Otter

One of my favorite clients is named Arthur. [Edit: Arthur now officially sucks! 2.10.10] Is is originally from Hawaii, but his parents were in the military so he grew up all over. Though he was born in America and grew up on American military bases he has a very thick, almost indecipherable accent. Also, he has an odd cadence and his sentences almost always start in medias res. For example, when asking for bus tokens to get to the G.R. building, Arthur might say "like to go again plus I need bus tokens. Gotta go to G.R. building." It would sound like the previous week I had given him bus tickets to go to the G.R. room, and he was correcting my mistake.

At our first meeting, Arthur pulled out a manilla folder full of photocopied pictures of himself with various people (including the chief of police in Santa Monica, and some guy dressed up as a Taco). Also contained in the folder were pages and pages of emails he'd printed off talking about how "Otter would not be working at Snazzy Jeff's anymore." I flipped through the document, trying to figure out why this was important. Everyone at Snazzy Jeff's seemed to love Otter. "Otter was a good worker" one email said. Another said "Otter was teh best we ever HAD!!!!!" I asked Arthur what this was all about and he said "see ok oh that's me. I'm Otter. I like people to call me Otter. This is when I worked at Google."

"Google? Oh... what's this talk about Snazzy Jeff's?"

"Snazzy Jeff's was working at Google. I worked at Google though."

(Turns out Otter worked in the cafeteria where Google employees worked, or something, but to this day I can't really get it out of him. He insists he worked for Google and always makes me put this on his resume.)

Otter is very confusing. One day he came in talking about how he was applying for a cook position at a place called "Creamy de la Creepy." I said, as I imagined you would also say, "What? What is it called?"

"Creamy de la Creepy. It's a restaurant in Manhattan Beach."

"Creamy de la Creepy? Are you sure that's right? Creamy de la Creepy?"

"YES! Creamy de la Creepy! Is where I want to work!"

"That sounds weird, Otter. Write it down."

He wrote down "Creme de la Crepe."

Otter is at least one foot shorter than me, always in a rush, and constantly carrying around lots of things he's printed off the internet (craigslist ads, coupons, photos of Geena Davis, etc). He gets beat up a lot, because he is tiny and lives in Skid Row. He also always has a lot of money on him from his job as a chef.

Otter has a few constant requests. Things he asks me every day. Here they are:

1) Can I take a picture of him to attach to his resumes? (I tell him that people don't do that, but I started to take his picture for him anyway because he was so damn insistent.)

2) Can I photocopy the picture of him with the Chief of Police of Santa Monica? And also the picture of him that was in the newspaper when he was in culinary school?

3) When am I going to get married? Doesn't my boyfriend know he needs to lock me down?

Otter can be very annoying, but he works regularly and is nice enough so I am happy to have him as a client. He likes to send me emails from the lobby to let me know when he arrived. The other day he sent me an email with "Otter" as the subject and the message being "I am here." He came in to my office with his usual stack of papers. Among them I saw a craigslist ad for a job at a gentleman's club. I ignored it. He announced that he had "a very weird thing to say; a very odd request."

"What is it, Otter?" I prepared to answer in the negative, because clients always have very "odd requests."

"Well, it's just. I need a private photo session. Well. I need a picture of me... for a job. I need you to take a picture of me in my underwear."

"No. Absolutely not." It came out really quick, because I knew before he asked that it was going to be my answer.

He got bright red and buried his head in his hands. "I'm so embarrassed, Miss Allison! I can't believe I did that!"

I started laughing, because I didn't know what else to do. He laughed too, but you could tell he was pretty embarrassed. I got up to get something from the printer. I was wearing my criss-cross tights that day. They look a little like this:

Believe it or not, I don't show this much leg at work. It would probably be wise for me to wear Mormon underwear to the office.

"WHOA! Look at your stockings! Where did you get those stockings?"

"I don't know. Macy's, I think."

"Whoa. Holy cow. When I have a girlfriend again I am making her wear those. You look like the president of Scotland."

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