Dr. U Know

Customers have started staying for actually hours at a time at the store to talk to me about their various problems. I can't figure out what about me appears welcoming or open-hearted or even conscious. Is it the blank stare? My monotone recitation of "cash or credit?" The fact that I am reading Roland Barthes like a douchebag while bagging your bags of, essentially, organic emotional baggage? The best anecdote from yesterday was when a regular visitor told me he went to the laundromat and thought the sign said "Drop Off or Self-Serving" (and not "Drop Off or Self-Service"). Is there a difference? Other runners-up in the Top Sunday Story category were: a 52 year-old-woman talking to me about Love and how she can count the number of times she's had sex in the last two decades and a stockboy who shaved designs (Rorschach test) into his head attempting to ask me out. Like on a date, I'm supposing, but I don't speak Mexican -- only Puertoricaño. With all of this madness distracting me, the register froze and I made a $15 fuck up. The thought of having to repay it reminded me of how poor I am and how much these people must be saving on their therapy while propelling me toward my own insanity. Can I claim workman's comp. or what?