dale bridges

When I tell people that I work at a medical-marijuana clinic, I usually get one of two reactions: A) They smile politely and blink a lot and wait for me to tell them where I REALLY work, or B) They say “Right on! That’s totally rad, dude! You have the coolest job in the world!” and they try to give me a high five. (Incidentally, there are an inordinate number of high fives being distributed amongst those affiliated with the medical-marijuana industry, and I for one would like it to stop. Also, no fist-bumping or complicated handshakes that involve fancy maneuvers that make me feel as though I’m participating in a shadow-puppet slap fight. It’s getting out of control.)

Honestly, my job is fairly boring on a a normal day. Yes, in the beginning, it was exciting to go to work and see five pounds of marijuana in a plastic bag on top of a giant jewel-store safe, but these types of events have long since lost their luster. Like any other job, the newness wears off and it just becomes work.

On the other hand, every once in a while, I will look around the dispensary and think to myself: “This is a very strange place.” Today was one of those days.

The dispensary where I work is near the college, and when the students went home for the summer, things really slowed down. We’re still doing steady business, but we also spend a great deal more time watching “SpongeBob SquarePants” on the giant flat screen than we used to.

One of my coworkers is a 25ish blond hippie chick who looks like she came right out of a Rolling Stone fashion shoot circa 1972. Today the blond hippie chick was feeling stressed out because she is the maid of honor at her sister’s wedding, and her sister is being a normal 20somethingish American bride (i.e. insane). Therefore, the blond hippie chick asked if she could run to her car and grab her hula hoop (apparently, she keeps a hula hoop in her vehicle in case of hula hoop-related emergencies) because hula hooping helps her relax. In the meantime, my other coworker, a skinny young stoner who basically looks like the male version of the blond hippie chick, decided that he was going to fire up the vape and buy some beers at the liquor store next door.

So there we were, watching SpongeBob fight some sort of evil, pink, lobster-man thingie, drinking microbrews, partaking of a vaporizer, while an attractive young woman hula hooped in the lobby in order to relieve the stress related to her sister’s wedding.

That’s what my job is like right now.