So at my prestigious job at Sam's club, one of my fellow cake-decorators is Avni. Avni Alla to be precise. He's easily on my list of the top 10 most interesting people I've ever met. He's quite a character. And this is my little tribute to the man who makes Sam's Club a little less arduous and a little more comical. Avni has a couple of things going for him in the way of humor. The first is his need to make a joke out of everything. Whenever he opens his mouth you can be assured that something he thinks is funny will be spewing out. What really MAKES what he says funny (most of the time) is his Albanian accent, and his lack of English vocabulary. Avni is from Macedonia and he moved to the U.S. about 4 years ago, not knowing a speck of English. His favorite song is Barbie Girl by the band Aqua. He is constantly singing a few of his select favorites (including this one) throughout the day, and he is usually making up his own variations to them and inserting the names of his co-workers into the lyrics. To give you an example, the one I've probably heard the most is, "I'm a Heidi girl, in a Barbie world...". Bad Boys from the show COPS is another favorite. There's also Coco Jambo, I Like To Move It, I Kissed A Girl, Hey There Delilah, the Barney theme song (because his daughter loves Barney) and some Albanian songs. He only sings select parts of each song, and in his own way, and with his own lyrics. They continue to amuse me no matter how many times I've heard them (except for the Barney one, and sometimes he'll sing that one just because he knows it drives me nuts). He also does some weird little dances to his songs occasionally. He has many recurring jokes like when he says, "you're making discrimination on me," for some stupid little thing (everybody discriminates against Avni over every little thing according to him), and when he talks about his "second" or "third" wife even though he's only been married once and he's still married to the woman. He likes to joke about how Muslims are polygamists even though they're not (he's Muslim, by the way). He likes to tell people they've been drinking "stupid juice" when they mess up (even a little bit). He also likes to tell people to "go to hell" and to "do your job" when the joking escalates to a certain level. Everybody knows he's kidding though. I don't think a serious word ever comes out of his mouth unless someone else is being serious with him first. It's hilarious when he pronounces things wrong (like pronouncing "sheet" like "shit"), or when he writes things down wrong (like when he pulled a bunch of stale bread from off the sales floor that was to be given away to a food bank and labeled it, "4 skin" when meaning to write, "for scan"). He's got some interesting eating habits, too. Apparently, over in Macedonia, they LOVE mayonnaise. Today for lunch he had a slice of cheese pizza with 3 packets of mayonnaise piled on top of it. He claimed that it's no different than dunking your pizza in ranch dressing when I told him that it's no wonder his belly makes him look like he's in his third trimester. If I'm going to miss anything about Sam's Club, it will be Avni (okay, I'll miss some other co-workers, too!). But I won't be missing the gazillion cakes I have to decorate, and the stupid members (also known as customers in any normal retail store where they don't charge people money so that they can buy things there) that I have to deal with. So now that this post really turned into a novel I'm going to end it. And here's some pictures of Avni with his sick pizza.

2 comments

1. Jessica on April 25, 2010 at 7:45 PM

   omg. avni's funnyness and yours is tied right now. that pizza is sick!

    
2. Brittany on May 2, 2010 at 5:33 PM

   Gross. I don't think I'll ever look at Sam's Pizza the same way again. Well, I have to say that I laughed through your entire post. Almost made me want to work there. Almost. Have you hear the "real men of genius" songs on the radio? They should do one of Avni. :)