Most of the time, I find myself near the front of the store where I work, running register (if anyone has ever worked in westernized retail, they will know what this entails, and thus the long spells of boredom which inevitably ensue...) On one particular day in the recent past, there happened to be a long, light-weight metal rod sitting serenely behind the customer service desk, in clear view from my perch behind the register. The rod was about an inch in diameter, made out of a combination of very thin metal and plastic, and about, hmmmm, I would say four feet long. Maybe three feet. Somewhere around the vicinity of a yardstick. :D
This al
one, the mere existence of the rod itself, should have been enough to start my mind running in many lovely directions, which in fact it did quite well. But, lo-and-behold, here come the gentlemen with whom I work, and each in turn wants to test his strength with an attempt to bend this curious rod behind customer service -- what a display for the pretty lady standing nearby trying to find ways to occupy herself!(Image courtesy of: Andevan Bronzeworks)
I watched, my face slowly reddening, as the young male employees of the store came up one-by-one to pick up the rod, some two-handed, some single-handed... swing it around in the air a bit, comment flippantly on what it would feel like to hit or be hit with it, make a joke or two about chasing annoying customers out with it, and then finally try to bend it one way or another.
The rod proved to be
quite deceivingly durable -- as none of the able young men could get it to budge more than about half an inch in either direction, despite it having been warmed up by previous contenders...I imagined quite a different and much less work-appropriate competition going on at the front of our store that day... involving that same innocuous metal rod and quite another set of skills entirely... :D
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