Tires, Fries, and Overrated Guys

Chapter 1

As I pulled the worn out tire off of the rim I was working on, my coworker Richard yelled out the lyrics to the "number one song of the day", horribly off tune and grinning while he did it. Everyone knows how bad a singer he is, including himself.

"Honestly, I don't know why you're not famous Richard." I yelled over the sounds of impact guns and music from the radio, which always seemed to be blaring through the shop, and grinned back at him. After working at the local tire shop in town, Budget Performance, for just over a year and a half now, this was my comment every single time Richard started singing.

My assistant manager, Mark, popped in and belted out the current lyric right after Richard, and everyone groaned while I laughed and said, "You two should start a band. Your sound could be 'The Sounds of Dying Animals'. It would be revolutionary."

They ruffled my hair and pushed me around, laughing while they did so. "Don't be jealous. One day that mouth is gonna get you in trouble, Nova." Richard says to me while pulling off his own tire and mounting a new one, seating the bead with a single push.

"By that day I will hopefully be a famous boxer." I reply with fake confidence while dancing on my toes and throwing a couple fake punches at an imaginary opponent. He just laughs and we work while listening to the music.

As we finished up the Ford F-150 we were working on, I took the paperwork to the front counter and saw that there were a lot of customers in the showroom with no front counter staff to be seen.

I stepped up to the counter and helped a few of the customers. They just had generic questions, like "What kind of tires will fit on my vehicle?" and "What kind of winter tires should I get?" or "What kind of rims do you carry?" And the answers to those are "Stock size, Nokian all the way, and we don't carry a lot in store, but we can order in anything you want." In that order.

The last customer had pissed me off before he even got in the door. First of all, he parked right in front of the doors. There is parking ten feet from where he parked with concrete blocks titled, 'parking'. Second of all, he was driving a fucking white Hummer. And lastly, I was still the only counter worker in the front. Which meant - damn it all - that I would have to help him. I couldn't even fake a smile as he walked in with an air of superiority and a gross smelling expensive cologne, with a name probably along the lines of, 'Enrique Iglesias in a Sharknado'.

I took a deep breath, trying to keep my voice calm and even as I said, hopefully politely, "I can help you down here."

"I am actually looking for someone to take a quick look at my tire and hopefully get a quick repair." He said, acting as if I don't even work here. That just made me breath heavily out of my nose in anger.

"Why don't we get a workorder started, and I will pull your vehicle in." I said trying so, so hard to be polite to this arrogant idiot.

"Um... Actually, I would like one of the guys in the back to do it." He said, trying to look around and find someone else, probably male, to help him. But of course, only Kathy, the boss's daughter, came back to the front.

"They're actually all working on something in the back." I spoke through clenched teeth now, definitely not appreciating the tone he was using with me. As if I haven't worked here for a year and a half.

He breathed through his nose deeply and sighed out a "Fine." and handed his keys over like I was the one with the problem.

I took his keys and went to the back to get a seat cover, because his vehicle looked like it was kept pristine. As I walked towards the large white Hummer, I see now that it is jacked up about a foot and a half, with offset wheels and tires that are so big that they really shouldn't be on this vehicle. Whatever. If his parents want to spend this much money on their spoilt child, then it's really not my problem. I pull the dumb Hummer in and jack it up; as I pull the rim and tire off the vehicle, I can see the outside signs of the tire being runflat, just another problem with driving a douchemobile. I rolled it towards the breakdown bay as Kathy brought the paperwork and put it on the clipboard above the bay that the Hummer was in.