Mean Girls Missing

15

April 26

6:58 am

Monica

I didn't have classes today. It was the one day I had no obligations for schoolwork, except maybe that I still had to come to campus to work my morning shift at the library. I was supposed to be there to open five minutes before seven, but I had drama with my alarm clock and ended up getting out of bed later than usual.

Shocker. Monica's never late to anything...

Right, I was late to everything. I was running through the employee entrance of the library with my thermos spilling scalding coffee across my hand, my headband was falling off my head, and my employee key badge was too tight around my neck and was slowly but surely cutting off my oxygen intake.

I hit all the lights and the building roared alive with fluorescent bulbs. I threw my bag, badge, and headband underneath the front desk while simultaneously setting down my thermos. I was finally able to feel the burning pain across my hand, but I had to shove it away after wiping it down with a paper towel because I had less than two minutes to clock in, run across the library and unlock three sets of entrances, and collect the overnight returns to check in.

Time to hustle.

I grabbed my key and bolted from door to door, testing each door to make sure it opened before moving to the next. I took the return bin from each entrance and stacked them together, running with three very heavy book return bins back to the front desk. I had eight seconds left to clock in.

My fingers scurried across they keyboard and BOOM.

Barely, just barely, I had managed to clock in on time. I was on the very last second when it pinged through.

Yes.

For the next two hours, it was dead. Maybe three kids came in to check out a book for class or plug in their laptop. I had one professor who came to print copies of something so my morning socialization was slim to none. It gave me plenty of time to put books back on the shelves and get a head start on the damaged bin. I was able to tape up ripped pages and print new labels for ones that had trouble scanning.

It was an extremely productive morning. Not something I engaged in a lot – getting stuff done hours upon being awakened – but it was a nice change in my routine. It wasn't until nine when things started picking up and my coworker came in to lighten the load.

Her name was Miranda, but she made everyone call her Randi. She was a rebellious freshman and this part-time job was the first one she'd ever had. Randi had dyed jet black hair that fell straight to her hipbones. There was more metal in her face than I could decipher; nose and eyebrow and lip and above the lip and oh my god. Randi looked like she lost a fight with a stapler. Randi's long sleeves were pulled up, exposing her pale wrists, which were absolutely covered in homemade tattoos.

She always brought her army-green canvas shoulder bag with her wherever she went. Whatever she put in there, it was bursting at the seams and looked heavy. She kicked it under the desk and typed into the computer to clock in.

I had just finished checking out the last customer. I turned back to my current task: wiping down and sanitizing the self-checkouts. Our boss had left us a to do list that was optional, so if we didn't have time to get it done it would be okay, but it kept us busy if business was slow. One of the things we would ideally check off was cleaning the bathrooms.

Cleaning a bathroom in the heart of a university campus was not ideal. College kids were disgusting. One trip with the janitor's cart had me swearing I would never use a public restroom again. Randi was still a newbie so I decided to push the job off on her. It would give her exposure to the reality of the workforce: it's gross and you have to deal with it.