Atlantic Terminal Brooklyn Target -part 2

It's the same culture. Red and Khaki. It's the same store. Atlantic Terminal. Brooklyn. Different story, same week-end. It's still Christmas but this time it's my daughter Maggie who had the the story to tell.
This one's all about the thin line between real and fake. Between real silver that costs an arm and a leg, and fake silver that cost Target prices, practically nothing. It's really about the Target brand, Expect More. Pay Less. They even do a sketch about it on SNL ( a really bad one), but it does capture the mania, the hysteria of the Brooklyn store. They don't expect so much there, they just want to pay less and they want to make as much noise about it as possible.
Lines!
Fast.Fun.Friendly. It has a few dictates. One, the Rule of Two.
If there are ever any more then two people in line, they're supposed to open a new line so that the guest doesn't have to waste their time by waiting in line. I picture the Brooklyn Target store and I just giggle at the thought.
Lines.
I use the term very, very loosely. I have this image, that if everyone, seething and screaming and struggling to find a line at the Brooklyn store weren't wearing clothes, then we'd be straight out of a scene of Caligula. But because we are clothed and not having sex, instead of being in a movie we're just in the cluster fuck of all cluster fucks, waiting in line at the Brooklyn Target store at Christmas time yet.
Those who have read the previous blog on 'Jennifer' now will know why everyone was so desperate to try and pay for their goods at the Electronics counter, that is, until they met Jennifer.
And what's so funny, if it weren't so pathetic is the Red and khaki army think they're helping by trying to organize everyone.
One day I saw them corralling guests like cattle in a pen, right between the Isaac racks and the shopping cart escalator. Really, we were herded and then one by one, depending on our own personal brand and by brand I mean race, (white people were definitely not shown preference, and hey, isn't it about time?) we were allowed to leave the pen and go stand in line at one of the registers.
And then I realized what they were doing, as I finally escaped the pen and queued up behind a Brooklyn guest who truly had the biggest ass I've ever seen. They were abiding by the rule of two. Each line, had its requisite two and a half guests. However, cue mooing, I glanced over my shoulder and saw this invisible corral holding back throngs of guests, wild-eyed, spitting and spewing to be released to a line, any line, controlled by a very smug Red and Khaki army. Rule of two, Brooklyn style.
But that's not the story. This story is Maggie's. She's was purchasing some plastic silverware for a party or the like. Target has this pretty cool plastic silverware (I'm sure all the Marts have it, but we don't, can't, won't shop at those places. That's bad!)
She didn't have the corral experience but she had just come down the escalator. Some Target stores have two floors and those stores have an escalator with a runway next to them for your shopping cart. A shopping cart escalator. And people in Brooklyn think this is an amusement ride. Like the man who's cart was so full that as he rode up the escalator next to his loot he had to practically lay over the cart full of goods just so they wouldn't fall back and crush everyone. And then we have both been witness to the cart escalator stopping dead.
Picture it. Betty Bag a Donuts. Brooklyn style. Fifteen hundred children, fourteen hundred and ninty two screaming, the rest just drooling snot from some orafice. And...the escalator stops. Not the people escalator. The cart escalator. The woman with the kids, keeps riding up while her cart load stays in stasis half way between the first and second floor. They get to the top, everyone does, and they huddle at the exit point of where the carts are supposed to be delivered to them, and they stare like pod-people. No one does anything.
The man who was draped over his cart-full is slowly ripped away from his goods as he keeps going and the cart does not. A whole layer goes skidding to the frozen track. He keeps going. Becomes a pod person at the top of the escalator. This mini-throng of guests are soon joined by Red Shirts and Khaki pants and skirts. To help? Nope. Just to stand there with lugubrious expressions of dismay. We've abandoned more carts on that escalator, Maggie and me. We've never joined the pod people. I have wanted to slap the face of the of the Red and Khaki's and scream, "For Gods Sakes! Do something. You're a Target team member for the Christ Sake!"
Anyway, back to the faux silver plastic wear. Maggie takes her fake prize to the checkout counter and her cashier, Lakeesha, is singing. I don't mean just humming and waiting for the next guest to step up. I mean singing, out loud and very proud of herself. She's singing Alicia Key's, "No One."
She eyes Maggie. "I just want you close. Where you can stay forever. You and me together through the days and nights." Maggie looks around. Is she coming on to me? And then realizes, nope, she's not singing to anyone in particular but is very aware that everyone can hear her.
" I don't worry cause everything's gonna be alright. NO ONE! NO OOOOOONE. Can get in the way of what I'm feeling." Really loud now. " NO ONE. NO ONE. CAN GET IN THE WAY I FEEL FOR YOU...FOR YOUUUUUUU."
As Maggie gets there, Lakeesha points somewhere behind Maggie.
"You see my baby's daddee?" Maggie looks behind her. There is a guy at the next check out, or is it the guy corraling carts? "Thas my baby's dadeeee. He's so cute!" Neither of the two Maggie spotted were even close to cute, but Baby Mama sure did think one of em was.
Then Lakeesha sees the plastic silverware made to look like real silver. She looks at Maggie in happy surprise. "Look at these! Are these...shit..these aren't real! They're plastic...been MADE to look real!"
Maggie nods, smiling. Sweet Jesus!
Lakeesha continues in wonderment and speed rapping, "I'm gonna git my momma these for Christmas! She'll be like, 'baby, you gots me real silverware!' and I'll be like, 'no momma, I gots you plastic silverware thats made to look real."
She turns to the cashier on the other side of potential Baby Daddy.
"Sure as shit looks real donit? Yep, that's whats I'm gonna do. Get my momma some real fake silverware for Christmas." Then to anyone who would listen. "These made to look real." Then to Maggie. "Sure's hope you din't take the last ones."

NOWHERE. NOWHERE. NOWHERE. LIKE THE ATLANTIC TERMINAL BROOKLYN STORE. (sung to the tune of No One)