A Summer Ago

Chapter Three

"It took that long to get a broom?" Ola asked suspiciously.

"I got lost." I lied, not sure if I wanted to tell her about my little run-in with Zach.

"Okay. Now let's clean this up." Ola had already cleared all of the boxes and saved the ones that were full and still in good condition.

After sweeping up all of the cereal, she looked at her watch and told me there was still about an hour or two left until lunch break so she would show me how to work in the inventory room.

I had been past it and seen the swinging door with the large sign saying "Inventory: Staff Only!" when Lu gave me the tour of QuickMart, but I hadn't seen the inside.

Walking in, I was surprised. The room was huge and had a higher ceiling than the actual store itself. In awe, I looked at all of the shelves and boxes filled with food and anything you could imagine. Here, there was a frozen section as well. The entire room was probably bigger than the first floor of my house. It was entirely made of concrete, keeping it cool and causing my to shiver a bit.

Crossing my arms and rubbing them to keep warm, I looked over to Ola, who had retrieved a clipboard from a bookshelf beside the door.

"So, here is where we keep all of the crap that goes to the store when we run out. All of the stuff is ordered from here," she said, pointing to a little corner with three wooden desks with old, but working, computers. "delivered here," she gestured towards a large door in the back where a small truck could easily be backed into. "stored here, and brought out to the store when needed."

She started to walk around, showing my all of the parts of the room she had just pointed out. She taught me how to work at each station and I listened in keenly.

"So this part is where it gets a little difficult. One of the parts of working here is you have to memorize which aisle has what inventory and how much it should have. The shelves should never be empty." she flipped a couple pages over on the clipboard, showing me an example.

"So," she continued. "since I totally ruined aisle twelve and there's a dozen Special Crunch boxes missing, we need to restock that shelf." she said, teaching me how to mark down the aisle number, inventory type and quantity, and leftover stock in a chart.

She walked further into the room and grabbed a cart on the way. Rolling it around, we went from shelf to shelf to find the exact kind of cereal we needed.

"Ah, here it is." she said and stopped in front of a tall shelf with at least three kinds of cereal, forty boxes a kind. Pulling a ladder up, she took two boxes a time and placed them on the cart until there was twelve boxes stacked on it.

"Now we just have to bring it to the aisle, right?" I asked her as she somehow steadily climbed down the ladder in her sky-high heels without a wobble.

"Exactly. Why don't you push the cart there, and I'll be there in a minute to teach you how to stack the inventory on shelves." she told me, marking something else down on the clipboard and pushing the ladder back to its original place.

I nodded and pushed the cart out the door, finding it swung easily once you pushed it. But once it did, I heard a thump! and Lu say something like "Oh Lordy!" in surprise.

"Oh my gosh! I'm so sorry Luanne- uhm, I mean Lu!" I said leaving the cart and walking around to her to see what I had done. The cart slid back into the inventory room, and cursed under my breath.

"Darlin', darlin'! It's okay! I was actually just comin' to check up on ya. How's you n' Ola goin'? I suspect you learned a lot?" she asked me, smiling.

"Oh, okay. It's good. I was actually just going to restock the Special Crunch cereal in aisle twelve." I told her, reopening the sliding door and rolling the cart through.

"That's good to hear." she winked at me and walked away.

"Oh, I thought you'd be there already." I heard Ola say from behind me, almost running right into the cart. "Let's go." she said, walking in front of me and waving for me to follow.

On our way to aisle twelve, I saw many customers and also many other people who worked here. Looking at all of them, I could see I was probably the youngest here. I didn't really know how I felt about that. It was good to know I had a whole bunch of people here who were more experienced than me to help me out and look out for me, but then again I wouldn't have minded to have a friend or someone my age working here with me.

Well, I sort of did. Ola was young and Zach, though he was really odd, could be a companion for the summer that I would work here. Who knows, I might even come back if this summer goes well.

We cleaned up and afterwards, Ola told me to follow her. She had one last thing to show me.