Note for clarification: As mentioned in the first story my boss's family has a few businesses in town. Besides the convenience store, they run a handyman service geared to fixing oopsies made by college kids who want to keep their security deposit, and 24-hour emergency services for other property management services. Our campus like many is split most of the apartments are downtown by the main campus where our dispatch and main warehouse is located. My store is on the east side of town where engineering, medical students, and research labs etc are located. Still a lot of student housing and apartments so rear of my building is a small warehouse, garage, and lounge for our handymen. We all know each other, sometimes they come into the store to buy drinks and snacks or just hang out with the people working in the store.
They also own their own property management company with a few apartment buildings, and a "leasing" company that owns the vans and equipment that the handyman use. Money gets legitimately moved around between companies, like the handyman service pays the store rent for use of the backside of the building, and splits utilities. The property management pays the handyman service for work done on their properties. So, a fair bit of my job at the beginning of each month is billing, hell even some of my payroll gets billed to the other companies. Anyways back to the story
Veronica was a tough old bird and one of my favorite handymen. Short grey hair, stocky but not fat, never married but shared a one bedroom with her roommate Chelsea for the past 20 years. I wonder who sleeps on the couch, do they take turns. Ha! Kidding Veronica was a tough old butch lesbian who could sling drywall faster and better than anyone else on the team. Voice raspy from smoking, she was my smoking buddy we always had a good time roasting each other. She was also very insightful, I started calling her Owl after working together for a couple of weeks. One day she asked me why I started calling her that. I told her it stood for Old Wise Lesbian. She looked at me incredulously and said,
"What makes you think I'm a lesbian?" I gave her the list, the job the short hair, her shoes, the carabiner she wore, her Subaru Forrester. Then I added
"And I saw you making out with your roommate Chelsea when she dropped you off the other day."
We both started laughing. Veronica was loudly silently out. Her whole aura said, "Yes I love vagina, probably more than you do!" If you didn't know she was gay you were either blind, or dumb. Veronica was also kind and giving to those she liked. She and her roommate practically adopted me after finding out I was alone most holidays. I was over for dinner, a few nights a month, they always made sure I had a thoughtful birthday and Christmas present. They were like my two older sisters now, older sisters that kissed eeew. We were on lunch together, I cooked for us, a spicy pork loin with saffron rice. She dug in, when she came up for air, she told me it's a shame I don't have a vag, she would marry me just for my cooking. I asked her
"Why does that matter you can't keep my loin out of your mouth as we speak" She damn near choked with that retort. After she was done coughing, I told her she was good at choking on my meat too. I knew a full-on punch was coming and blocked it.
"We've been spending too much time together, she laughed, you coming over for dinner tonight?"
"Nah, training that new kid tonight I will be here till close."
"That lady works you to the bone, does she ever even lend you hand?" I almost choked this time, but put on a poker face.
"Eh its not so bad, I'm getting overtime and I might have to actually do half an hour of actual work tonight. The hardest part is going to be not punching this kid's face. He's a kiss up, I already hate him." We both laughed she met him the other day when we filled out his new hire packet.
The hours dragged on training this guy. After his third idea about how we could do something better or products we should carry.
I sarcastically told him. "Write all your ideas out, put together a real business plan and in 30 days I will read it, I'll give you notes, then we can talk about theory vs praxis." He looked at me like I was an alien.
"What's praxis? he asked.
"It's a Latin word derived from ancient Greek which means to put into action. In this context its how well your theories will work in real life situations and not on paper."
This time he looked at me like I was beneath him. He started telling me about his classes, and the things he knows. I cut him off.
"Look dude I have done everything customer service under the sun from, from banking, to loan origination, from fast food to tuxedos, from managing grocery stores to convenience stores. My skill sets outweigh yours by several factors. You are almost 21 and this is your first ever job, you know nothing about real life. I will show how standard operating procedures and roll outs work as the proverbial "shit rolls downhill. And if your plan has actual merit and feasibility not just fiscally but in actual practice, I will help you put in front of Julie. Do it right and present it at your intern interviews you will blow the suits away."
"Really? You'd do that?" the kid asked me
"Yeah especially if you stop bothering every 30 minutes with some idea about something without even knowing the cost."
The rest of the night was a breeze, when he wasn't taking care of customers, he was writing his great ideas. He took directions well he was a little too stiff with the customers, but he did okay for the first night. I showed him how to close the store. As we were locking up, I noticed one of the handyman van coming on to the lot. Weird, most of the guys on this side of town are gone by seven. Most hang out downtown. Told the new kid to clock out have a good night and I would see him for his next shift. Locking the door behind him I went out back to see who the straggler was.
Julie had the van in the garage, and she was a hot mess. Hauling out what looked to be an entire gardening section. She had her hair up in a loose bun, her t-shirt clinging to her body from sweat. Tight denim shorts, these ones were cuffed making her already awesome thighs look even better. It was the crocs that didn't fit the rest I looked at feet and told her to put those bad boys in sport mood, so she does slip coming out of the van. I stared at her feet with disdain, she noticed.
"Hey there comfortable and I have been doing landscaping for 10 hours today."
"Oh yeah? Well, I have been here 12 hours and had to work with the new guy for the past 5 hours, my day was way worse!" I gave an indignant pout, knowing I won that argument. Also, I didn't feel bad for Julie, she loves building gardens almost as much as she loves making money. It's her Zen hobby, the only reason she's not still on site is because its dark out.
I wear nearly the same thing every day, a pair of black khakis or black basketball shorts, a tank top t-shirt and a polo. Sometimes I help they handymen out, the black helps hide dirt, and I take my polo off, so it doesn't get dirty. I took off my polo and started taking empty soil bags out of the van and out to the dumpster, along with other trash from the site. When I got back inside Julie was swearing up a storm. She rarely swears, apparently two of the full soils came open and spilled out in the back of the van. She looked at me sheepishly and asked me if I could help her clean out the truck. We had to take everything out and put most of back in for tomorrow. It was early September, but the nights were still warm and the garage had one ceiling fan 15 feet up for ventilation. We both quickly worked a sweat.
She was already sweaty from working outside all day, and now the sweat was rolling off her. The clingy t-shirt now almost see through, she was wearing a black spots bra underneath, her legs and arms had a thin veneer of sweat on them.
"Jesus Julie even disgusting you are one of the sexiest women I have ever seen." She smiled and for the first time ever she blushed, her face and ears turning a shade of pink.