It was a gig that I landed what felt like many years ago. I was fresh out of high school and in desperate need of a job. However, searching for jobs in a rural small town has made me learn very quickly that it's not what you know but who you know. It was weeks and weeks of rejections or no call backs at all. I was afraid that I was going to apply for every store in the city and no one would hire me.
"It's because of the way you present yourself," Mum would tell me. "Matted hair and slouchy walk – you've already failed before you even step through the door!"
She was right, but my pride wouldn't allow me to tell her that, just like how it wouldn't let me change my approach to finding a job if it means that I have to be all wishy washy and be someone similar to who I'd like to gracefully punch in the face.
Thankfully I got a call back. I answered the phone one day to a woman with a forceful tone. She always spoke with few words and always like she was interrogating me. "Hello, did you apply?"
"Yes, I did."
"Still looking for a job?"
"Yes."
"Come by tomorrow at 10pm. Black shirt and black pants, shoes I don't care what colour they are. Come barefoot, I don't give a shit."
It wasn't until I hung up that I realised that I had no idea who she was or where the venue was.
I gave her a call back and after a few short-worded responses I got all the information I needed. Her name was Susan, she's the manager at a 24-hour supermarket and she was looking for someone to cover the night shift, 10pm to 6am 4 days a week.
Even after I got the information I needed, it didn't occur to me how pedantic she was about the clothing required, but she didn't care about the shoes. An antic that in the end never meant anything, I would later find out.
*
I was excited to tell Mum that I got a job, but her response wasn't what I expected.
"A supermarket? During the night time?" she sneered, two fingers supporting a freshly lit cigarette, the smoke billowing around her, watching her menacingly. A toxic relationship.
Mum has always declared her love towards her smokes was stronger than the love she had for my late father.
Sometimes I feel it is stronger than the love she had for me.
"It's the first positive call back I've gotten since I started job hunting," I explained, almost in a pleading tone. Please just be excited for me.
"You're not even eighteen years old! What in the fresh hell would a store benefit from a minor to guard the store during the night time?" This was followed by a sputter of coughs. Dry and forced, it made my throat itch just listening to it.
"I'm taking it." My god I sounded weak.
There was a moment of silence while Mum recovered from the coughing. She took another inhalation from the cigarette and blew out another cloud, refilling her immediate surroundings with the groping wisps that she's known and loved for so long.
"Do whatever you want, sweetie. But once you realise just how shitty of a gig this is I will be parading you with I told you so's for a month."
What I wouldn't give to hear her voice one last time.
YOU ARE READING
Night Shift
Fiksi Umum"It's the same routine every night. I've done it so many times I can basically lock everything down to the very millisecond. Hell, maybe even the very nanosecond. "
