Get Another Job

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“Thomas! Let’s play!” Jonathan yelled.

    “Can I play too?” Tarlie asked, looking up from what she was staring at in the grass. 

    Jonathan hesitated, then looked at me. “Are you okay with it, Thomi?”

    “Yeah,” I replied. “Let’s play. . . tag?”

    “Sure.”

    “YOU’RE IT!” Tarlie screamed, pointing at Jonathan. 

    “What? Why me?” he smiled as his younger sister chased him. I was left there, the fun without me. But then I joined the game later. We all played that afternoon — including the neighbor kids. 

    I stop my car and park in the parking lot. I lean back in my seat, my foot slowly pressing down on the brake pedal. I stop completely; I zip my coat up as I leave the car to the cold world outside. When I get inside, I take off my coat and clip my name tag that says Thomas on to my grey shirt. I set myself up behind the cashier and see a woman in a pink shirt in front of me. “Hey there, welcome to KingSoopers. . .” I do a few other things and finish setting myself up. While I’m in the middle of that, I say, “Sorry, give me a minute.”

    She chuckles. “You’re fine.” I know that voice. I finish setting myself up and look at her. 

She has curly blonde hair and an oval face. She’s quite dazzling nowadays. “It’s been years since I last saw you.”

    “Yes, it has.” Tarlie pauses. “I didn’t know you worked here.”

    “Well, I do. . .” I say. 

    I look at her basket and roll it closer to the counter. I grab the first thing that’s in her cart — ten apples. I scan the barcode, the price comes up — $10. I put it in a plastic bag. I grab the next thing, which is a pineapple. That’s $5. 

    “How’s your job?” she asks, watching me intently. Her eyes follow every movement I make. 

    “It’s pretty good,” I say, looking at her and smiling. “I get to talk to other people, you know?”

She doesn’t answer. Instead, she’s silent for several minutes.

    “Well. . . what degree — or degrees — do you have from college?” she asks. That’s somewhat random. 

    “Bachelor’s.”

    “You could use your bachelor’s and have a better job, you know. This looks pretty boring.”

    “It’s not, I love it.”

    “Most cashiers hate their job after the first year or so.”

    “That’ll never happen to me.”

    “Sure,” she says, shrugging her shoulders.

    I finish scanning the last item. “Alright, that’s $124.99.” I stare at the black letters on the white screen. Even though I’ve paid for groceries for the past four years, it still shocks me. It’s so much. Why do they make food so expensive? 

    Tarlie nods her head and swipes her credit card. I put her ten plastic bags in her large cart. My automated words tumble out my mouth before I can stop them. “Thank you for visiting King Soopers.” She merely nods her head and keeps walking.

    She comes back the next day. 

    “How much food do you eat in one day?” I ask, laughing. 

    “Don’t you get it?” She asks, staring at me. I shake my head. “I want you to use your job for something else!” She bangs on the counter. “You should use that bachelor degree, the one you spent four years getting! Are you just going to let it go to waste?”

    Why do you care? I glare at her and my jaw clenches. “I want this job. I’m sick of school; I’m sick of finding a job. It took me four weeks to find this job and get accepted. I’m not going to play that game again. I nearly went broke.”

    She stares at me. “Perhaps you’re right. . . but consider my idea.”

    “Will do.” My lie sunk into my veins, my brain whispering, You shouldn’t lie, you should consider it. . . 

“That’s $23,” I say a minute later, looking at the white computer screen that has her price tag on it. Tarlie pays and leaves.

    Tarlie doesn’t return for another week.

    “Are you going insane now?” she asks. 

    “Why would you think that?” 

She doesn’t answer. 

“No, I’m not.” 

Tarlie shrugs her shoulders. “Alright.”

    “Why do you care, anyway?”

    “I want to see you succeed in life. Being a cashier won’t help you accomplish anything. You’ll be eighty years old, still working, and think, ‘I could have just researched a little bit when I was twenty-two, and I wouldn’t be working and I’d have a lot of money.’ ” 

    “Yeah, but why do you want to see me succeed?”

    “My brother wants you to do well.”

    “So he asked you too? That’s odd.” I raise a brow.

    “No. He doesn’t have enough time to watch you anymore, but I do. I want to help my brother with his goal, and since he’s clearly having a hard enough time toppling life already, I’ll do this for him. It’s my only way of telling him, ‘I still want to help you. I still care about who you’re friends with and what you want in life.’ ”

I nod my head. “But why should I care about what you want?”

    Tarlie looks at me like I slapped her on the face. I guess I did, emotionally.

    A month passes, every day more dreadful than the one before it. And then twenty years pass before my eyes. 

    I find myself hunching over the counter, sighing. I find myself staring at the clock, watching the hours tick away until I can leave.

Tarlie returns. 

“It’s too late to get a new job,” she tells me. “I think so, anyway.”

Tension builds in my chest and I glare at her. My fists ball and heat rushes to my face. “I don’t care! I don’t want to hear about it! You have tried to tell me this for such a long time and I don’t want to hear it.” 

I finish up scanning all the barcodes on the back of the items and then put everything into her bag. “Goodbye.”

She takes it and spins on her heel, her grey hair spinning. Tarlie strides away and doesn’t look back.

Another twenty years pass. 

She doesn’t visit me again. 

One day, I’m looking around my apartment. I’ve lived here for forty years and I’ll never move. If I only had enough money. What did Tarlie tell me every time? Right. 

She told me, every single time she visited me, “You need to get a new job. You’ll get more income.” Or something like that. It’s been twenty years.

Now I get it. I should’ve looked into it, I could have ended all of that misery. But I didn’t. I should have considered it. Regret filled me, I sighed. There’s nothing I can do now.

She was right all along. 

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