreens/Shoppers Drug mart type establishment) and used the loo before I proceeded onto the floor to start stocking shelves.

It wasn't 15 minutes before I realized I was feeling a slight draft in my nether regions (don't worry, this doesn't get gross), and I thought to myself "hmmm, I could have sworn I zipped up my zipper".

I looked down, and my zipper was broken. 

Now there are some types of trousers that don't open much, even if your zipper is down.

Unfortunately, these weren't that type...not by a long shot!

My zipper area was wide open and I was wearing a white button-up shirt underneath which was painfully obvious.

I was seized with a moment of horror, knowing that I couldn't just take the bus home and change...I just started with this employer. What would they think!?

You could almost taste the smoke billowing from my brain as I desperately grasped for any possible solution to this dilemma.

"SAFETY PINS!" I mentally screamed. 

I turned to the side and asked a lady that I was working with if and where I could find safety pins in that building.

She said that if there were any, they would be in the First Aid box at the Pharmacy.

That was all the way at the other end of the store, and this is quite a large store!

I shuffled along nervously, looking in all directions for any possible encounters to avoid, then I made it!

They gave me 2 safety pins, then I proceeded all the way back across the room again and up 2 flights of stairs to the toilet.

I frantically secured the two pieces of cloth together with the two safety pins, but unfortunately, being the design of those trousers, there was no way to safety pin the pieces together without people seeing these 2 really big and bright safety pins sticking out of my crotch. Ya THAT wouldn't be distracting!

So I safety pinned them in a way that at the very least covered up the hole, but by no means pulled the zipper together. So my zipper was still wide open and it was painfully obvious. People just couldn't see the white shirt underneath or the pins.

The rest of the shift was absolutely ridiculous and excruciating!

I had to constantly walk everywhere with a box in front of my crotch, or walk around areas where people wouldn't see me from the waist down (think Wilson from Home Improvement, but the lower half of my body). 

When I was at the shelves stocking, I couldn't have my shield in front of me, so I was extremely self-conscious. 

And every time I bent down to put stock in the lower shelves I had to bend like a woman in a tight skirt, or do a really lame curtsy so that the safety pins wouldn't stretch and pop out.

I tried to do all of this for the whole shift, and all the while do it inconspicuously and as manly-looking as possible.

Now that the shift is over I can laugh hard about it. But tomorrow, the first order of business is getting a really strong black zipper sewn into the crotch of my trousers!