Work- Part 2

If the Seller is my least favorite type of customer, the children are number two on my list of least favorite customers. Let me preface this by saying I love babies but hate children when they hit age five and up. They’re no longer chubby and cute, they’re little assholes. They are the sole reason as to why the children’s section looks like a tornado blew through it, and even if we fix it back up, it turns back to a disaster the next day. I feel like a Mom cleaning up after them. They yell and scream, and throw books on the ground, while their exhausted parents just softly say, “Stop that.” They don’t. I hate kids.

I love my Regulars though. There’s this one guy, a little chubby, who comes almost every Sunday around five o‘clock. He picks up a sci-fi books and reads on the couch, never buys a book, just reads. I pretty sure he’s a little off in the head considering he doesn’t drive, and the fact that before he leaves he goes to the bathroom and screams. He yells, as if maybe he’s singing, or having a conversation with some non-existent person. You might think he’s dangerous, but I don’t. He seems harmless for the most part. There’s another women, old, black, and soulful, a grandma-looking type. She’s so sweet, she knows me by name, and asks for these obscure books we rarely ever have. And there’s this little boy who comes in maybe twice a month, for the past maybe four months, asking for The Invention of Hugo Cabret. We never had it before, but now it just came in. I can’t wait to see him again and tell him that we finally have it.

The day goes by and I’ve listened to Don’t Stop Believing and some Blondie song maybe three times each. I know them by heart. I answer phones automatically with the same greeting, and they ask me the same questions on the other end of the line- a book, directions, how selling books to us work. I answer with fake enthusiasm and with the same script I have created for each question they could ask me. Callers are all the same. The day’s almost ending, I count the drawers, take out a deposit, write my hours down. Turn off the lights, the open sign, and the radio. I lock the door, and check it once, twice. I go home not remembering anything about my monotonous, repetitive day at work. Except I remember my Regulars. My Regulars offset the Sellers and the kids and make the drear of my job worth it.