Scary/Funny/Random job experiences

[CatRabbit]

I found a post on ear piercing; it reminded me of my high school job at Claire's and wanted to share my experience and hear any interesting stories you have, too.

As I said, in high school I worked at Claire's (the place of cheap trendy jewelry) for a couple years. I started piercing ears at the age of 16 and was damn good at it. One girl came in and wanted her cartilage done, but she was so scared. I told her my personal experience, which was that it didn't hurt when it was done, but was sore for a few weeks after and always remember to hold the phone on the opposite ear when you pick it up or else you'll be yelping in pain to the person on the other end.

I finally convinced her, and she was so sweet that I wanted to make it as quick and easy as possible. For cartilage, we only pierced with 14K posts and they required a different gun. Instead of the pull-the-trigger-and-its-done thing, we actually had to maunally push the stud through the person's ear with our own hand pressure on this gun. Basically, we controlled how fast that 14K post went through your ear. I was a pro at making it quick. But with this poor girl, my plastic glove got caught in the gun and the post only went half-way through her ear. It was stuck!

So I had to call my manager over and whisper what was up, but this manager was an idiot and loudly said, "So the earring is stuck half-way through her ear and won't go any further because you glove is stuck in the gun?" Yeah, the girl started crying, I ran to the bathroom to cry myself, and didn't come out till the poor girl was on her way out so I could apologize. Then we cried together and she left. Only time I've cried at any job, and that was 10 years ago.

On a side note, I hated piercing people while wearing those silicone golves because I have really little hands and they never fit me (or other employees, really). So we'd just wash our hands and do our thing. Of course, I'm sure that's unheard of now, but I hope Claire's now buys their girls' gloves in size Small and not XXLarge.

ETA: I can't spell.