She took one last look in the mirror before leaving. Her locs fell around her face, their crimps perfectly framing her sweet features. Her brown eyes staring back at her only reflecting pure innocence. She admired her full lips licking them as she took in the delicious image before her. Smiling, she blew her identical twin a kiss and headed out the door.
Today was supposed to be her day off, her reprieve from working with demanding clients and incompetent coworkers. Instead she had spent the morning in the office as usual; phones ringing non-stop, pacifying angry clients, picking up the slack of her lazy coworkers. She was now spending the evening taking care of a few last minute items on her to-do list. She was throwing a dinner party tonight, much needed time with good friends, good food and good wine. As excited as she was, she was that much stressed. She wanted every little detail to be perfect. This would have been a breeze had she been able to stay home from work, but duty calls. She hadn't been able to spend time with her friends in quite a while, this was very overdue.
She arrived at the grocery store and quickly found a place to park. She pulled her shopping list out of her purse and started making her way around the store. Flour is here, the wine is there, need another package of butter. She was briskly making her way through these last minute items until she came to the last item on her list. She pushed her shopping cart to the appropriate aisle, looking for the black olives; she needed them for her famous pizza. Finding them, she was a bit surprised at the dust covering the lid. Just to be safe, she decided to double check the date. Shocked, she found the contents were out of date almost 6 months. She reached for and checked the next cans on the shelf to reveal all of them were already expired. Frustrated, she asked the next store employee she saw to check for any additional cans in the store's stock room. The girl disappeared for about 15 seconds and came back empty handed. "We're out," was the short, curt response given as the young employee shrugged, walking away.
Shocked, she stood mouth agape in the middle of the aisle trying to figure out what just happened. A voice behind her surprised her from her trance, "Can I help you, miss?" She turned around to discover the source of the question. His sweet smile was the first thing she noticed, next was his height as he towered over her. She sighed, attempting to release a bit of her frustrations before talking to this so-far, innocent man. He introduced himself to her, said that he was the night manager of the store and he would look into the situation for her. This time instead of mere seconds, he was gone for a few minutes. Irked; she checked her watch several times, tapping her toes that yet again, her time was being wasted. Finally, he resurfaced - empty handed. Yes, his hands; they were quite large, she caught herself staring as he started talking to her again. "Sadly, we are fresh out of the olives you were looking for. I won't be able to get them in until later next week. I can however, give you a discount on the rest of your order," he reported.
She locked eyes with him for several uncomfortable seconds before saying anything. She actually felt bad for this man. He only worked here, much like she only worked at her job. But enough was enough, she couldn't hold in her frustrations. Finally, she rolled her eyes, pinched the bridge of her nose and put her hands on her hips. "You mean to tell me," she loudly sighed again, "that there is no way I'm leaving this store with a simple can of olives?" She continued before he could speak, "No, no. You're telling me that no one in this entire store thought that a customer could possibly want to eat olives? Olives! That not one competent individual could be bothered to check the expiry on a can of non-perishables. You do know that they actually DO perish, right? No, that can't be what you're saying."
"Miss, this really isn't necessary. I would be more than happy to -".
"To what? 'Offer me a discount'? A discount doesn't put dinner on my table! I want," she pushed her tongue into cheek and then used it to moisten her lips, "to file an official complaint with your location."
He took this time to practice his best customer service behavior. Two employees had called off this afternoon; another had been caught stealing money and was fired. Not to mention the three customers they caught trying to walk out with items they hadn't yet paid for and he was at his wits end with today. "Of course, miss. There's just a little paperwork I'll have you fill out and I can submit it to our corporate office. If you'll follow me, I'll take you to my office and we'll get everything squared away. I apologize again for this inconvenience."
He calmly led her into what was obviously an area few customers had seen before. There were miscellaneous items and boxes lining the walkway. They finally arrived at a bank of offices; he held the first office door open for her before following her inside. "Let me just find the forms here. We haven't used them in so long," he explained as he shuffled through files and folders on the messy desk. She took this chance to take in her surroundings; the computer desk took up the entire right hand wall, directly in front of her were several banks of file cabinets, and over her shoulder she saw a small table and chairs sitting along the left side of the room. She hadn't noticed before that lining the left side wall was a long pane of security glass providing a view of the back supply room they had just walked through. She sighed and set down her purse on the chair beside her, she was resigning to her fate of not having dinner done on time. She could feel the tufts of steam starting to come out of her ears.
