Heller and Shannon: Flower-petal Pink

Shannon was on pins-and-needles. It had been six years since she had been the new-girl at work.

She sipped a Monster Energy Drink as she navigated through traffic. She couldn’t stomach the thought of breakfast.

The pounding from the misaligned slabs on I-69 gave her a headache.

The lights were on even though she arrived a half-hour early. She went to the door and knocked.

A man in a “Western” shirt and a Bolo tie came up to the door and asked “Can I help you?”

Shannon showed him her badge through the glass and he opened the door.

“Ya can’t be too careful” the man said. Then he stuck out his hand and said “My name is Fred Barker. I am the branch manager. We are all thrilled to have you aboard.”

“Do you drink coffee?” Fred asked.

“Sometimes” Shannon admitted.

“Keurig is in the corner. Lemme know what your favorite kind of coffee is and I will keep it in stock” Fred said.

Staff started trickling in and Fred let them in. He greeted each one like he was thrilled they had been able to make it into work. His greetings felt genuine rather than like Ken Johnson’s greetings which were scripted by a charm-school video he had watched.

Fred casually walked her about he office as he did his warm-start for the day. He pointed out the staff bathroom, the fire-alarm, fire-extinguisher and walked her through how to lock-down a room in the event of a robbery.

Ten minutes before the branch opened and older woman came to the door. Fred beckoned Shannon to join him at the door.

“Joyce Nesbit, I want to introduce you to Shannon O’Dell. Shannon, this is Joyce. Joyce will be training you. Joyce is retiring after…”

“Fifty-one years, as you well know” Joyce reminded him. If there was a bit of tartness in her voice it was all an act.

Joyce let Shannon do the heavy lifting as the customers came in. Most of them seemed genuinely sad that Joyce was retiring.

“Not my choice” Joyce said. “Company says I have to retire because I am going to be seventy-and-a-half years old next month.

Joyce encouraged Shannon to remember names, “Even if you have to write them down on cards. Folks know it is hard to remember names and will appreciated that you are writing stuff down to remember.”

Shannon didn’t expect the customers to warm up to her the way the old, familiar customers did at her old branch. After all, she was new and replacing a worker who had been a fixture since long before this branch had been picked up by Sparky Credit Union.

Still, some of the customers seemed a bit stiffer than she expected.

Joyce announced to Fred, “Shannon and I are going to take a long lunch. We are going over to Ionia. If you gotta dock our pay then take both hours out of my banked time.”

Fred laughed. “You bet Joyce.”

Joyce insisted on driving since she knew where she was going. She explained “The Credit Union will only convert so many banked hours to pay and I am over the limit. Basically, I either use them or lose them.”

Over lunch Joyce explained that everybody was surprised with they got word the Shannon would be showing up. Manpower being what it was, they thought they would be running short staffed for months before a new-hire-out-of-school showed up. Being on the far-end of nowhere, they were very surprised to get an experienced teller.

“So who did you piss off?” Joyce wanted to know.

That took Shannon aback. She had never considered the possibility that she was being punished.

“Well, I don’t know?” Shannon mused. “Nobody that I can think of.”

Joyce poked and prodded a little bit and learned that she had a boyfriend. She was glad to know that Shannon had a support system.

“Do you think you are going to stay?” Joyce asked. 

“I think so” Shannon admitted. “The commute is brutal but the people are friendly...except it feels like some of the customers were giving me the stink-eye.”

“I think I can fix that” Joyce said with a chirp of laughter. “It is your make-up.”

“Many of our customers are farmers and small-business owners. In a lot of cases, the wife does all of the banking. Not too many young women move into jobs out here and it sets off their radar for gold-diggers” Joyce said.

“The reason I wanted to eat in Ionia is so we can hit the Walmart and tone-down your color palette” Joyce said.

Seeing Shannon’s skepticism, Joyce said “I sold Mary Kay for decades. Trust me. I am not making this up. You only have one chance to make a good first-impression."

So, after lunch the two of them hit Walmart. Shannon had never considered shopping there for cosmetics but they had several of the brands and product lines she had used before.

While they were walking into the super-center, Joyce never stopped chattering.

“A woman has to consider who she is trying to attract and how far away he is” Joyce said. “An actress on a stage is fifty-sixty-seventy feet from the audience and has to wear bright, heavy make-up to be seen.”

“When you are at a party or a dance hall the air might be smoky and people are moving. You might be twenty feet away from somebody who might ask you to dance but he might only get glimpses of you. Again, you have to wear shades that catch his eye and make a statement. That, plus you are competing with all of the other girls to catch his eye.”

“Working in a bank is a little bit different. You will be four feet away from the customer and they will have minutes to study you. You want to project a girl-next-door image. You want to be seen as rock-solid-honest and wholesome.”

“So what do you recommend, Doctor Nesbit” Shannon asked, jokingly.

Studying Shannon’s complexion, Joyce declared “A moisturizer with SPF. Sun will not treat your skin kindly. A neutral foundation and then a pure-pink-tone blush.”

“I would skip lipsticks and go to translucent, semi-gloss, pearl-tone brushable products. You don’t want super-shiny...you just want to look-well hydrated. I would stick with the flower-petal pinks”

Looking at Shannon’s eye makeup, Joyce suggested “Simple is better. Maybe a ‘nude’ base and nothing else. The only other change would be to pump-up your eyebrows with a slightly darker shade. That will accentuate your blue-eyes which are one of your best features.”

Shannon was relieved about the eye-shadow advice. She struggled with balancing multiple colors and the shading. Simple was easy.

“These are little-kid colors and I am afraid that I will be so pale that nobody will see me” Shannon said.

“Believe me, honey, if you are counting money everybody will see you. The thing is that everybody trusts Mary Anne and nobody really trusts Ginger” Joyce said.

The reference to Gilligan’s Island went completely over Shannon’s head.

---A tip of the hat to Belladonna for helping me with the bits about the make-up.---