If you are bored you can read this silyt thing i wrote for this class.
the job
Now, my name is Albert Leroy. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Every night I have to wake up at 6 pm, yes pm and walk all the way down Branch Street to the Branch Street Store 24. I’m the guy that works there during the graveyard shift. The shift. That is to say the hours from 7:30 pm to 4:30 am. It takes me a little under an hour to walk there. The bus, you ask? It’s too close for that. Walking is good for me anyways.
I was lucky. Lucky to get this job.
I’d just run out of chances at my previous one, which was at a Sunoco station. It was a self service station but I felt that the customers needed me to help them pump gas. I’d come out of my bulletproof glass booth and say hello how do you do and try to help these fellows out with their gas. I was real nice. I’d even ask them if they wanted leaded or unleaded. But somewhere along the way somebody complained about me. I guess it doesn’t pay to be a nice guy in a gas station. I mean, I still don’t understand. Maybe the manager just didn’t like me. All I ever did was smile at him you know when I’d take my check every Friday. Besides that I never even looked him in the eye.
Well the only thing I know for sure is that I was out of a job and like I said I was lucky, see. I was walking down Branch Street and I see this HELP WANTED sign peeking out at me through this window.
Wow, you know. And there I was bumming out on the street and another job was awaiting me.
Now I can call myself a professional Store 24 clerk. No more bulletproof glass. Really, I think that it was the glass that was cramping my style.
So every day at midnight the janitor comes in to clean up the place. Mops the floor real clean. His name is Paul, not sure about his last name. He’s the quiet type. I’m not too sure about him sometimes, but he’s all right. It’s probably my own imagination acting up again, but I see him digging in the trash from time to time. At midnight there are some strange people that start to come into the store. Odd bums you know. Mostly the same bums wanting to stay inside because of the heat or the occasional crazy person that you only see once in your whole life but you remember the exact way they talk and the way they walk and what they bought, how much it costs and everything.
It’s my job to keep my eye on that type. I mean any responsible Store 24 clerk would know to do that. Even Paul helps out…
Here’s how a normal day turned into a memorable and maybe panicky one. It’s really only panicky if you think about it in the wrong way. But then again anything can be anything if anyone thinks about it for long enough.
So there was this one day I was working at the Store 24. Was a Tuesday that was about to be a Wednesday. I rememeber the day because I’d always pass by the sandwich store next door and they had double deals on Tuesdays. Anyhow time goes by and it hits quarter to midnight so I’m expecting Paul to come in at any moment. Paul is the janitor and he’s a real punctual guy. Someone I can count on to be on time. Not that I’ve ever told him I could count on him. It was a slow night that Tuesday, nobody comin in and wanting to buy those fancy thirty-dollar alarm clocks on the back wall or those new ultra menthol mint cigarettes behind the counter.
Now before I tell you the next part of this I have to say something about the basic layout of this particular Store 24. The counter (where I am most of the time) is to the left of the main entrance, and when you walk in the door the items that face you are the large refrigerators with see-through doors. So if somebody comes in through the doors I have to look to my right but I only see part of a person’s face at first because the red lollipop containers block my vision.
Well this white couple comes in the doors all walking fast and looking in a hurry. I was watching them carefully, not because I was trying to be rude or anything but they were the sort that was interesting to watch. The lady is talking about something... something about orange juice and vitamins. Hey, it’s my job to watch people. Make sure they don’t steal anything or break the law or do anything unpleasant. I AM a professional after all. If I’m not professional about my job my employers and customers won’t be satisfied with me. The lady is wearing one of those black tailored leather jackets but it looks too small for her, and she has this short black ponytail. Her male companion looks like a regular beer-loving guy. The guy was probably in his mid-thirties I’d say. They were talking about orange juice of all things. The lady was holding one of our generic brand Store 24 orange juices in her left hand. After a minute or so of speaking to each other they approached me. She still had the orange juice.
They looked angry at me- don’t ask why, but they looked angry. I was thinking to myself, I was thinking how could OJ make someone this mad at a stranger? At that moment I was wondering where Paul was. Time slowed down as soon as this pair entered my store. Paul wasn’t going to be here soon enough for me.
In any case it was too late because the lady opened her mouth and spoke to me.
She was telling me about how the government was reducing the amount of vitamins in orange juice but raising the prices of oranges so that orange juice would have to be more expensive, and well now look at it five ninety nine for a gallon of orange juice.
What a rip off, she said to me. Well I was at a loss for words, what could I say? I apologized like any trained professional would do and I was secretly hoping that Paul would come in and take some of the pressure off my shoulders. She ended up buying it anyways and I never saw their faces again.
I mean, I was put on the spot there. It’s hard to be on the spot.
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