1.
Working in a bookstore meant a lot of things to me when I was younger. Mostly it meant books I wanted at cheaper prices, but there was the added bonus of meeting people who at least attempted to delve into literary minds. Well, some of them tried to delve into literary minds while others read drivel similar to the brain food equivalent of prune baby food. But I digress. Walking around a bookstore was more inviting to me than some people truly ever realized. See, when I was a child, I idolized Belle from Beauty and the Beast. Aside from this movie being genius in animated form, it created a standard I held for myself - where I was, whatever I was doing, I demanded it be surrounded by books.
So that never stuck so well, but I always wanted to think in the back of my mind that somehow I would continue to work around books until the day I died. Which in reality could be very monotonous. But I digress.
Subsequently, though I did manage to land a job in a bookstore at the ripe age of eighteen, I was planted in their cafe. Though appealing and quicker-paced in a smaller environment, I longed to wear clothes in shades other than black, gray, faded black and the occasional white if I dared. Apparently my lot in life was allotted under the category of "close, but no cigar", which now that I think of it, is not a term I often use. That's a shame.
But I digress.
Working in cafe had it's perks, though. All employees had specific discounts within the company, and considering the amount of business each cafe in the company received, our discount was fifty-percent. Though I often despised the idea of indulging in cupcakes and sandwiches drenched in oil that would probably entail an earlier death rate, the cafe area itself was fun. And whenever I was about to go on a break, I'd just ask them to start on whatever drink or food I was going to end up getting. Even though there was sometimes a line ahead of me when I eventually came to purchase, the fact that the beverage and food was already ready made it easier to anticipate the amount of time not wasted in the quick-finished half hour break I was given. Eight hour shifts, and all I got was a half hour and a fifteen. Criminal. Well, not really, but I often liked to seethe on anything that made it seem like I hated my job, because deep down inside all I ever wanted was to get paid enough to live off of that dumb job. But I digress.
One day I was sitting at work on my fifteen, up on the second level right in front of the kid's section. There's a railing, comes level to about the middle of my torso, and I even out at about 5'9" so I guess it was a decent sized fence. There were always two mini-mission or mission tables up there, against the railing. It's easy to spot those tables - they're all black, and some are about half the size of others. I was sitting between the two tables - there was a lengthy amount of space - when I heard a manager nearby tsking at something I saw in her hand.
"That's ridiculous."
"What is?"
She hadn't seen me, but didn't jump. My best friend and I had a tendency of sitting there to read on our breaks. Kept us out of cafe, but in the store incase we needed to jump into action somewhere. I'm aware I lived a sad life. I digress.
The manager held up a planner, the pages flapping madly as she twisted it at it's binding. "This planner, I just found it on the table and-"
"Oh, I love those planners. I get one every year." Another manager chimed in as she passed, wheeling a v-cart (these tall-ish black carts that carried books for particular sections on them. I loathed them in a way, because I was always too scared to bring them down the escalators in fear of spilling the contents of somehow maiming myself. Trust me, if anyone who knew me were telling this story, they'd mention how horrible my balance is - and in combination with how accident prone I've always been, the likelihood of a spill occurring up or down an escalator with a v-cart in hand was as good as it could get.
I'd actually fallen on the up escalator. Technically at the time it was temporary stairs, since we'd been closed and the escalator was turned off. I had literally tripped going up stairs. Sprained my ankle and was out of work for at least a month and a half. And all of this isn't even counting how often I feared stepping onto escalators out of sheer terror, solely because my over-active imagination pulsed with the idea that somehow I'd get stuck and then sucked in between the cracks and slowly tortured by the grainy lines on the metal steps. But I digress.)
"Me too, but this one is going to have to go into our damaged goods section." The first manager whipped through some of the pages and showed it to her colleague and I sat, cross-legged, curious as ever as to what it was they were looking at. But I was positively forgotten and I had no intention of interrupting.
"It's not the worst I've seen," the second manager, who was the older and wiser (in that, 'I've-worked-here-longer-and-seen-more-than-you' sort of way) nonchalantly waved her hand before walking off with the v-cart (seriously, they're scary and made of evil.)
The first manager laughed and shrugged before zipping passed me to the down escalator, and she was gone. I went back to my reading, the seemingly ruined planner taking a backseat to the horrid shoujo manga I was reveling in.
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