104 degrees.
It was only eleven in the morning and it was already 104 degrees in the middle of June on a Tuesday.
Most people would be heading to Santa Cruz to escape the dry heat of our town, however, I was not that lucky.
Today, I have an eleven to six o'clock shift at Postal Plus, a shipping store. This means while I watch my old classmates' snapchats on my cracked iPhone 7 phone that I oh so cherish, I am walking in this welcoming weather two and a half blocks to a job I was blessed with at the beginning of summer.
And that wasn't sarcasm. This job was a blessing.
See, most of the local businesses around my hometown don't hire anyone under eighteen, especially if you were still in high school. Therefore, the moment I graduated from J. Robert High School, I began job hunting like crazy. Seventeen rejection calls, fourteen failed interviews, and one offer from a very creepy Jack-in-the-Box manager later (I turned it down after he went 17 minutes without blinking), I was gifted the a perfect job.
My old friend from high school, Tyler, who I used to tutor, posted on his Snapchat Story about a an opening at his work. I swiped up so fast I nearly flung my phone out of my hand. A few days later, and a meeting with the boss at Postal Plus gone perfectly, I could finally call myself a working gal - though obviously for social reasons I didn't say that in public.
That brings me to today.
Three weeks into June.
Two weeks into my job.
One minute away from heat stroke.
Yes, I know, two and a half blocks isn't a mile or a marathon. Although, for someone who chose the trumpet over sports and reading over running, two and a half blocks in this heat, in jeans and a polo shirt, felt like walking on the sun in a winter jacket.
I turned the corner of my neighborhood street, meeting the halfway mark. As I did, the smell of actual rotting death hit my nose so hard my eyes began to water. I looked around for source of this horrendous smell to be met with an even worse sight.
"Someone must have hit it last night," a friendly old man said, taking a break from walking his tiny two Pomeranian dogs. He was referring to the sad looking roadkill.
I couldn't quite make out what type of animal it was, and staring at it made me sad, so I looked to the cute Pomeranians to take my mind off of it.
"You're dogs are quite cute." I croaked out to the man, my throat dry out of nowhere. I sucked at making small talk.
When in doubt, talk about the cute dogs.
He chuckled a bit before agreeing. "Have a nice day, miss," he said, bidding me goodbye and ignoring my awkwardness, while pulling his pups along.
I sulked the rest of the way to work, silently scolding myself. I was awful at small talk. Not awful at being social, I am a very social person. I was into public speaking all throughout school: mock trials team, speech club, debate club...practically in any speaking based club. It was just the small, polite, little conversations that I didn't do so well in. I'm not scared of talking to people, I'm just not good at coming up with a topic out of nowhere, I guess.
This was something my manager, Tyler, knew about me before he got me my job.
"If you are going to work as a cashier," he told me on my first day, "you are going to have to be able to find something to talk about other than their package."
It took a bit before I was able to pinpoint a topic that I could talk about without causing offense to anyone.
Weather.
Weather became the foundation for every conversation I had at work. Yup, I talked about the weather to almost every person who came into the store. No matter what they were in for, we talk about the weather. It never ended awkward or negatively.
Except for these two old ladies who fought about whether or not global warming was real.
The cops came.
It wasn't pretty.
I have been getting better since I started work. For the customers who came in regularly, I was able to branch out more and remember little things like the movie an old man went to see or the date one of the P.O box holders had the week prior. This didn't help new customer, though. They still got to enjoy a three to five minute conversation about the weather.
I finally came up to our quaint mail shop, panting a bit with a bit of sweat of my forehead. Postal Plus was in between a sub shop and a smoke shop. On the days where we weren't as busy, my coworkers and I would place bets on who in the parking lot would be walking to the smoke shop and who was going to the sub shop.
More than often, they would walk to the smoke shop. This made me a bit disappointed that people chose lung cancer over a nice BLT, but to each their own.
The bell rang as I entered Postal Plus and I was engulfed by the cool AC and the sound of the Smooth Jazz Pandora Radio station Tyler loved to play. I was ten minutes early, as usual. I always left my house twenty minutes before work to ensure I made it on time. It was a bit silly, but I would rather wait for ten minutes then have my manager wait for ten minutes.
"Hey, Cheryl," Tyler mumbled, as he packed up a box for a lady in the store. By the looks of it, she must have been a bit hard to handle, seeing as Tyler wasn't the type to be easily frustrated.
I walked to the back - and by 'back', I mean behind a shelf of boxes that separates the front of the store and a little space with some files cabinets and the hooks with our Postal Plus aprons, enclosed by a curtain - and placed down my bag and keys and grabbed my apron. I waited until the lady had left, answering a few texts and putting my curly blonde hair into a bun, before walking back out into the main store.
When I had, Tyler was grumpily taping up a box.
This caused me to giggle, since it was quite the rare sight to see Tyler ever upset. Taking a seat on the packing table, I looked around to gage our inventory and see how many boxes I would have to make today.
Our store wasn't that big. It was the basic white walls with a blue trim. Posters of the services we provided such as shipping, notary, passport photos and copies hung proudly on the wall in mismatched colors.
Walking in, there is about 300 P.O. boxes to the left, followed by the main counter that held our registers. Further down is where we had the packing table and where we held packing peanuts, bubble wrap, and any other packing supplies we may need. In the back corner we had shelves for UPS and FedEx to pick up drop-offs - which was mostly Amazon returns - and packages that our customers were shipping.
On the right side of the store, there was a soda machine and the USPS letter box for people to drop off letters and packages. Next to that held shelves of greeting cards, office supplies, envelopes, and pre-made boxes for us to sell. Overall, we made a lot of use from the tiny space of the store. It was just that it was still just that, a tiny store.
Tyler passed by me in a huff, placing the box he had finished on the shelf for FedEx Express.
"Hard customer?" I guessed, trying not to poke fun at his bad mood, but still gage as to why he wasn't the happy-go-lucky Tyler I had known him as.
He shook his head, hopping onto one of the counters, nearly knocking off the laminating machine.
"No, she was fine. Clueless, but fine." He said, with a bit of edge to his voice.
We were a bit used to clueless customers. In my short time working here, I realized that not many people understood shipping and what the shipping rates meant. It was completely understandable, I didn't even understand it until I started working here. Nonetheless, it was still quite frustrating when people came in and didn't know what they wanted or how they wanted something to be done and completely wasted our time.
A bit of time passed before I asked, "So, not to assume you're grumpy or say you're acting grumpy, but may there happen to be a reason you are not in the best of moods today?"
Tyler let out a dry chuckle, probably due to my hesitant, beat-around-the-bush-so-I-don't-get-my-head-chopped-off way of asking how he was. "I am fine. I just can't come in tomorrow because my ex wants to meet and discuss how we are going to 'handle our situation'," he said, putting air quotes around the last part of the sentence.
Tyler and his ex-boyfriend had broken up about two and a half months before I started working here. And from what I had observed, he ex was the ex from hell.
He went into ranting for the next 20 minutes about how he had to meet with him over the weekend and how the conversation didn't end well. It was a dramatic retelling, interrupted every once and a while by a customer walking in to drop off mail or buy stamps.
"That sounds awful," I tell him, honestly. If I had an ex like that, I would go actually crazy. Luckily, I didn't do much dating in high school, and the one 'big ex' I did have wanted nothing to do with me. "Are you taking tomorrow off?"
Letting out a sigh, Tyler nodded. "Yup, I was going to ask if you wanted my shift? I know you need the hours, so I was planning on offering it to you before offering to Mitchell."
It was my turn to sigh. Yes, I did need the hours. I knew that if I wanted to be able to attend school in the fall, I would need extra in my paycheck to pay for my courses. Since sophomore year, I knew I would have to pay my way through college. This wasn't some big surprise, I just knew that was the way it would be. My mom was a single parent who had to support my two older brothers and I, and did't have the money to pay for our tuition, especially after the divorce.
"You know I will take them," I said with a bit of a forced smile, as he thanked me and went to the back to add it to the schedule.
I knew I would have to accept them. It didn't matter whether or not I had plans (which I didn't) or if I wanted the day off (which I definitely did), I needed the money. It was for my school, my future.
And that was my number one priority.
~
Hello lovelies!
So I haven't written on this website for actual years and I don't even know if the few followers that I have on this website still even remember little ole me. However, I am back!
I took down the old book I had on here. I might rewrite it, but probably not since that was from way back in middle school and I am currently a few days from my first day of college.
I have been working on this story all summer and I am super excited to share it with all of you. I don't really know how often updates will be but I am going to try to update as the chapters come along. I think I am going to post a little sneak peak or spoiler for the upcoming chapter at the end of every chapter, just so you have something to look forward to.
In this chapter, you met the main character, Cheryl Freitas and her manger at work. Tyler will be a bit of a subplot and we will get to hear about more of his dating life so look forward to that!
I really hope you enjoyed it! Please stay tuned for more of this story, I am really excited to share more of it!!!
-TheGirlInTheBandana