Today, I was on my lunch at work sitting on the bench smoking a cigarette. I saw Renee, a girl who works up front, carrying a broom and a dust pan. And Pat, a woman who is one of the night managers up front, following closely behind tapping a cigarette out of her green pack of Pall Malls. Pat lit the cigarette just as I was stubbing mine out on the ground, and then looked at Renee.
“We’re not supposed to smoke here because the higher-ups say it bothers the customers,” she says taking an extremely long drag, “which means we have to clean all these butts up.”
“Okaaaaaay.” Renee said rolling her eyes upwards along with her vocal tone.
I threw my butt in the broken black plastic flower pot which acted as our ashtray and garbage.
Pat abruptly turns, and walks towards the front sliding doors finishing her cigarette in three puffs before dropping it on the sidewalk.
I noticed a small brown bird hopping around near my feet eating the crumbs from a discarded poppy seed bagel, and shitting little white dots everywhere. And it was unavoidable.
Renee dropped the white dustpan to the ground and started sweeping the brown butts and ash out of the cracks in the sidewalk into a pile. She turned her head and fixed her accusatory pupils on the white pack of cigarettes next to me.
“Are you the one whose doing this shit? Throwing them on the ground like a lazy motherfucker? Making me have to sweep your shit up?”
“Nah,” I said shaking my head back and forth before opening my pack, “all my filters are white. Those are brown, which means I’m not the perpetrator. SEE!”
I pointed down to a pile of 50 brown cigarette butts, none of which are white.
“Alright, we’ll keep up the good work.” she exclaimed with a wink.
I gave her a thumbs-up, and watched the pile gain mass with each sweep.
“The funny thing is you don’t even smoke. Yet, you have to clean up everyone else’s shit cause they’re too lazy to toss that shit into the ashtray, which is literally five feet away. Bastards! Hahahaha..haaaaaaaaa!” I said rocking back and forth on the broken bench whose peeling red paint exposed splotches of cheap wood. It made a clanging sound as the metal legs lifted up and slammed back down.
I started laughing after completing the sentence because it’s a nervous tick, which is probably really annoying to the people I am talking to, and most of the time, I don’t even realize that I’m doing it. But, she didn’t seem to notice:
“I know right! Those motherfuckers!” Renee exclaimed slamming her broom down in an impulsive act of sedition. “I mean I smoke weed here, but not cigs. And they got me cleaning up other people’s nasty ass butts and ash. I, mean, what the fuck right?”
I pulled another cigarette out of my pack and lit it.
“We should go on strike!”
“Yeah, Fuck this place!” she said throwing her right fist into the air.
She knelt down and brushed the pile into the dust pan.
“Do you know we are selling expired baby food right now? They told me to check the dates and when I did, they were all two weeks expired. When I told them, the regional manager said, ‘Ehhhhh…They’re vacuum sealed. I’m sure they’re still fine for a couple more days.’ Can you believe that? ‘a couple more days.’ I mean, we are talking about little FUCKIN babies here. It’s terrible!” The skin on her face scrunched together forming ridges and valleys. “I work here.”
In my head, I saw babies with puffed up cheeks and green tinted faces regurgitating globs of decomposing fruit purée. Their soft pink lips were coated in thick jelly-like film of infected nutrition, which made them look rabid and pitiful at the same time.
“Yeah, I can believe that.” I said, exhaling unsurprised syllables through the streams of breath and smoke. “Because I work here too!”
“This week we have an ‘In-Store Special’ on the expensive imported ham. It’s $5.99/lb, and it’s usually $8.99/lb. Last week, I noticed the expensive imported ham was two weeks past its expiration date because it never sells since it taste the same as the regular imported ham, which is $5.99/lb. We have sold about 7lbs out of a 12lb block of the expensive out-of-date imported ham. I feel bad selling them that shit, but I still do it anyway. Half the population of Plains may have food poisoning. And it would be my fault.”
I laughed, “But the worse they could do is probably sue me, and it’s not like I have a shit ton of money— twenty cents above minimum wage + a dollar extra on Sunday. What’s the worst that could happen?”
I laughed.
(10 second silence)
“Anal rape in a prison shower.” She answered matter-of-factly.
"Shit." I laughed and snubbed out my cig on the ground.
“You better not be fuckin up the sidewalk I just cleaned with your butt.”
I held the butt in between my thumb and index finger and shot it directly into the center of the broken flower pot.
"Michael 'Fuckin' Jordan!"
Renee dumps the dustpan full of ashes into the broken flower pot. It looked like a waterfall : the ash and the butts freely falling downward into the basin of empty 25 cent bags of potato chips, which created a misty cloud of ash that drifted sensuously out of the broken flower pot in all directions, coating the surrounding surfaces in a thin grey film.
Pat stuck her head out of the automatic sliding doors and screamed in the hoarse voice of a drill sergeant who has been chain smoking for the last 37 years as a way to deal with post-traumatic stress disorder.
“RENEE, IT DOESN’T TAKE 15 MIN TO SWEEP UP A PILE OF CIGARETTE BUTTS!”
“Alright. I’ll be in, just give me a minute.”
“I’VE ALREADY GIVEN YOU 15! LET’S GO!”
Renee gathered her dust pan and clipped it to the shaft of her broom.
“Yo, at 9:45 we might smoke a bowl in produce you down?”
“Word, I’m pretty far ahead on my work, and should be able to close on time. So, yeah. Just get me before you go.”
“Okay. Cool.”
Renee slowly walked through the doors following Pat to register two and immediately scanned a bag of cat food for a sixty year old lady wearing bulky glasses and pink stretch pants.
For the last 10 minutes of my lunch, I envisioned hundreds of babies keeling over in their high chairs face first into bowls of spoiled fruits and vegetables.
I laughed, because maybe we aren’t so horrible. Maybe we play an integral part in the solution to the planet Earth’s overpopulation problem. Checks and Balances. But still everybody gets a paycheck every Friday, which makes the whole situation kind of fucked up.
I noticed the small brown bird again and it was shitting all over the area in front of the store and, for some reason, it felt like justice was being served in some small way.
