Elle Vampa

Pride does not pay rent. Which is something I’ve come to understand recently.

And because bills do like to get paid eventually, here I am: working a part-time job in a store I’ve never before set foot in.

But that’s a story for another time.

Because today marks the beginning of a new category: the Weekly Loss (I sense I’ll never run out of material for this one).

Picture this: a blonde working a service desk in a hardware store on a very, VERY quiet day.

There’s literally nothing to do. No customers. No phone calls. Not even labels needing to be printed.

Nothing.

My boss walks by and I ask him with all the decency I’ve got left (the other option being begging) if there is anything I can do.

He stops, looks around, thinks for a while and shrugs: “Nope.”

I concede and take to cleaning.

About six hours later and five minutes before the end of my shift, me and some coworkers, including one assistant-boss, are waiting for those final minutes to pass by.

We hang, we chat, and I listen to complaints about the holiday workers who “don’t do sh*t” and “just hang around all day” when my assistant boss looks at me and says: “Yes, much like Elle today.”

…

I can’t win.

I wish the people keeping an eye on me would do a better job with that. So they’d see me not only at my laziest, but even more so at my best.