The Dreaded Voxes

So, part of the pleasure of working in retail is working on the weekends. What is a better way to spend a nice sunny Sunday afternoon then helping people select the best shrubbery for their home? My schedule allows me to get the fullest of the weekend working experience, cramming 40 hours into four days!

Part of the joy of working weekends are the variety of guests. Working at a home improvement center (glorified hardware store), there are all sorts of weekend warriors trying to fix things. People who aren't your Monday thru Friday shoppers, who come in for the sales on RC cola or 2x4's. And then there are the unique set of folks who turn out at my store. Being happily situated on the West Side of Chicago we get more than our fare share of people who have rather heavily accented English. Some are non native speakers, while others are experts in the flow of Ebonics.

Today I had one such guest who by virtue of her royal blue weave was one of the later types of guests. She began our exchange by shouting across three aisles "Hey you, yeah you, come ova here". This is always the best way to get me in a chipper mood and achieve optimum guest service. So as "Smiled and said Hi!" she asked me her question. She was looking for very special items, the rare and elusive Voxes. I really didn't hear what she said the first time, so I asked her to repeat it " What are you stupid, I lookin for Voxes, don't you be tellin me you ain't got no Voxes up in ...".

So what perchance are Voxes? First thought was that they were creatures from the Fireswap in The Princess Bride. But I am a purely logical person and I know that movie is a fairy tale. So utilizing my deductive reasoning and nine years of college experience I devised what exactly Voxes are and aren't.

Option 1: A box from Venezuela. To be termed an authentic Venezulain Vox there are certain pureity standards. It must be plastic and wood. The plastics are made from the refined socialist oil of dictatorship, while the wood is virgin rain forest cut by virgin nuns.  This box is strong enough to hold back military coups but gentle enough to carry bananas.

Option 2: A vox is a cross beteween a Vole and a Fox. They are small and compact as a Vole, but a cunning elusive predator like the Fox. Voxes are viewed as vermin in their native habitats, most particularly in fields of oxen.

Option 3: A combination of 1 and 2. Voxes are exported from their native Venezuela in special Vox crates. They are kept as attack animals for protection against home invasion in lucrative communities, such as the neighborhood my store is located.

Sadly not one of my guesses was correct. As I asked the guest follow up questions like " What is it used for", "What color is it", "Is it for inside or outside the home". I came to a much less exciting conclusion. The guest wanted a flower pot. My best guess was that thinking its not a box, and its not a vase she thought it must be called a Vox.