Afternoon Shifts

$25.00

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Current Balance: $25.00

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     Having a job is no easy feat.

     It's so difficult.

     And Rowena hasn't actually started working yet.

     Like, do you see the problem here?

     Maybe she hasn't actually started working yet, but Rowena likes to think that just waking up at 6:20 AM on a Saturday morning is a miraculous accomplishment in itself. 6:20 AM on a weekend is an ungodly hour made for health addicts and people who don't have Netflix subscriptions. She just so happens to fall into neither of these categories.

     "God," Rowena mutters to herself, heavy feet dragging across the sidewalk. "The things I do for love."

     She doesn't even know why she decided to take this Saturday time slot in the first place—maybe because she'd been hungry and desperate (the worst combination), but Rowena has never realized how little of a morning person she was until she woke up this morning. She can only be glad that Saturdays are her only morning shift; the rest are in the afternoon after school.

     Afternoon shifts sound much better, she decides.

     Deciding that the mush in her brain needs a little bit of a pick-me-up, she goes to take a sip from her coffee. It takes her three tries and a near enucleation to get the straw in her mouth.

     And then it makes a stupid slurpy noise.

     She sips again. It makes that noise.

     Shocked, she peers into the empty cup. "The hell? You fucking dare make that mocking noise?" she rages. "I KNOW I JUST DRANK FIVE HUNDRED CALORIES IN THREE MINUTES! YOU DON'T HAVE TO RUB IT IN!"

     And that's when the vexation takes up residence in her soul.

     "IS THIS WHAT YOU WANT?" Rowena yells to no one in particular, half delirious from lack of sleep. "FOR ME TO SUFFER? IS IT BECAUSE OF THAT ONE TIME I STOLE THAT RED LACY UNDERWEAR FROM THAT DEPARTMENT STORE WHEN I WAS SIX? I JUST WANTED TO SEE-"

     She runs straight into a telephone pole.

                                                                                  • • • • • 

     When Rowena actually does arrive at the Quick N' Easy twenty two and a half minutes later, Charlie is already waiting at the front counter to meet her, wearing freshly starched Bermuda shorts and a Hawaiian print shirt and holding a pair of neatly polished brown loafers in one arm. He gives an zealous handshake as greeting.

    "Hi," she says, forcing her eyelids to stay open. The golf ball sized knot on her forehead makes it hard to concentrate is pounding so hard that she's absolutely certain tiny drummers have made her skull their new home. "I-"

    "No time," he interjects, "there's a cheese convention downtown that's starting in half an hour and I really must be going!"

     "Okay, so what do I-"

     (This is the part where Charlie proceeds to repeat a list of things at a speed previously unknown to mankind. Just thinking about it gives Rowena a migraine bigger than Texas.)

     "Uh..." She scratches her forehead lump nervously.

     "Okay?"

     Not okay. Truthfully, Rowena blanked out about three words into Charlie's speech, and hadn't realized it until he was already three thousand words into it. All she picks up is something about expired milk and restocking the three aisles dedicated solely to spam.