It’s Thanksgiving weekend, and the grocery store was very busy today. As we went about our shopping, we kept hearing, on the P/A, variations of “Mr. Smiley, telephone, line 1 please.” This call was repeated every few minutes the entire time we were in the store. My first thought was that Mr. Smiley ought to get himself a cellphone – it would make things much simpler for him, given that he gets a lot of calls and is never near a landline.

Then I started to notice that it was always different people asking for Mr. Smiley, which seemed a bit odd. Perhaps “Mr. Smiley” doesn’t even exist, and by calling him to the telephone, various store employees were instead sending some kind of coded message. “Shoplifter in aisle three”?

Then I started to worry about myself for inventing grocery store secret codes and conspiracies. Still, the whole thing was a little strange. Perhaps I’ll call them up one day and ask for Mr. Smiley, just to see what happens.

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