The Good Life

Downtown

Mitch was headed downtown in the early afternoon. It was about half an hour bus journey to Little Italy and a short walk to Blick Art Materials where he desperately needed to buy some paint to cover up his horrendous walls. It was a nice area, if not slightly overwhelmed by too many pizza places and, unlike shopping in New York, he could actually move freely along the sidewalk without being jostled from every angle, despite the fairly large number of tourists congregated.

The rest of his week had gone slightly better than bad. He still felt like he was causing more work for the rest of the staff than helping them but no one ever got unreasonably annoyed with him. Ever since the first disastrous day, Mitch had actually managed to not offend anyone else during the week and had even begun to engage in friendly chat with a few of his colleagues, especially with Kevin, seeing as his work station was closest to his.

At times the man was too friendly for Mitch's liking - seeing as all the overly friendly people he had met in the past had an alternative motive - but he was able to have Mitch laughing even after the latter had been shucking corn for what felt like a good hour.

As for the rest of the staff, they were pretty much the same. Loud-mouthed, boisterous and hyperactive but incredibly competent and hard working all the same. He had actually seen another side to Avi besides hopeless romantic when someone had their meal sent back, causing the man to kick off at one of the line chef's for not degreasing a soup properly. Mitch had no idea what that meant but was glad it wasn't on his list of tasks.

And as for Scott, he was still as confusing as ever. One moment he would be rushing around very seriously making sure the party of twelve all got their food at the same time, the next moment he was performing a spoon juggling act with one of the front of house staff. Most days he would pay Mitch little to no attention, just shouting out to the others occasionally about planning nights out, but then on Thursday he had taken the time to teach Mitch how to caramelise sugar so he could make things like fancy sugar cages and baskets for the deserts. They had actually been quite fun to do and the other man had complicated his technique afterwards.

Today, the weather was almost perfect in Mitch's opinion, not too hot, but sunny with a nice breeze. It had put him in a good mood. Walking through the store doors, he was immediately approached by a boy, maybe about sixteen years old, who was in serious need of a hair wash and acne cream, and listened patiently while the kid spewed out the customer service jargon he was trained to. "Hi there Sir, how are you today?"

He sounded kind of like Chris from Family Guy. Mitch had been watching a lot of that show recently, it was one of the few decent programmes available on his TV when he got round to sitting down and putting his feet up.

"Good," Mitch gave the kid a tight smile, hoping that he would get the message that he preferred to be left alone when he was shopping.

No luck there unfortunately. "Uh...can I be of any assistance?" The kid was clearly repeating that for the fiftieth time today and due to his brighter mood Mitch decided that he would actually give him a challenge to see what he was really made of.

"Hmm maybe," he speculated. "Have you got any colors the opposite to golden brown?"

It quickly became apparent that this kid's brain was as absent as the expression on his face. "Uhh...we have some African Violet..." The boy mumbled and pointed dumbly to the paint aisle that Mitch could clearly see from where he was.

"Do I look like an eighty year old woman?" he sassed back in jest. It went right over this boy's head though, who just gawked at him, the response to that obviously not in the training manual. "Never mind," Mitch waved him off. "I'll find something myself."

It didn't take him long. He avoided all the bright colors and headed straight for the bland ones, quickly settling on a cream color that was apparently called Champagne, the naming of which had no influence on his decision of course. The hardest task was trying to lift the three incredibly heavy tins into his shopping cart, which involved a lot of cursing on his part and a lot of disobedience on the paints side.