Working Retail

I felt a tap on my shoulder and heard a grunt. I stood up from straightening the endcap of blank DVDs, and put on my best smile. If I had learned nothing else from nearly four years of working at MediaTown, it was that I never sold a single laptop, flat-screen TV, or Elton John boxed-set if I didn't greet everyone who wanted my attention with a smile.

Sometimes it was all I could do to make the smile touch my eyes, but it still counted as a smile. That day, I was in a pretty good mood. I was getting paid at the end of my shift, and for the first time in my life, I was going to be able to pay something off. Two somethings, actually. I had made some stupid decisions since I had graduated college, the worst of which involved living off a high-interest credit card and buying a new car a month after graduating. In my defense, I had been promised a cushy programming job at a tech firm in the fall, and I thought as long as I could live through the summer, I'd be okay. But that was the summer of the outbreak, and while I-and my accrued debt-lived through the summer, the firm didn't. On top of regular living expenses-rent, utilities, gas, and so on-those decisions made money a little tight in my neck of the woods.

But that week's paycheck was going to make the final payment on the credit card, which was going to finally get me off my signature "Dollar Menu and Bologna Diet." I would still have enough money to throw at getting the car paid off, too.

So it wasn't even a fake smile I put on when I had to stop stacking DVD-Rs.

"Hi there!" I said as I pushed myself from the floor. "What can I do for-Holy Mother of God!"

Given my normal clientele, I expected to find one of three types of people waiting for me:

The first type, and probably the easiest to deal with, was the three-hundred-fifty-pound man with a cowboy hat he bought in the 80s, a mustache that would have made Tom Selleck jealous, and a question about "one of them TeeVoe thangs." I could point these guys in the right direction after that, but sometimes I'd answer a few vague questions and make a sale.

The second type was the elderly lady who would do nothing but talk about her grandson and how he wanted some game that she couldn't remember the name of. She would then start describing it in the most general way possible; she would talk about how he wanted to fly and shoot a gun, change his costume, and collect those little things if he waves the controller really hard. She thought the name was Nintendo or something like that. More often than not, my best attempts at finding what she wanted would leave her frustrated, and she would leave after saying something like, "Oh, nevermind. I'll just come back when he's with me and he can find the stupid thing himself."

But the third type, my most favoritest type of customer in the whole, wide world, the kind I loved best of all and made my whole job worth it (can't you just see my eyes rolling at this point?) were the teenagers who would come in, grab something random off the shelf, and approach me as a pack. One of them would get my attention, hand me whatever it was and ask, "Uhh, how much is this?" while his two or three goons giggled behind him. Because it was my job, I would have to go and run a price check. When I told him whatever price came up, the teenager would laugh and barely get out, "Oh, sorry, I thought it was $4.20," before he and the goon-squad would shamble into another department, laughing at their oh-so-hilarious and oh-so-original joke.

On any given day, I dealt with at least two out of those three before the end of a shift. Sometimes, I would be really lucky and run the trifecta.

However, this time, when I turned around, I was legitimately surprised.

A man stood in front of me. He was about six feet tall, had matted brown hair, teeth that screamed for braces, and one eye hanging halfway out of its socket. Most of his skin was either rotten or missing, and his shoes were on the wrong feet.