Hollister Seizure
It’s July, 2008. I’m 19 years old and 50 days sober. I’m staying in a Sober Living halfway house in Boca Raton, Florida. I’m sunburnt, vibrating with discomfort in my own skin and wishing I was blonde, skinny and tan. When you arrive at Sober Living, you have two weeks to find a job or else you’re asked to leave. With all of the newly sober addicts floating around, jobs are actually much harder to come by than you’d expect. All the girls in the halfway house talk about how hard it is to get a job between sips of sugar-free redbull and drags of Marlboro reds.
I can’t drive, so I walk my pedestrian ass to the Town Center mall, crossing highways and squinting. Clueless and sunglass-less. I spend hours in the mall bashfully walking into stores and asking if they’re hiring. Yankee Candle, Foot Locker, American Eagle. I try to imagine different versions of myself working at each store. Am I wholesome? Sporty? Preppy? Then I see the fake porch and palm trees of the Hollister store. Why not? I think to myself. I walk in the dark store that’s pulsating with “Mr Brightside” by the Killers and I smell the overpowering stench of their beachy colognes.
“Hey, are you guys hiring?” I try to project over the music.
A guy who looks like Chad Michael Murray behind the counter motions to a computer kiosk and says, “Application’s over there.”
I type in all of my details and when the drop down menu gives me the option of applying as a “Floor Model” or “Stockroom,” I quickly select STOCKROOM. I am not blonde, skinny or tan. I belong behind closed doors, unpacking boxes and climbing shelves. A Stock Troll.
To my surprise, a few days later someone from Hollister calls me on my Sidekick and asks me to come in for a “group interview.” A group of us 10 hopeful teens sit at some tables in the food court. The manager, Rachel, is blonde, skinny and tan wearing jeans and a vintage wash t-shirt that says “Venice” in script.
Rachel is bored. “Raise your hand if you’re here to be a floor model.”
Three, confident BSTs (blonde, skinny, tans) raise their hands.
“Stock?”
The rest of us, slouched and insecure, raise our hands.
“Okay, cool. Follow me.”
That was it? We follow Rachel to the backroom of Hollister and watch a video warning us that if we steal from the store, we will lose all of our amazing work friends and never work at a Hollister ™ franchise again.
“So, you guys have to wear Hollister clothes, okay? You get an employee discount, though.” Rachel tells us.
The employee discount is a whopping 20% and the pay is $7.95 an hour. I picked out a pair of low rise, ripped jeans, a gray tank top and a blue and white striped cardigan to cover up my arms. It’s also mandatory to wear Hollister ™ flip flops. My uniform is worth about 24 hours of work.
“Your butt crack is showing.” A skinny boy Stock Troll with curly hair tells me.
I self-consciously hold up the back of my jeans with one hand while climbing the shelves of the stockroom in flip flops. I’m trying to sort the different shades of blue jeans and the Green Tea diet pills I bought from CVS are making my head spin. I wonder what would happen if I went careening onto the floor. Would I be zipped into a Hawaiian print body bag and stashed away in the depths of the stockroom?
The next day I work is a Sunday. Rachel tells me she needs help on the floor folding some men’s khaki cargo shorts. But I’m a Stock Troll. I don’t belong on the floor. “The Middle” by Jimmy Eat World is playing and I start folding.
“You’re doing this wrong.” Rachel says, annoyed.
She tells me I need to fold the shorts in a triangle shape and arrange them in a pyramid. She shows me a laminated card with a picture of what the khaki cargo short pyramid should look like. I let out a heavy sigh. I can’t believe I’m such a fucking loser that I can’t even fold khakis correctly.
Two big and bro-y guys walk into the store wearing shirts with beer logos and backwards hats. They’re the first customers in the store and give off the vibe like they were out partying late last night. I continue folding. The guys are just two feet away from me when one of them loses his balance and bumps into the khaki cargo short pyramid. He falls to the floor and starts shaking violently. My heart is racing. What the fuck? I think this guy is having a seizure. He pisses his pants and blood is coming out of his nose. I grab the back of my pants with one hand and run in my flip flops to go find Rachel. I find her in the back texting.
“Rachel, Rachel! I think there’s a guy out here having a seizure!”
“Huh? Where?!”
“In Dudes 1!”
We run through the store and I point to the guy still thrashing on the floor. Rachel dials 911. I’m panting.
“I think you should get him a spoon.” I suggest panicking.
“Why?” Rachel asks.
“I don’t know. My mom said people can swallow their tongues when they have a seizure.
“Ew. He peed.”
Rachel looks around and sees one of the floor models, Ethan. She instructs him to go get a plastic spoon from the food court. Ethan returns shaking. The pop punk continues blasting on the speakers “Here in Your Arms” by Hellogoodbye is playing when the EMTs arrive. I’m in total shock as they carry the big guy away. His friend looks scared.
Rachel barely waits until the stretcher leaves the store before she starts stuffing the khaki cargo shorts into a garbage bag. All of my hard work, folding these shorts into triangles and now they’re piss-soaked garbage. I’m tense for the rest of my shift. Mall employees get to exit through a loading dock in the back. The second I’m out of the store, I call my mom. I stay on the phone with her as I walk to TCBY to get Frozen Yogurt for dinner.
I only worked at Hollister for maybe another week, but I’ll never forget the man who had a seizure in Dudes 1. When the crisis struck, it didn’t matter who was a Stock Troll, a Floor Model, or even the manager for that matter. The khaki cargo short seizure man was the great equalizer.