Chapter 158. An Assassin’s and Friend’s First Day of Work (4/9)

Alicia had gained a lot of experience through repetition and her initial nervousness disappeared before I knew it. It reached the point where she was leaning over the counter engaging with customers directly in a relaxed fashion, no longer stiffly straightening up her back the way she had during her first few interactions.

None of the customers caused any problems for her. They were all extremely cooperative. Even when she made a small mistake they weren’t even mad. When they received a sincere apology from her for her mistakes they even looked like they’d gained something great.

Having a pretty girl apologize to you and you forgiving them, there was some strange sort of appeal to it.

Since so many were just buying one item we didn’t even have to bag them up.

If there was one thing I wanted to complain about, it was definitely the guys who’d immediately pick something random to buy and head to the back of the line again after they made their first purchase.

They had no consideration at all for this poor girl who was on her first day of the job. After two hours of endless customers, I finally stepped in.

I got close to Alicia’s ear and whispered so nobody else could hear, “Alicia, go take a fifteen-minute break in the back room.”

“What? But there are so many customers in line. There’s no way I can leave them all to you.”

“Taking a break and managing your time is part of your job. If you can’t even do that, you’re neglecting your responsibility. You’ll exhaust yourself without taking any breaks. This is also only your first day on the job. You haven’t built up stamina. Once you get back from your break I’ll take over for a while.”

“But-”

“No buts. You may be older than me, but I have seniority on the floor at work. You have to listen to what the senior employee who’s training you says.”

“Ah. Uhm… I understand.” She looked a bit downcast.

“Jerk, you make Alicia sad.” The customer in front of us suddenly said that to me.

The other customers in line who heard that all looked at me like I’d become the common enemy.

“It’s not like th-”

“Alicia, go to the back room now.”

“Ah. Uh… yeah… sorry.” She left under the watchful eyes of the customers.

“What did you say to her to make her look like that? Did you tell her she was doing a bad job?” Other customers started to also make a scene after she was out of sight.

“No, I simply told her it was time for her break. It’s still her first day on the job yet she’s being worked to death right from the start. Who knows, she might up and quit on her first day because of being overworked like this. She’s also only in high school and needs to focus on her studies as well. There seem to be a lot of forgetful customers who aren’t picking up all their items at once today forcing her to work even harder. It’s so tough on this poor high school girl who just wants to support her family with the money she earns from working here.”

When I said all that, the customers in the line all had awkward expressions. They all understood exactly what I was getting at. If you keep this up, the pretty angel they found may get fed up and quit for good so stop causing so much trouble for her.

“Yeah, like aren’t some of these guys just the worst? They just paid for something then picked up another item and headed straight to the back of the line.”

“Yeah. Yeah. What’s with that? Get everything you want all at once and leave. Don’t make so much trouble for this girl on her first day of work.”

Two high school girls close to the front of the line suddenly chimed in and agreed.

The guys all felt even more awkward. I started ringing them all up at a rapid pace, spending a minute per customer not bothering to be courteous with them in the slightest. Though when the two high school girls made it to the front of the line they smiled at me and chatted a bit while I rang them up.

“Hey, hey. Do you have a girlfriend?” One of them teasingly asked.

“I do have someone I’m involved with already.”

“What~ and here I thought a nice guy who wasn’t taken for once. What the heck, why are all the decent guys always taken already?”

“Oh~ He’s your type?” The other girl poked at her friend.

“He seems like the attentive type who’d take good care of a girl he’s dating.”

“Hmmm~ does he? I mean he looks a bit gloomy.”

“Haha, that’s the appeal though~ other girls would probably pass up on him because of it. It’s too bad he has a girlfriend already.”

“Hey, is it that new girl? Is she your girlfriend?”

All the guys' ears perked up when they heard that question.

“No. She’s not my girlfriend.” I wasn’t lying, she was more than just a simple girlfriend. She’d sold her soul to me already. Besides that, I didn't feel like I technically had a girlfriend. The three women I was involved with all had a status above that of a simple girlfriend in my mind. Though I did still refer to them as a girlfriend when speaking to them or others who knew of our relationship for the sake of simplicity.

Also, I’d be lynched if I honestly said she was in front of all these guys. The looks of relief on their faces were all too telling what would have happened to me if I said yes.

The man who flies too close to the sun will surely be burned alive by the jealousy of others.

I wrapped things up with the two girls and took care of the remaining customers in the line before Alicia returned from her break.

There were still a few customers inside the store when Alicia returned to the counter. They’d specifically waited for her to return before they lined up.

However, it was too bad for them, I was long onto their little game.

“I’m fully rested after my break, I can take over from here.”

“You, be a good girl and don’t say a single word. Just sit and watch for now.”

“But-”

“How many times do I have to say no buts for you to remember that?”

“S-Sorry.”

She sat down on the stool beside me while I took care of the last few stragglers in the store. After another half hour, the store was finally empty and had settled down.

“Haaaaaah. Finally.” I breathed out a sigh of relief.

“Thanks for the hard work.”

“Come with me, we’ve got to use the small chance to restock the items that sold out from that little storm of customers.”

“Oh, right. Rosa also said that. Uh… sorry.”

“Sorry about what?”

“That drink I always buy. I had no idea it was that bad.”

“Haha… so she told you about that too.”

“Yeah, she was laughing a lot when telling me about it.”

“Well, don’t worry about it. And hey, you can now even save money when buying it with your employee discount.”

“Ohhhh! Right, I completely forgot about that! Let’s go~ let’s go~!” Her eyes lit up.

The two of us walked through the aisles together while she unconsciously held onto the bottom hem of my shirt from behind. 

“You should take note of items out of stock. You should try to also familiarize yourself with where each item is kept in the backroom. Sometimes we have to also help sort the boxes when we get a shipment of inventory in. Usually the morning staff takes care of that, but if the story is busy from morning and it gets slower in the evening we have to do it ourselves.”

“Oh. Got it.”

“If you’re not good at remembering everything that’s out of stock you can always note it down on your phone. Sometimes there’s a lot of items out after a rush like we just had and it’s hard to remember everything.”

She took out her phone and carefully jotted down the items that were out of stock.

Once we had a list with all the items we needed we entered the back room.

She read off each item to me one by one while I rummaged through the boxes on the shelves and tossed them into a larger box on a trolly.

Alicia dutifully took notes on where each item was kept. You could go through the system one by one to find where each item was kept on the shelves, but it was tedious. For a larger store that was typically how things went, but for smaller convenience stores it was easier to just go off memory. It was much simpler to just grab them all at once and update the backroom inventory in the system after the fact.

It was a pretty simple process when you were used to it and eventually you didn’t even need to think. It just became an automated process.