"Hello Paradise Fisheries." I kindly chimed into the receiver of the wireless phone. It is the store I work in, mainly office work and cashing. As I heard the young man complain I rested my hand in my head watching the seconds tick by on the clock not too far away from me on the wall above the craw-fish tanks.
"Tick-tock," I muttered. "Almost 5 o'clock."
"What!" he exclaimed. "Are you even listening to me?"
"Quite frankly, no sir I'm not," I said as I rolled my eyes. I'm pretty sure the sudden injection of gumption was due to the fact that we were talking over the phone and not face to face.
"I want to know your name!" he almost screamed. "I'm a customer at your establishment and I'm highly dissatisfied, and not to mention this customer service."
"Well sir," I replied. "You should have thought about that before you started screaming at me through the phone and maybe I would have been able to solve your problems."
"What your name!?" he barked.
"Allyn Roemer," I said as I began to spell it slowly and condescendingly as if he was retarded. It was just to further piss him off. "A.L.L.Y.N R.O.E.M.E.R," I continued.
He had tried to stop me halfway through with the repetition of 'I get it' but I still pressed onward.
"Its 3 minutes to 5 and I'm sorry to inform you sir but we are now closed," I said with a smile, ending with just a hint of sarcasm. "Bah-bye!"
"You are definitely going to get fired now," said Rinishka. She was a short little black ball of chocolate, at least that's what I liked to call her. Her skin was the color of deep chocolate and she was quite rotund. However that never took away from the delicate features of her face. She was one of those girls who could pull of a good bit amount of weight, not that she was entirely fat, just a big short girl. In other words, like I had said she was a little black ball of chocolate. "Good job," she smiled.
"Yeah, that man will come in as irate as ever on Monday, call me out, and hopefully I can get out of this place." I said.
"Why can't you just quite again?" she asked.
"I owe the bastard money and he won't let me earn it any other way," I lied. Antonio Vasquez and I graduated from the same high school together. I wasn't the Valedictorian or anything but I was rather smart. I would have gotten a scholarship to go to school if I hadn't been misinformed of the deadline. This, I might add, "mysteriously" had been as a result of Antonio's uncle who is one of the counselors at Saint Abbey's College. He had told me the deadline was two weeks after the actual deadline, so when I had come thinking I was a week early I was actually an entire week late. They had to decline my application because it wouldn't have been fair to the other students. I could almost cry back then. I wasn't dirt poor but my parents couldn't afford to send me to some fifty thousand dollar per semester school in America or England somewhere so I had to stay home at the University of The Bahamas. Moreover, the fees were about 5,000 dollars which included books and other essentials but I hadn't been able to scrape up even nearly a grand. My family would have sacrificed a few bills to send me to college, they knew I was worth it but I wouldn't let them. Instead, I borrowed the money from Antonio, the boy I knew from since we were kids. He was rich; most of my friends were actually. But despite popular belief, not all rich people look down on lower society. That is of course neglecting the fact that they may smile in your face and do it behind your back. I always held my own, and the fact that I never asked them for anything probably granted me their respect.
"Are you serious?" asked Antonio. He sounded worried for my well being, and how I had been fooled by his fictitious smile. He took a hand to my back and tried to console me.
