THAT DRUNK GUY AT THE DEP
Claire Loewen, reporting intern
In the summer of my 18th year, I worked at a dépanneur in Plateau-Mont-Royal.
I passed the time by making conversation with pretty much anyone, and phoning my friends, whom I would promptly hang up on as soon as a customer came inside. That customer was usually a drunk guy named Eric.
Eric would come in many times a day to give me three empty beer cans, in exchange for 15 cents in returns. It was a nice routine, when he wasn’t trying to rob the store.
Once, Eric dropped a can on the floor, which sprayed everywhere. I yelled at him to “sort d’icitte sinon j’te jure Eric. Aweille!”
Not all my dep relationships were as funny. Some of them I don’t even remember. But they remember me.
The next year, after I had quit, my friend sent me a missed connection ad she found on Kijiji. It had been posted a month prior.
The ad read: “Claire — Concordia — Journalism. You used to work at a dep down the street from my place.”
Oh. My God. That’s me.
“I kept waiting for you, but you never came back. Hope your life is good. I wish we could have bonked on your smoke breaks.” I still have no idea who wrote it. It was creepy, but the job made me laugh — and it taught me a lot.
Yes, I painstakingly learned how lottery tickets work, and how to balance a cash, do inventory and deal with drunk people — but I also got the hang of standing up for myself.
The biggest thing the dep taught me is that relationships work best when you set your biases aside.
Even a person you would never speak to under different circumstances can teach you about yourself and help you grow. Some of the best relationships in our lives are the short ones we stumble upon.