"First Day. I've got this." I assure myself, as I look over my clothes that I had laid out the night before. A plain black t-shirt, dark jeans, and converse. "Casual. Normal. Nothing wrong with it." I mutter, exiting my room and walking into the living room where my dad, and mom sit with my baby brother Dean. He's playing in the floor with our dog. "Ready?" Robert asks, grinning from ear to ear. He and I never really got along, and as my mom pointed out, this may bring us closer, working together. I nod, and return the smile as I sit down in the tattered black recliner in the corner of the room. Dean gets up and stumbles over to me, talking gibberish as he does. I pick him up, and he sits in my lap for a few minutes before getting bored and getting back down to terrorize the dog once more. "Now, Todd might not be there when you go to clock in. There's a titans home game today, and he always goes."
I nod, slightly disappointed, but kind of relieved. I didn't know what was in store for me, all I knew was that I had basically grown up in this store, and with Amy and Aaron. I should be fine. They'd help me out if I needed anything. It was nine in the morning, I didn't have to clock in until noon. But we'd leave the house at about 11:30, so we could get there early and I could meet a few of my co-workers. 'Interactions. Great.' I thought to myself, hating meeting new people. I sit in the living room for a while, before getting up to go find something to eat for breakfast. Finding nothing that interested my appetite, I sigh and head back into my room, grabbing my phone from my bedside table, and turning it on. I open up skype and scroll back through the group chat's messages, before sending. 'First day of work, wish me luck. wooo. ;-;" Receiving no response after a few minutes, I toss my phone onto the bed next to me and lay back, staring at the ceiling as I begin and try to conquer the overwhelming fear of what the day could possibly bring. After about twenty minutes of being lost in deep thought, I sit up and begin getting dressed. "Almost time." My mom says as she lightly knocks on my open door. I nod, sighing quietly as I get up, and exit the room. All of us pile into my mom's SUV, Me, my two 7 year old brothers, the baby, and our parents. The drive seemed like an hour long, just because of the lingering possibility of me fucking everything up my first day. Finally, after what seems like forever, we pull into the parking lot, my heart racing along with the thoughts in my head. We all exit the vehicle, and as we do I see who I would soon find out to be Mark, my dad comments something, that I only slightly hear. "Make sure he does alright today." To which Mark nods. We enter the store, and two of the three cashiers of the day are there. Vanessa and Kirsten. They smile and wave, to what I think is to me, but is just the baby and my dad. I awkwardly follow my dad to the managers office to the left of the entrance, where Todd is on the phone. He turns around, to see us through the glass in the door, and a grin as large as the store itself greets us. "Dylan! Ready for your first day?" He asks, shaking my hand, and then my dads. I awkwardly shrug, nodding as I do. He gives me the run down of clocking in, and what times to do so. "So today, you'll be going on break at four, with Brandon." I nod, not exactly knowing who the hell Brandon was.
After My parents leave, Todd soon follows, leaving and not returning for the rest of the day. Penny, the secondary manager clocks in as soon as he leaves, and greets me with a large smile. "So, today you'll just be learning how to do shit." She said plainly, which caused me to laugh a small bit. From behind me, Justin, and Brandon walk up. "So this is Dylan huh?" Justin asks, smiling as he pats me on the back. "Don't worry Penny, we got this." And with that, we all walked to the back of the store. "You're lucky," Justin began. "Todd won't be back all day. So this is going to be easy as all hell." Brandon nods, agreeing. Mark enters the backroom, and grins at the sight of us all. "Dylan, this is the squad." I nod slightly, and then they all begin talking to me, about what a normal day at the store was like. It wasn't too much, the basics were just make sure the Milk and eggs were always stocked up, and help any customers that need it. "Justin, how about you let Dylan go out and help you do the roadsign today?" Mark suggest, to which I give a strange look. "The what?" I ask, to which Justin speaks up. "Man, it's basically just wasting a hour. All we do is take down the letters from the roadsign, and put the new Ad up. Easiest thing to do here." I nod, not really sure what else to say. "But first, we have to make the ad, with the letters in the crates over there." He says, pointing towards the corner of the room, where multiple crates sat, with large plastic letters and numbers.
After about an hour of creating the ads, and bundling them all up in rubber bands, Penny comes down from the small front office, and says. "Drink time." Confused by what she meant, I looked to Justin, who was already walking over to the drink coolers in front of the registers. I follow, and he laughs, seeing my confusion. "Penny does this, at random times she'll buy us all drinks or a bag of chips or something." I nod, grabbing a bottle of water from the far cooler. When I get up to the register I see everyone else with their drinks, and then there's brandon. Who has a gallon of deer park water, already open and a quarter of it gone. "Damn man." I say quietly, which causes the rest of my co workers to laugh. "Penny said a drink, not a damn lake." Mark laughs, but Penny shrugs it off and pays for everything.
Three O'clock. One more hour until break. It hasn't been too bad, I seem to have made a few friends already. Good start. At the moment, me and Justin sit in the breakroom, on our phones. The store was dead, maybe three or four customers in the last half hour. "Is it always like this? Just laid back and boring?" I ask, putting my phone down. "Nah, not really. Only when Todd isn't here. When he's here we have to stay busy, or else he'll make us busy." Justin says, not looking up from his phone. After that we fall back into silence until four rolls around.
I walk up front, and clock out, noticing Brandon waiting by the exit. "Come on, I want to show you something." I follow him, confused. We walk around to the back of the store, where it's silent, and calming. "Reminds you of The Walking Dead, doesn't it?" He asks, and honestly, it does. It's barren, with old boxes and shopping carts against the wall. "I like to just come back here and get lost in thought sometime. I'm a big zombie guy. So that's normally my topic." I nod, a smile forming across my face, as I too, loved to put myself in Apocalyptic type scenarios. We sit on the truck loading dock, just talking. About what we would do, if when we walked back up front to clock back in, and on the news was the first announcement of a zombie like infection. And it was truly fun, not what I expected to be doing that morning.
