It’s kind of a pain working at the Dollar Store with tattoos all the way down my arms. Randy is a nice guy, but he’s pretty straight laced. We’ve never talked about it. Still, I can tell he’s relieved on hot days when I come in with a long sleeved shirt on under my uniform shirt. He sometimes turns up the air conditioning, and that’s nice.
Nice things can be hard to come by some days in the Dollar Store. People always seem to be embarrassed to be in here, like their better than the place. Which is clearly not true if you are in the place. Only the Mexicans act like they truly appreciate finding a place that sells stuff cheap. Of course we are selling cheap stuff, and they learn as quickly as anyone that you get what you pay for.
Teenagers are the worst, since they know our stuff is crap they don’t care about coming into the store and messing up the merch. They move stuff around. Pick stuff up in one place and put it down some other place. They don’t think about someone having to put it back. I don’t blame them for being careless because I remember being them. It wasn’t that long ago. I could do without their price check jokes.
I keep telling Randy that we should close at six on Friday and Saturday since it is more trouble that it is worth staying open when no real customers come in and wee have to clean up after the kids. He probably would if it were up to him, but the owners won’t go for it and there is no telling when they are going to show up from Florida.
So that means we only play out of town gigs when I can get off early, and I can only do that when I know I don’t need the money. It would probably be a lot easier to keep Skylar in diapers if I would strip a couple of nights a week, but having a baby made me want her to have a mama she can look up to. Besides, that would make it even harder to do out of town gigs.
My mama says that she is happy to help with the baby. She likes us living with her and all. She says she even likes the band, which I find hard to believe since I don’t like us a lot of the time. But I’ll be damned if I am going to give up the last of my dreams. I don’t know what we are doing, and mama is too nice to pressure me into going back to school. It’s hard to see this band making any real money. Still, I’m not ready to be the ones those kids a laughing at when they come in the store. Every time they do, I push my sleeves up a little bit. Randy usually goes in the back.