Balancing Act: Life Behind the Counter
#2 - The Girl Gets To Choose
The Girl Gets to Choose is a story about love, in all its messy forms. You can find more of my work on my website.
This is a story about how young love is intense and impulsive, trusting and naïve, and how mature love fulfills a deep need within us. It is about love overcoming obstacles and how friendships are bound together by love. Most of all, it is about the importance of loving yourself.
Paid subscribers can access the entire archive of this series from the beginning, along with my poetry and every article I’ve ever written here. If you aren’t a paid subscriber, you can access the archive for free with a 7-day trial.
Juggling work, school, and caring for herself took up most of her time.
Watching her mother, Alicia got the impression that all you had to do was work hard, and focus on what you wanted, and then it would all come together. Well, she had done that.
She went to school every day and handed in her assignments on time.
After school, she went to the Mike’s Milk store on the main drag and showed up for the evening shift. She made minimum wage but the shifts fit her schedule at school. And the last thing she wanted to do was sling beer at the local bar.
Living on her own wasn’t as easy as she thought it would be.
Mike’s was a convenience store that sold everything from milk and smokes to school supplies, though you could get those cheaper at the dollar store down the street. Mostly people came in to pick up things that they’d run out of, like eggs.
Then there were regulars that came in almost every day for a pack of smokes. They really liked it when she remembered their brand.
Alicia would smile and say ‘Players Regular or a pack of Rothmans, right?’, and it would make their day. It was a little flirt for them and they felt recognized.
She liked it too. It was a bit of a challenge and made her shift go by faster.
The long quiet stretches when no one came in were the worst. Sunday night was always the hardest and she would busy herself by stocking shelves, going in the cooler behind the counter, and filling it up.
There was a bank of glass doors behind her where the milk and other dairy products were. The customer would ask for a quart of 2% or 3 bags of milk and she would open the door, get what they wanted, and deposit it on the counter in one graceful movement.
When the stock got low, she had to go into the back cooler where the product was stacked in plastic crates. Part of her job was to unload the crates into the cooler, pushing the product to the front where it would be easier to grab.
Eggs and cheese would sometimes run out too. They were in a long bank of coolers along the wall to the right, as you came into the store. She would carry a box of eggs – ten to a box – out to the cooler and replenish it, making sure to rotate the cartons so the oldest eggs were on top.
When she had a lot of homework, she would sometimes work on it behind the counter, sitting on a little stool off to one side. That helped pass the time when it was slow.
The owners didn’t seem to mind, but it made her uncomfortable. She felt as if she should be dusting the shelves or wiping down the glass counters.
There was a security camera behind her and she was never sure if it was on her or on the store, to prevent shoplifters. She could see the electronics in the back room and knew that it was recording by the little red light that was on.
No one ever told her about it, but she wondered how much it could see, especially when she stood a certain way. She was sure the camera’s view was sometimes blocked by the monitor on the counter too.
If she dropped a twenty, instead of putting it in the till, would the camera see it? But then her cash wouldn’t balance at the end of the day. In the end, she decided it wasn’t worth risking her job over. But it was tempting sometimes.
As it was, she was barely making ends meet. She rented a room from a lady who ran a boarding house at the far end of town. It was nice enough, but the other boarders were men and she had nothing in common with them.
One of them was a real creep. A couple of times she’d caught him staring when they were eating dinner. After that, she mostly stayed in her room. More than once she’d opened her door to find the guy standing outside, listening.
She really wanted to move, but couldn’t afford it. A roommate would help but most of her friends still lived with their parents.
Alicia sighed. “She’d have to hang in there”, she thought. “At least for now.”
The Girl Gets to Choose is a story about love, in all its messy forms. You can find more of my work on my website.
This is a story about how young love is intense and impulsive, trusting and naïve, and how mature love fulfills a deep need within us. It is about love overcoming obstacles and how friendships are bound together by love. Most of all, it is about the importance of loving yourself.
Paid subscribers can access the entire archive of this series from the beginning, along with my poetry and every article I’ve ever written here. If you aren’t a paid subscriber, you can access the archive for free with a 7-day trial.