Awkward

So today I opened the store much too early. Two men were standing at the door waiting to be let in and I thought "well, I was going to open early ANYWAY." So I let them in. The thing is, there was nothing about these two men that made me WANT to open the door early other than that they were THERE. And it ended up being a mistake. I could tell as soon as I walked up to the door that older man was attracted to me. I ignored it pointedly and let them in and tried to be pleasant. As I rang the man up, he stared at me in a way that was less than creepy but annoying none the less. And he told his friend, "Hurry up so the pretty lady can ring you up!" I snorted at that, not trying to seem even vaguely attractive and actively denying his compliment at the same time. He continued to irritate me by being indecisive and being about two dollars short which led to much annoyance on my part eventually ending me having to void the transaction and re-ring everything. They left.

Several hours later I was working and another, younger, man came in. He wandered the store for several minutes and eventually walked up to the counter, leaned on it, his chin on his hand and stared at me. Having seen him approaching I was waiting at the register to help him. "...can I help you?" I asked, seeing no merchandise. He smiled at me, not moving or speaking. I blinked at him, not quite sure what to think. "MAY I help YOU?" I asked again, louder. And he winked at me. I could feel my pulse racing, my adrenaline pumping. Whatever was going on with him was not going to be good. "...do you need help?" I finally asked, ready to smack him. He laughed and stood up straight giving me his merchandise and saying something inane and normal. "Just teasing," he said. I continued to feel like smacking him. I ended up messing up counting his money (which I KNEW I did and corrected the mistake before he knew) but said "you might want to recount that" as I handed him his change. "It was the wink, right? It distracted you," he offered, thinking himself funny. I gave him a sharp look, "I'm NOT sure distracted is the right word." He ended up asking me some innocuous question (which was phrased badly and, once again, made me uncomfortable) and we had a conversation about that. When he left he was acting normal.

The worst part about it was that I'd been working 7 hours straight at that point without a break and was extremely hungry, and tired. With my adrenaline up, after he left and my body went back to "normal" mode I felt even worse because my blood sugar dropped dramatically. I thought for sure I was going to get a headache but ended up just feeling depressed and gross. Lunch about twenty minutes later fixed everything.

As I sat there, though, feeling like shit I couldn't help but ask myself why I even WANTED to be attractive to men in the first place. I don't like receiving that kind of creepy attention and really have no idea how to deal with it. I went home and posed this question to husband and he responded that I was getting the attention whether I thought I was attractive or not so why not be attractive and get a job where I'd be in a position to tell them to fuck off.

Indeed.