The Deli

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Night Shifts

  tw- mention of suicide

Spring break was here. Meaning no school. Let me re-word that. No more zoom classes aka I can spend the majority of my break going out instead of staring at a computer for 8 hours straight, learning about things I already knew. I was oddly excited for my spring break work schedule to come out because I really needed the money. So on April 5th, I waited for the notification to pop up on my phone that said "Your new schedule at Shake Shack was released". After a few hours into the afternoon, I finally received that notification. I was just laying down on the couch, in my living room, watching random videos on youtube when I received the notification. I was waiting for it all day so I can plan around and see my friends. My two main friends, Brooklyn Tate and Alexa Kiefer, were the friends I was just always with. I was just starting to get close with Brooklyn, I knew her from middle school classes but never really hung around her till spring break. We were all in our sophomore year of high school.

As I checked my phone to look at my schedule I saw I was schedule 9/10 days of my break, all the night shift. Of course I was annoyed at first and I wanted to have more days off but, I did make $12 an hour meaning my 38 hour week at the shack would make my bank account happy. I texted only Alexa about my schedule since Alexa was my best friend and it was just one of those trios where if Brooklyn and I were left alone, we would probably just scroll through instagram in silent. She sent back a frowning face emoji but replied with "if it makes you feel better I am at Houston majority of Spring Break so maybe your work schedule can be just a distraction when I am away". Alexa was the only friend I had who has and license and a car, so we would always ride around together and go to Charlotte, the city we lived in, we lived in the suburbs but Charlotte was only a 30 minute drive. Brooklyn just got out of quarantine so she started to join us on our rides. Obviously Alexa and Brooklyn were closer, so Alexa tied all three of us together. I replied back saying "that's true. have fun in Houston". Alexa was going to go see her Dad, there's a lot of things that happened with them, not really my business to share.

As the rest of the day played on, I sat in my bed at night waiting for myself to fall asleep so I can go to my 4-11pm job like always. As i slowly started to drift off I thought about my love life. It was shit. All i have to say is that it was just a complete mess. I was in love with a girl that I couldn't ever have, the last 2 years it was like this. A couple months before she had told me she could never date me but she felt the same with me. I told her that it was fine and I could deal with it but, deep down in the back of my mind I knew it bothered me more than anything. All I could think about before I fell asleep every night since then, was just the fact I could never be with her. I started to have a lot of doubts since that night and every time I felt less and less about her. The "her" is named Mackenzie.

The next day I had woken up around 12pm, like always, I sleep in so much from my exhaustion of getting up for school, on the days I didn't have school. I sat in my bed feeling hopeless and not to sound dramatic, but also depressed. Maybe it was because i'm a teenager turning into an Adult and I experienced my first heartbreak or because I felt like I lost myself as a person. I sat in my bed, ate nothing, did nothing, all I did was think until it hit 3:30pm. Mackenzies presence filled up most of my mind, that's the only way I could make time fly by without doing anything but sitting in bed. I got up to put on my all black uniform, tie my hair into a bun, put on my hat, and checked myself into the mirror. My hair was tied horribly, my long black hair was always hard to style, with how I looked, I never looked good with styled hair. I'm around 5'8, brown eyes that appeared black, black hair, a more sweatpants and graphic tee kinda girl, and I always had on my black and white air maxes or black birkenstock's. I told my mom I was ready to go, yes I am 17, not licensed but I did have a job, so at least I wasn't lazy. My mom had taken me to work on April 6th, it was busy the whole day. My order screen was just filled and filled with shakes. At the time I was still the "new" girl so I was never trained on anything else but making the milkshakes and closing it down. Everyone there gets a 30 minute break, but as more and more time passed by, as more people were sent on break, I was still the only person doing the shakes, frustrated, tired and distracted with my thoughts of Mackenzie. Every time I thought about her saying she could never be with me, I'd look back up at my screen and see a handful of shakes ready to be made and served. Time passes by fast when we are busy, in fact it was 8:00pm and I still haven't had a break yet, I was the youngest in the kitchen but how I was treated, I felt like they depended on me way too much. The restaurant started to slow down. Around 8:25pm I was told to go on break.