Fish Food #JustWriteIt #OnceUponNow

Fish Food

The store is called Happy Pets, but a more accurate name for the place would probably be Unhappy Employees.

I lean my weight against the mop, the cheap plastic handle bending slightly. The floor is shiny with mopwater because I've gone over this area three times already, but my boss wants me to make sure the floor is spotless.

I tried to tell him that it was, that this tiny store doesn't take a whole hour to mop. He thinks that because I don't spend as much time cleaning as Angelina, I don't clean as well. The truth of the matter is that she spends half the time she's supposed to be mopping slacking off and I'm just more efficient. My boss loves Angelina even though I have to do half of her work for her, and it irritates me to no end.

I plunge the mop back into the bucket with excessive force, sending some water splashing over the edge. It's my third bucketful, and it's not even dirty anymore. Nobody even comes into this stupid store to make the floors muddy, but either Angelina or I have to mop at least once a week.

Don't get me wrong, I love a clean environment more than I probably should, but I don't like cleaning something that's already clean. Like this floor.

I take a moment to straighten the cans of cat food on the shelf behind me, leaving the mop leaning in the bucket.

That has to be enough time spent mopping. I drag the bucket away to dump out the used water in the sink in the back room. Angelina is leaning back in the chair behind the checkout counter, snapping her gum periodically as she listens to music through her earbuds and scrolls through her social media feeds on her phone.

I open the door to the back room by leaning against it overturn the bucket over the sink, allowing the water to rush down the drain. Afterwards, I wash my hands thoroughly with soap and set the wet bucket in its place to dry. Grabbing the wet floor sign, I go back out into the store, and I'm just reaching the spot as my boss, the owner, pops out from one of the aisles to hound me for endangering his non-existent customers by taking so long to put the caution sign in place.

I put him in my blind side and tune him out as best as I can.

"What do you think?" I murmur when he's finally gone. Misty, the cat in the enclosure behind me, purrs sympathetically.

"Scratch him," she advises and I humor her by nodding contemplatively. That's her advice for pretty much every situation, but she likes to be consulted. In any case, it's sounding pretty good right now. I should grow out my fingernails, like precious, perfect Angelina, and then file them to deadly points.

I leave the cat section of the store and go to the fish. There are always plenty of fish for sale, even if there's only one cat with us at this time.

The fish have always mystified me. They look really pretty as they swim back and forth and do their fish-y foraging thing, but they just stare blankly at me if I try to talk to them. I guess they're not smart enough to understand, or maybe they can't talk underwater.

I make sure that the tanks look clean and not too crowded, double-checking the temperatures they're supposed to be set by comparing their actual water temperatures.

There's one fish there that's my favorite. He -- I think he's a he, at least -- arrived with our last shipment, and was repeatedly attacked by the other fish. I isolated him after he lost his left eye, and that's kind of why he's my favorite. Because I'm half blind, too.

Now, he's got a nice tank all to himself, shared with some dying aquatic plants I'm trying to revive, as well as a snail I put in there just in case fish get lonely.

It takes me a moment to find the canister of fish food -- why does Angelina keep moving it? -- but I give him a few flakes. It takes him a moment to notice them, but with only a single flick of his tail, he glides gracefully to the surface to chow down the food with markedly less elegance. Feeding him is probably the highlight of my work day, so I have to be extra careful not to overfeed him, but I think it would be good for him if he put on some weight.