Look Busy

Lena picked at the skin around her fingernails. Her mother had always told her it was a bad habit - unsightly. But she wasn't doing enough. She'd look lazy and her boss would fire her.

She circled the dining room again. One man was halfway done with his French toast. A woman typed away on her laptop and sipped an almost-full cup of coffee.

The skin around her fingernails burned as she made eye contact with her manager and scurried outside. Nobody was outside. Jordan had already written her up for under-performing. She'd lost every job in the past year. She pressed her lips together. She had to keep calm and look busy. It was simple. She could just wipe the windows again.

She slipped back through the heavy glass door and dug through the cleaning cabinet. She paused as her fingers brushed the Windex. Hadn't she cleaned the windows like, ten minutes ago? What if that made it look like she hadn't done a good job? What if that also counted as under-performing? How could she show she was still a good worker? Was she a good worker? If she had so much trouble everywhere she worked, then wasn't she the problem?

She resisted the urge to chew on her nails. She'd gotten snapped at for that before. This was a restaurant. She couldn't have her hands near her mouth - she knew that. Of course she knew that. She glanced over her shoulder. Her coworkers were behind the counter, laughing and chatting. One was on his phone. She didn't really care, personally, but she'd been written up for her work ethic a week ago, and she'd never pulled out her phone on the floor for longer than it took to clock in.

She turned away and snatched the Windex. It wasn't her business. If she wasn't going to snitch on them, she might as well pretend she can't see them. Still, there was the matter of the doors. She didn't see any fingerprints on the glass. Perhaps the pastry case, then? There were a couple of kids in the dining room - they probably put their little hands where they shouldn't at some point.

Still, they had to give her another write-up before she was fired, right? She'd clocked in early, today. They couldn't reasonably say there was a problem with her work ethic. She'd been on task all day. It didn't take long at all to wipe down the pastry case. And the drink cooler was also full, because she'd restocked it thirty minutes ago and any customer who got a drink had gotten a coffee.

She had to look busy. A manager, Kara, was looking at her. The bathrooms!

The women's bathroom was mostly fine. People apparently didn't know that throwing toilet paper all over the floor was probably not the best thing to do in a public space, but that was kind of a daily thing. She checked the weight of the paper towels, sighing. The trash was also still empty. Toilet paper was still stocked. Great.

Onto the men's. Nothing to do in there either. She ran a hand through her hair and checked her phone. It was almost two. Maybe she could switch to register when Sheila left. She'd been discouraged from asking to be taken off the floor, sure. But the managers had said that nobody should be in the same position all day. She'd spent the past six hours on the floor today. Not to mention having been there all day Tuesday, Sunday, Saturday, and last Thursday. That was four shifts out of five. Surely it was okay to ask to switch, right?

She approached the counter again. "Hey, Kara, when Shelia leaves, do you think I could move to register?"

Kara frowned, looked at the nearly-empty dining room, then back at Lena. "I'll think about it."

Lena inwardly sighed. Probably not, then. She scanned the dining room. The man with the French toast was halfway out the door. She scurried to his table and cleared it.

She looked at her hands as she wiped the table, her mind once again circling the write-up she'd received the week before. She'd been working for the past six years, and she'd never gotten a write-up anywhere. The closest she'd come had been a verbal warning after she'd snapped at a customer who'd called her an 'incompetent bitch' at Fireside Barbecue a couple years before.

She used to think she was a great worker. Honest and, even if she got distracted, diligent. Everyone said she was good with customers and could keep her head in a rush. All she'd done was ask for less time on the floor when she was dizzy or her legs were weak. She couldn't control how sick she felt, and she couldn't afford to not work her entire shifts. Then again, there was the other thing on the write-up. She'd gotten upset when someone had spilled her drink the Saturday before Jordan and Kara had sat her down.

But despite what Jenny, the coworker who'd reported the incident had said, it wasn't this loud fight that scared the customers. She'd simply told Zenith she'd be at the coffee shop down the street until they got off work and had explained the situation with the drink. It could have been loud, she wasn't denying that. But she'd looked at the customers to make sure she wasn't being disruptive. None of them had been paying attention. And the manager on duty - Ben - had already handled the incident with her.

Lena realized she'd been wiping the table for too long. Jenny was staring at her. And while Jenny wasn't a manager, she was definitely a snitch to the highest degree. Unfortunately, there were no fingerprints on the glass, no tables to bus, no drinks to restock.

Her skin prickled. It was two. She got off at four. Two more hours. She could make it two more hours. They couldn't fire her just for having a slow day, right? Right. But the managers had been on her case more than usual this week, snapping at her over mistakes whether she actually made them or not. And the matter of her hours. She was supposed to be full-time, but had only been scheduled for twenty-four hours this week.

Was she overthinking it? Did she have a victim complex? She didn't think so, but she was biased. Of course she wouldn't think she was overthinking it or that she had a victim complex.

She jumped as Kara approached her.

"Hey, you can move to register."

"Oh, cool. Thanks." Lena set the rag and spray bottle on the counter. Yeah. She'd been overthinking it. Everything was fine.

While there were no customers, she started on the boxes. She had been packing orders while taking them, but Jenny left Expo and took over that. Lena had about an hour now, so honestly? She didn't even care. Jenny was going to do what Jenny was going to do.

Jordan tapped her shoulder. "Hey, Kara wants to see you outside."

She sighed and raised her eyes skyward before following him. What would she be lectured for? Asking to be taken off floor when she'd been working there all week? Letting Jenny take over packing? Who had the energy to argue with Jenny? There was no way she did anything to get written up, right? She didn't think so.

Kara pushed a paper toward Lena as she sat down. "Read this and sign, please."

Lena's anxiety gave way to irritation as she read the Corrective Action at the top of the page. Then flared into anger as she read the termination. She glanced up at Kara and Jordan as she signed.

"Oh, there's one under it," Kara said, not meeting her eyes.

Lena signed that one too.

"And you can go on and go home. You don't need to finish your shift."

The pen hit the metal table with a loud clack as Lena's chair scraped concrete. "Cool."