This post is all about Vicki Lawrence. She was a frequent customer at the copy center. Her thought process always intrigued me simply because it was ass backwards. She was a very nice lady but a little delusional at times.
The first thing I remember about Vicki Lawrence was her business cards. She was a private realtor, meaning that she didn't have a company backing her. She found and sold listings all on her own. It was really interesting that she was able to compete with the companies that had hundreds of realtors on their payroll.
In order to stand out from the same old realtors, she thought she had to make her business cards special. A normal business card for a realtor has their contact info, their company and a small picture of them on the right hand corner. Vicki Lawrence thought that was not enough. She of course put in all the necessary contact information but instead of a small picture, the entire background of her business card would be a picture of her sitting on what looked like a throne and draped in fur. Neither my manager nor I could understand why she wanted this. Not only did the words cover most of the picture, the picture made it hard to read the contact information.
It took a lot of patience to deal with Vicki Lawrence only because she constantly had ideas similar to that one. She would come in to get her fliers designed. There were only two people who could do design, my manager and myself. My manager didn't work weekends so it was up to me on Saturday and Sunday. She never really wanted the layout of her fliers to change but she liked really bold colors. The colors she wanted either didn't exist in the world of graphic design or they were too hard to pin point.
Vicki Lawrence: I want the background to be red, but not circus red. I like blood red. But not the blood red that you see women wear as nail polish the blood red in those bags at the hospital.
WHAT!?
One of the funniest things I found about Vicki Lawrence was her man candy. She was an older woman. She was probably in her late 50's but her makeup was always so heavy and smeared that it made her look older. Her boyfriend was probably 38 at the oldest. During their first few visits I thought he was her son but then one day she perched out her lips for a passionate (and slightly awkward) kiss from him. By the look of things you would think he was trying to get her money but he seemed like he genuinely loved her. He was a very nice guy and one of the first customers to confront Mr. Budweiser about his treatment of me and the rest of the employees. We figured there was no physical attraction from him to her but their personalities seemed to mesh well.
Vicki Lawrence will always leave a lasting impression on me because of the way she thanked people. Sometimes she was messy, and with her mess came procrastination. Often times she would come in right before she had an open house to get her fliers made and printed. She knew that because we had to drop everything we were doing just for her, we were owed something. Just like any other older woman, she would pay us off in the most random of ways. She would give my manager $3.63 gift cards to Starbucks and other stores for other crazy amounts. My biggest pay off from her was in the form of a fur coat. Though it wasn't the infamous fur coat from the business cards, it was a reversible fur coat in which one side was leather and the other was fur. Don't be jealous.
I still have the coat and therefore I still have the memories of the crazy but interesting Vicki Lawrence.
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