One Sweater, Please

The sweaters irritated his cold hands. He wasn’t sure why he had to set up the sweaters, or why management decided to start selling sweaters, but he knew better than to ask questions. Many employees came and went, and he was still amazed at the fact that he still put up with that God-forsaken job. Trying not to block the customer’s view of the cigarettes, he took the racks for the sweater display and set them up on the left side of the counter.

                “Setting up f*****g sweater racks at 5-f*****g a.m. What the f**k am I doing?” he muttered to himself. “God damn it, no one’s going to buy this s**t. F**k.” During elementary school, the clerk grew a habit of swearing. His teachers had told him to act more adult, and to him, “adult” meant swearing as much as humanly possible. Now, being an adult, he had enough restraint to hold himself back in front of customers, but in private his swearing would make the Pope’s mother cry.

                The sweaters were diligently placed on the racks. He lined up all of the shoulder seams with the arms of the hangers and did his best to make them look ironed, even though they had just been thrown out of a box. The angle of the last sweater was finished and he took a step back to analyze the racks. The sweaters were all visible; the customer would be able to see each shoulder just above the shoulder of the one in front of it. Deciding on the two front sweaters was difficult, they were all horribly ugly. He decided to picture himself in each one, and the ones that seemed to make him approachable were put in front.

                He never considered himself an approachable person. When he originally applied the job at the lonely 7-Eleven, he only needed it for a few months to catch up on rent. Those months turned into years all too quickly. The prospect of becoming a clerk never even crossed his mind before having this job. With a deep sigh, he left the sweater racks as they were and walked behind the counter. Being a successful clerk turned out to be harder than he thought, and he never received any positive feedback from the manager. This was nothing new, as the manager never really said anything positive. It was always an insult or some smartass comment he couldn’t help but share with his employees. His behavior had earned him the title of “Jackass” among the people who worked for him, but no one would tell him about that.

                It was almost 6 a.m. now. The clerk watched the clock obsessively, thinking it would make the clock go faster. Few people, if any at all, would come in between 4 and 6 o’clock in the morning. So, the clerk had to fill his time with small tasks. Sadly, after sweeping the floors and dealing with the sweater racks, he ran out of chores to do around the store. Everything was stocked up, so there was no reason to go up and down the aisles. No one had even entered the store after 3 a.m.

He detested this shift, but it was the only way he was able to make a living. He wanted to find a better job, but was simply unable to find anywhere else willing to hire him with better hours. He was often exhausted around 6 a.m., when the manager would arrive and hold down the fort. Today was no different, the lack of anything to do for the last hour made his body start to shut down.

His eyes were half glazed by the time the manager walked in, 10 minutes late, as usual.

“Good morning,” the manager said cheerfully.

“Morning, Hank,” he replied after shaking off his drowsiness. He did his best to not look like he was falling asleep; he didn’t need to get yelled at this late into his shift.

Hank took a sip of his coffee out of his canteen and walked by the counter slowly. Typically, this is to see how well the impulse shopping went over the night. He stopped abruptly, almost spilling his coffee over his thick moustache.

“Did you do this?” Hank asked gesturing his canteen toward the racks of sweaters.

“Yes, sir.” he said frantically, trying to put a proud smile on his face.

“It seems to be leaning to the right.” Hank tried to tilt his head to make it balance out.

“I’m sure it’ll fix itself.”

“Not if it’s broken.”

“What?”

“If the rack is broken, it certainly won’t fix itself. I mean, it doesn’t even have consciousness for Christ’s sake,” Hank said. The clerk could feel the annoyance and sarcasm as he talked.

“It looks fine to me. I don’t think many people are going to be paying attention to whether the rack is leaning or not,” the clerk said, trying his best to not sound too patronizing or disrespectful, but Hank picked up on it.

“It matters to us as a store. To that one customer who has enough free time waiting for your slow a*s to cash the customer in front of them, they’ll see this rack and think ‘Wow, this place is much shittier than I thought.’ And then what happens? They leave, and we don’t make more money. Do you see the problem?” Hank’s face was growing redder by the second. His voice grew a bit louder and higher pitched, but from his years as a manager, he learned to control it better.

“I’m sorry, sir. I’ll take care of it right now.” He strolled around the counter and examined the rack again. There was a definite lean now. It must have taken Hank’s yelling to wake him up and raise his awareness.

Hank walked around the store to give everything a once-over before going into the backroom and putting up his jacket and unfolding his newspaper. He threw the first section to the floor and opened up the sports section. “Damn it,” he muttered, “The Mariners lost again. F*****g Royals.”

The rack’s base seemed to not be screwed in all the way. The clerk tried to lift the rack slightly off the ground and push the bottom to the right.  “Righty tighty,” he repeated to himself. It stopped turning, so he set the rack back down carefully, and stepped back again. Now it looked straight. He was sure of it. He looked over the rack to see Hank sitting in the office reading the paper. “Hey Hank, I think I have the rack fixed.”

Hank sighed, closed his newspaper, and walked out of the office. He stood in front of the rack and stared it down, like it was a child who needed to be taught a lesson. “It still seems crooked. Did you even do anything?”

“Yes sir, I twisted the base around to try to give it more support.”

“It doesn’t look like you even tried to fix it.”

“I assure you, sir, I did my best to try to fix the rack. I’m just not sure what the-“

“Of course you’re not sure. That’s the only way you’d think I’d let you get by with failure.” Hank shot him a look that was practically deadly.

“No, sir, really, I wasn’t just trying to-“

“I don’t care what you were trying to do. I told you to fix the damn rack.”

“Look, I tried to fix the f*****g thing, but it’s just not going to f*****g happen. And even if it is, I’m not doing it. The whole selling sweaters s**t is ridiculous. People come here for beer, cigarettes, and slurpees, not f*****g winter-wear. Get one of your other damn lackeys to do it. I quit.” He took off his old jacket uniform, slammed it on the counter, and walked toward the automatic doors.

“You think I care? You’re just a f*****g clerk. Anyone can do this s**t,” Hank yelled.

He didn’t look back through the windows, just grabbed his keys out of his right pocket, got in his car and left. He then realized he had no way to pay his rent for next month.

Hank took the jacket and walked into the office. He threw it onto the desk and took a long drink of his coffee. The caffeine seemed to relax him. He looked at the clock, 6:30, took a deep breath, and then over to his newspaper, “F*****g Erik Hanson.”