"OH FUCK, MOTHERFUCKER, NO!" It is 5:30 in the morning on a Saturday and my grandpa came in to check if i had woken up. In the recent months he became rather emotional and attached to me and my sister, but he saved every centimeter of my ass that morning.
I woke up, threw my button-up from yesterday on my body and put on my jeans. " Will you have something to eat before you leave?" I turned my head and it was my aunt, who was awakened by my grandpa for whatever reason and told i overslept. "No, I'm fine." I replied with jeans halfway on me. "Well, you can't go hungry." "Well, i will have to." I mumbled underneath my breath and left the apartment as quickly as possible.
While on the bus, that i managed to catch, I had some time to self-reflect. You see, this was not actually my first day of work, i actually worked during the summer. After i finished my work at a Slovenian music festival, my grandma managed to get me work at a supermarket, that she used to work at. I spent the night before at hers, but she was not there as she went to get a surgery.
But back on the bus i thought to myself, what am i doing? I decided to go back to work i n December as i didn't really know what to do with myself, so i sent the message to the recruiter who offered me the position on the fruit & vegetables section where i used to work during the summer. Sure some of it was also money, but as someone who came from semi-upper-middle class family i wasn't exactly starving, but i needed some extra cash as i was starting to cover more and more things for myself or at least i tried to.
Anyway, i was driving on a bus, my headphones were playing Video killed the radio star by The Buggles and at about 6:30, i managed to get to the store and as i was starting at 7, i would say it was quite a success. I had to wait for a bit, because i wasn't allowed to sign in more than 15 minutes before the start of my shift, but after about 10 minutes, i made my way to the fruit & veg, when i was met with a shock that shook me to my core.
I saw a woman that i did not recognize, i searched my memory for a bit, but i quickly gave up. You see during my summer work, i used to work majorly with 2 women, who used to rule the section and we managed to built quite a system. And the system was.....Tell me what to do and i'll fucking do it, but on my own i was useless . But now all that was gone and i will have to rebuild the system and FAST.
She struck me as a bit of a introverted person and as a introverted myself, well that's just great, but she absolutely carried me she was insanely nice to me, but you could tell she was not used to having a leach on her back during the entire shift, but we somehow we managed to make it to 8:45, me mostly by refilling bananas.
The reason why 8:45 was so important as a time in the store was because we opened at 9 and 15 minutes before we started, the workers were allowed to go around the store and buy their lunch and stuff so i decided to take a stroll down the store. I bought a piece of bread, a Snickers bar and a Pepsi max. It came out to 2,37 euros, so i put a fiver in the self-checkout machine and took a receipt you had to show it to the woman who worked at a reception, so she checked that you didn˙t steal anything, they also checked your bags after the shift.
I did all that, but i had a weird felling that i forgot something. After that i want back to reloading fruit and vegetables. I kept fucking up like taking the new salad to the store instead of the one from 2 days or more ago, which was the standard. You could tell that my coworker was getting a bit more comfortable with telling me what to do. Don't get me wrong i was not completely incompetent at my job, otherwise i would probably not even get called back from them. But my coworkers were one of the main reasons i managed to get around and i can't thank them enough and i hope they don't completely hate me yet, but really i love them. However love was not on my mind at the time, cause i'm an asshole.
On a saturday, the morning shift is usually seen as a tougher one, because most people come in the morning to pick up the fresh fruit & veg, but it was december, so it really didn't matter.
So me and my new "boss" continued working as much as we could, we sold most of potatoes, oranges, tomatoes and so on, and so on...However at one point my coworker stepped up to me and asked me " Do you know how to make a price sign?" And my first instinct was to say yes, as i could still recall somewhat what to do. I made my way to the office and boy, did god decide to test me today. At first they changed the computer password, so i had to wait for one of the workers to come by and ask them what to do. There was a password written on the screen but my dumbass kept misreading it .
After that i thanked him and he went his way. But i was not out of the mud yet. At first i kept forgetting to put on country of origin and class of food, but the best was yet to come...the PAPER. It was not the right kind, it was not deep enough in the printer, the printer was jammed and after about ten minutes in there, maybe less, but it felt like an hour, i snapped. "WHAT DO WANT FROM ME YOU FUCKING FAG!"
I had to take a step back, it was bad. I took the fruit that I was making a sign for and I left it in our refrigerator and i went for a break. A break was 30 minutes and after I came back, I just went back to refilling the shelfs, but now i had to deal with customers.
Now, when they asked me about something related to fruit and vegetables I could help them as I knew about it, but anything else i was useless for. They would come to you and ask you if we had spray paint and all i could to was say: "I really wouldn't know." It felt powerless and as someone who went to economic school i felt that extra dumb. My shift was coming to an end and I saw people coming in for the afternoon one. I popped in said hello and left. I signed out at the entrance and I went to the bus station.
I had to take a run as a bus already coming and I just couldn't seem to find my bus pass in my jacket. I was like "No, please not now!" As I got on I was still searching for it and I thought I was gonna have to pray that bus controller comes on and checks for the passes, but I ended up finding it somewhere deep in my jacket. I was on the edge, I was planning on going to my grandma, as she came home today, but I just wanted to get home as soon as possible.
From the last bus station to my home there's still like a kilometer of walking through the woods. So as I'm walking, I started thinking "Eh, the shift wasn't that bad, it will be fine." But then I remembered...wait, what happened to my change from lunch, what happened to those 2,64 euros. It hit me, "I left it at the register". It wasn't much, but it was enough whole 2 euros and a half. I ran home, right past my mother and in my room. There, on a piece of paper, i wrote myself a message I will not forget. "YOU COULDN'T EVEN SELL YOUR BODY YOU WHORE" I threw it under the bed and forgot about it.
LARA PETEK 2.12.2024