Chapter 17: Bittersweet

So I had my last day at the store. I worked a 9 hour shift and tried not to think that this would be the last time that I worked with the people that I have grown so close to over the last six or seven months. Not even just them, this was my high school job, I’ve worked with some of these people for almost 8 years. Many of them remember what I was like when I was just 16 years old.
You have Maps who always notices my haircut even when I haven’t gotten one, The Motivator who believes that I will do great things (wish I had her faith in me), Wheezy who to me will always be a 16 year old kid even though he’s 23 and getting ready to go to law school. Wiggum who is probably the most dramatic boy I have ever met and may be even more dramatic than most girls I know. Poof Daddy who I wouldn’t even talk to at first and now I talk to every time I go to the store; Steel Eyes, who I used to be afraid of for no particular reason and all my other boys who accepted me so quickly even if I didn’t want them to. Even the ones I don’t get along with as well will still be missed.
I was doing okay, the whole day I was fine. Then suddenly I’m off of work. The Motivator comes over to say ‘goodbye’ and how nice it’s been working with me on and off for the past 7 or so years and then I’m still doing okay with not crying and suddenly she asks if she can have a hug. Of course she can have a hug, so I give her one. Big mistake, I start crying, a customer even points it out! The nerve! So I blame the Motivator for ruining the last 9 hour record I had of not crying. I went over to café to say goodbye to my friend whom I will call Anguish because one day he just kept telling me how much his soul hurt but he wouldn’t talk about why and then the next time I saw him things were better. I hid in the café while Anguish made sure no one could see me. Bulldog came over though and told me not to leave because he had something for me.
While I was waiting for Bulldog to come back Poof Daddy came over and Anguish, him and I were talking. I told them I was such a girl because I was crying. It’s not like I would never come back to visit. Poof said it was hard though because it was like I was leaving my family. That didn’t make it any better. Bulldog finally came back with balloons and a cake. I was a little embarrassed; I mean I was going to have to walk out of the store with a heck of a lot of balloons. So Poof and another coworker carried my stuff out to the car. With the display I’m pretty glad that I had decided to start and tell people that I was leaving so that it wasn’t a surprise to everyone. I cried a little on the way home, sometimes you’ve got to eek out every last tear.
Poof Daddy was right though, we are like a little family. So in a way it’s like I was leaving my family, and to me at the moment it felt like it was going to be for forever. With the training that I have been able to do for the company I have had the opportunity to go to many different stores and none have quite been like this one. The people haven’t been as close. Some people don’t like the idea that we are all up in each other’s business and we know so many details about each other, but we care about each other too. We can be horribly honest with each other, pick on each other, and just plain mean to each other but if someone else (especially customers) try to mess with them then we all get angry. It’s hard to find that type of relationship, especially in your work environment. It so much like that of siblings. We lend to each other a little piece of ourselves. The teenagers lend us their youth, the older employees lend us their knowledge, and some just teach us to have a little compassion with each other, the managers teach by example the value of hard work and see within all of us our potential for the lives we are beginning to lead. The job itself may not be the greatest but it’s the dynamics of our workplace that makes it so hard to leave.