Office Affairs

Fall To Pieces – Avril Lavigne

(I’m going to hell for using this song.)

It was a good day at work today, for sure. I was feeling paranoid because my boss has told me that money has been missing for the last few weeks. My managers also seem to be cracking down on me. I got in trouble for excessive chatting yesterday. I never get in trouble for that anymore. The store is going downhill fast and sadly, those of us who haven’t jumped ship yet are the ones who have to deal with it. After almost two years, they still don’t trust me a lick. That ain’t right.

My service guy for the day (that is, the guy who pushes around shopping carts and does other odd jobs) was being a total prick. He thinks because we’re friends…excuse me, let me rephrase that. He thinks that we’re friends and because of that he slacks off more than usual. First of all, I’m in the office and that means I have to take responsibility for his actions, or lack thereof. Secondly, since I also have to do service shifts it is an insult to me that he does it so poorly. Honestly, if he acts like this one more time it’s going to be on. So on.

Oh, and the office balance was short $17.40. That’s not going to look good.

As usual, she made it better. She is the lone beacon of hope at work. She comes in today and she’s like, “Can I ask you something about last Friday?”

I didn’t know what she was talking about.

“Was it your birthday?”

I immediately go into denial. I don’t like to make a big deal about my birthday. It’s like, “Oh yay, I survived another year! Hooray for me!” And of all birthdays, why celebrate mine? As if my existence is actually a positive thing. It’s like celebrating the discovery of a disease.

It was tough deflecting all her queries, since she asked me about eight thousand times, but I tried to keep it creative. My best bit was this one:

Me: Hey, you know whose birthday it was last Friday?
Her: Yours?
Me: P. Diddy’s.

That never gets old. After some P. Diddy humour (isn’t that the best kind?), I followed up with this:

Me: Ha ha, okay. Seriously, you know who else celebrated their birthday last Friday?
Her: You?
Me: Matthew McConaughey.
Her: Ooh, I just saw a movie with him!
Me: Which one?
Her: Amistad.
Me: Good movie.

And so on and so forth. You get the idea. Eventually I ask her why she wants to know. She says that recalled me saying that my birthday was November 4th and that she wanted to call me but she wasn’t sure. Let’s think about this. She remembered my birthday, which is impressive since it’s not something I mention often. She was going to call me. That means a lot to me. It’s always weird when you care about someone a lot and you think they don’t care about you at all, but it turns out that they care for you at least a little. Whoa, I think that was an Avril lyric right there. Sorry about that.

At the end of the night, I let her hang out with me in the office. I’ll tell you right now, if they have security cameras watching me in there I am going to be in deep shit. My manager for the night was checking in on us and she had to pretend that she was using the phone to call her dad. I don’t know how long we can keep up this charade.

I like her so much it is killing me.

What do you want to be when you grow up, son?
Nothing.