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Security Guard Lopez knew it was going to be one of those days. A grey day without joy or excitement, people entering the store and leaving the store and her eyes glazing over in a tired attempt to protect her from the overwhelming mundanity of it all. It had been raining when she'd gotten to work: just a drizzle, nothing worth commenting on but enough that a faint smell of mud and wet socks would permeate the store for the entire day. Greeters mumble-mouthing 'Welcome to Walmart' became a regular drone in her ears, white noise coming from human mouths. When she stopped to pass her bored, bored, BORED eyes over the magazines and tabloids at checkout, she noticed enthusiastic declarations of LIZARD PEOPLE FOUND TO BE CROCODILE PEOPLE: ENGLAND'S QUEEN SECRETLY FROM TAMPA BAY SWAMP in smudged grey and white, smaller text promising more inside.
It would turn out to be the day's high point by the time her shift was over.
She went to the parking lot in the hopes of catching a scuffle between customers, an argument over shopping carts, a fight over a parking spot, or even some geriatric walker fencing. None of that would technically be her responsibility (except maybe if things got violent with the shopping carts themselves) but even an altercation she had no authority over would have been an improvement over her day.
A child scuffed its booted feet through a shallow puddle on the edge of the parking lot, getting a woman's shoes wet, but she was apparently content to address this assault on her clothing with a thick fingered flipping of the bird and a snarled "Fucking little shit drop" that the child's guardian did not feel compelled to dispute.
Disappointing.
Back inside, Lopez went to all the most likely areas to catch a would-be shoplifter in action: Electronics, Shoes, Pet Supplies, that one stretch of shelving in Pharmacy and Hygiene where the Listerine and its off-brand mouthwash colleagues were. She thought her luck was changing when, out of the corner of her eye, she saw a gangly adolescent, his face a war between blistering acne and tufts of optimistic facial hair, came and stared for an eternity at a bottle of green mouthwash, but it turned out to be decoy behaviour for the benefit of some mysterious all-seeing eye when the kid instead spun around and grabbed a packet of condoms, making a beeline for the doors.
Her luck may have still be on the upswing, for she followed the boy discreetly, hoping he was going to try and walk out with the condoms concealed in his sleeve, but her hopes were dashed when he slouched into line at the express checkout (20 ITEMS OR LESS proclaimed the sign). There was only one person in front of him in the lineup; all the other lanes had the standard lengths of lineups where they managed to be just long enough to fill you with dread whenever you looked at them (as she remembered from her own horrible high school cashier job) but not long enough to make it feel like any time was passing.
Ever.
Dennis was on express right now, running through the customer's items with an increasingly annoyed expression that contained a hint of promise that this time, surely, Lopez' day was going to take a turn for the better. She watched discreetly as items passed over the scanner: frozen dinner, beep, frozen pizza, beep, pizza from the deli, beep.
Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. (Why could she tune out the voices of the greeters but never the sound of the scanner?) Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep.
Beep.
Dennis' hand froze with the bottle of Dr Pepper still under the scanner, the plastic wobbling slightly against the glass as he began to shake with internalized rage.
This was it.
"The sign," Dennis said slowly, "says twenty items or less."
The customer looked bored, pulling out his wallet. "The sign is wrong."
Dennis appeared to be seriously considering this statement, setting the bottle on its side where it rolled into the rest of the purchases. "No, it isn't," he finally decided.
"It is," the customer said, boredom changing to a swollen smugness. "It should be twenty items or fewer."
Dennis took the card reader from the counter and jammed it into the customer's nose, blood spurting when he pulled it back only to ram it into the customer's face again, this time aiming for an eye.
So much for something exciting.