Attention, Women:  This Store Is a Store Designed Just for You.  Now Stop Freaking Me Out and Behave Yourselves.
 
Three Customers, ranging from not-so-bad to unbelievable:
 
1.)  A Phone Conversation.
 
Her:  Hi, somebody gave me a gift certificate, and I'd like to redeem it.
 
Me:  Okay, great.  Did you want to know how to use it online?
 
Her:  (Pause)  No....no....I think I'll need to come in.
 
Me:  Okay, how can I help you?
 
Her:  Do I need to make an appointment?
 
Me:  (???)  No...
 
Her:  Oh?  Great!  Okay, then.  See, I've got this gift certificate for a hundred dollars...well, actually, I've lost the gift certificate.
 
Me:  (shit.)  You have?
 
Her:  Yeah...well, I got it as a gift two years ago, so it's probably expired, but can I come in and shop anyway?
 
Me:  (!!!)  You want to come in and get a hundred dollars worth of product using an expired gift certificate that you've lost???
 
Her:  Actually, I want a pedicure.
 
Me:  Oh my God!!!  You don't want us!  You don't want us!!  You want the Honeysuckle Spa on Oak Street!  Don't you? 
 
Her:  Yes....
 
Me:  This is a sex toy shop!  You've called the wrong Honeysuckle!  You have the wrong number!  (laughs with hysterical glee, possibly rubs hands together)
 
Her:  I don't understand why you're so happy about this.
 
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2.)  Hey, This Is Just Like the Last Episode of Six Feet Under, but Without the Van, the Gun, or the Dead Farting Body, and Steve Didn’t End Up In an Alley Covered in Gasoline, Blowing a Pistol and Begging for His Life.  Otherwise, Just Like That.
 
Right before closing, a woman walked in and asked if she could browse.  I may have mentioned this before, but retailers really hate it when people come in right when as the doors are shutting, see the clerk in a coat and clutching their car keys, then dick around for half an hour just to, you know, kill time.  If they’re looking to buy, we’re happy to help them.  Ecstatic, even.  But we’ve been standing here for 11 hours , and we’d like to go home now.  But Steve and I let browsers browse anyway, with no visible sulking or pouting, in the hopes that we may be rewarded.  This time it paid off - the woman began to enjoy herself and decided she’d do some shopping after all.  She ran Steve a bit ragged, making him bring her almost every piece of petite sized lingerie we had, but she eventually decided on a few items and brought them up to the register before heading to the back to look at the toys.  She won Steve over completely when she took a call on her cell phone.  He only got one side of the conversation, of course, but from this end it sounded like:
 
Her:  I can’t talk right now.  I’m shopping.
 
Caller:  Mmm mmm mmmm mmm mm?
 
Her:  When’s a good time for you to call me back?  Hm.  How about never?
 
Caller:  Mmm mm!!
 
Her:  Because the only reason you’re calling me is because I have a boyfriend.  You’re not really interested in a relationship.  You just want to fuck.
 
Caller:  Mmmm mm mmm mm!!!
 
Her:  It sure is.  I don’t even like you, really.  I’ve just been being nice.  But here’s the thing:  I have a boyfriend.  Quit calling me before I tell him to kill you.
 
She hung up and smiled at Steve sheepishly.
 
“Sorry about that.  He just keeps calling.”
 
“No problem.  Well-handled,” Steve assured her.
 
They buddied around a bit after that, and she was happy to take toy recommendations from him, as he had proven himself to be a man of good taste.  Her bill came to $300.  She pulled out her wallet and began to pay in cash, and was dismayed to discover she was $4 short.
 
Not wanting to turn down $296 because she didn’t have $4, Steve told her really, don’t worry about it.  It’s not that big a deal.
 
“Are you the owner?” she asked.
 
Steve admitted that he was.
 
“Oh, that’s cool.  Well, you should let me make it up to you,” she smiled up at him and tilted her head to the side.
 
Uh oh, thought Steve, but before he could speak she had rummaged around in her purse and pulled out a glass pipe and a black topped glass vial with two white rocks.
 
“Do you want to party?” she said.
 
Oh my God, thought Suburban Dad, she’s offering me crack!  At least, I *think* that’s crack.
 
“Gee,” replied Steve, “that’s really sweet of you, but no thank you.”
 
“If you want, I can just leave these here, and you can do them by yourself, if you want,” she said.
 
“No, no, I couldn’t.  But thank you so much,” he said, as if she was offering him a third slice of pie.  It’s delicious, but really, I’m stuffed.  Did you make it yourself?  You’re too kind.
 
He had just called me on the phone to tell me about his adventures in the seamy drug underworld when she came back, rapping on the glass.
 
I started yelling over the phone, “Don’t open the door!!  Don’t open the door!  She’s going to rob you!  Tell her to go away!!!”
 
She had forgotten her keys, she said.  When Steve, without opening the door, told her he’d go to the counter and look for her, she fluffed up the contents of her purse and came up with them almost right away.  Influenced yet again by my paranoia, Steve waited in the back office for an hour before deciding to leave.  She was gone.
 
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3.)  Steve Flat Out Thinks I'm a Big Fat Liarhead, But I Swear, This Happened.
 
Right after the Cubs game on Saturday a topless woman walked into the store.  She did a lap around, meeting my eyes and my completely neutral smile with an odd little smile of her own.  She settled on the lingerie, pawing violently through the racks.  Bras fell to the ground as she jerked the hangers around.  She held a black mesh garter skirt up, stretching the fabric roughly to test its give.  "Guess I need something to wear," she muttered and flashed me an odd look again, and another odd smile.
 
Oh shit, I thought.  Either this woman is a mean drunk, or she's crazy.  Initially, I thought she'd been attacked, but no.  She'd made a decision to be topless, and she was going to beat the living shit out of the person who made an issue of it. [Ed. note:  She was wearing a transparent yellow bra with spaghetti straps.  Technically, was she topless?  No.  But I'm of the opinion that if you can clearly see both the shape and the color of a woman's nipples, then by God, that's topless.]
 
I started to get very nervous, and grabbed the panic button.  I decided to wait until she escalated things before using it, though, and I disappeared to the back office and opened the door to the gangway so I'd have a clear shot at getting the hell out of there if I had to.  My absence aroused her suspicions, so her muttering in my direction increased.  To my relief, four more customers walked in.   Even better, they seemed to be non-English-speaking European tourists.  
 
This will decide how crazy/drunk she is, I thought.  If she maintains or cools down when other customers are here, then she's not that bad off, and she's probably going to rob me.  
 
I could see she most likely wasn't armed, because complementing the see-through bra was a pair of see through boxer shorts.  
 
The tourists ignored her and split up, a man and a woman looking at the books, two other women looking at a fake vagina in the back.  When Topless saw the women giggling over the vagina she lost it and ran over to them, shouting about how would they like it if someone laughed at their vagina.  She actually bent herself in half in order to laugh up one of the women's calf-length skirt, as an example.  They had no idea what she was saying, so they giggled and discussed her behavior in what I think may have been Swedish.  She mocked their language and went over to the video section and held up a copy of Better Sexual Techniques, Part III.
 
"Here's what you need!" she raged.
 
Here's where I should have called 911.  I didn't do it, though, because I knew, I just knew if I did, things would get a lot worse before they got better.  The Swedish tourists didn't seem to be fazed at all by her, and regrouped to look at the Rabbit Pearl.  I followed suit, walking over to them and asking if I could help them.
 
Seeing that no one was going to confront her, she picked up a votive candle and threw it out the door.  She followed the candle a few seconds later.  I ran to the door and locked it.  The tourists looked confused. 
 
"Closed?" they asked.
 
Something about that language barrier, I guess.  They had no idea how bad things could have gotten.   That was the worst, the scariest incident I've had since the store has been open.  Worse, even, then the guy who dropped his pants and masturbated in the dressing room.  He responded to my "GET OUT NOW" by zipping up and meekly exiting, even locking the door on his way out.  Seems sort of flat in the telling, that I almost got my ass kicked by a naked woman spoiling for a fight, but dude:  I almost totally got my ass kicked by a naked woman spoiling for a fight.
 
That would have sucked.