There are things about the human race that you only learn when you work at Walmart. For example, the fact that some people think it’s okay to grab a sandwich from the deli, eat half of it, and then try to hide the evidence by wrapping a t-shirt around it and stuffing it behind the magazine rack.
“All right. You win.” Ciara gags at my discovery, pushing it away. “That’s got to be the weirdest LBAC.”
I held the previous record for Left Behind at Checkout, too: a man with a cart full of groceries and a very specific budget, who stashed, among other things, three raw steaks, a bag of frozen shrimp, and an entire birthday cake in my aisle. It took me half an hour just to find and return everything.
“I’m back!” Whitney slides around the corner, her box braids swinging wildly. “You didn’t talk when I was gone, did you?”
“I would never.” I put my right hand over my heart like I’m pledging allegiance.
“But she did make a new LBAC record,” Summer reports. “Half-eaten deli sandwich, wrapped in a shirt, behind the magazine rack.”
It’s ten at night on a Wednesday and the store is dead quiet. There are no managers around to yell at us, because the night managers are ghosts who appear to clock in and clock out, and who knows what happens in between. Whitney’s supposed to be manning register 6, while Ciara and Summer and I have been recruited by the customer service desk to restock the checkout shelves and put away the day’s LBACs. Instead, I’m catching them up on the latest episode of ‘Lissa Tries To Find Somewhere To Live’.
“Okay the sandwich is gross,” Whitney grants, “but back to the roommate. They actually arrested her?”
“They raided the apartment. It was full on Law and Order in there, I thought I was going to die. Turns out, half her stuff was stolen! All the fancy furniture, the TV. And that’s not even the worst part. She’s been smuggling stolen cars into Canada.”
All three girls gasp. I’m glad they think my roommate curse is entertaining, because for me, the endless string of catastrophes has just been exhausting. Especially this last one.
“So let’s tally up.” Summer hops onto the bagging carousel and counts on her fingers. “First we had the alien cult. Then there was the girl who fed the rats.”
“Not just fed,” I clarify. “She had them living in her room.”
I don’t think I’ll ever recover from waking up with one of the beady-eyed things on my chest.
“And after rat girl, there was the one with night terrors,” Ciara adds, dropping a pair of furry orange slippers into the miscellaneous bin.
Whitney examines her nails. “I still think if anyone swings a baseball bat at you, you have the right to sue, medical condition or not.”
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