Chapter Text
Peter Mullins was not the guy anyone would call in an emergency. Or for anything, actually. He was bad at everything.
After being a mediocre student at best in high school, he managed to snag a place in a community college for general education. He did the minimum credits for his first semester, lived at home, and had no job, but still managed to get put on academic probation. The probation ended in his “ejection” from the program. Peter thought it was because he didn’t see the point of going into debt to basically relearn things he already tested on in high school, so he tried the workforce instead.
Turned out, his frustration about relearning the same topics wasn’t actually rooted in a belief that he was wasting him time and money, but it was indicative of his general lack of interest in doing mundane and menial tastes at all. Sweep the floor of an office daily? Most of those people took working lunches at their desks. They couldn’t generate a significant enough in one week, let alone one day! Wipe down the mirrors after every shift change? The staff were the only ones with bathroom access. There was no reason to clean the bathroom three times a day. And tidying the shelves on a loop? Customers and kids would mess everything again in an hour. Peter was of the mindset that a mess needed cleaned up only one time, at the end of the day, to have done a sufficient job. It felt like these things could have been done after business hours, or during night shifts. It was tedious work with such little value to the staff or customer experience. At least, that’s what Peter thought.
After his seventh job loss, his parents kicked him out. Peter’s friends let him stay with them for a week or two, but when he failed to land job interviews, they would toss him to the next person. It turned into a game of “Hot Potato” at times, though Peter hadn’t been privy to the arguments they had about housing him at the time. Whenever he did manage to get extra cash, he chose to spend it on a weekend trip away. Peter’s friends got a break from him, and he had a good time, so it seemed like a winning choice by his logic. When he ran out of couches to surf on, he started to exchange labor for a place to stay at different hotels. His longest “gig” was with a hotel that needed help with lawn care and laundry, both which were easy enough and took no time at all. Unlike a traditional job that would require an eight hour shift, he could do most of the tasks in less than half the time. Plus, they would send him to a new location to help there every few months.
When the hotel chain didn’t need him anymore - they finally got fully staffed at each location - he had to try to find other ways to secure shelter. He looked mostly at Help Wanted ads in discarded newspapers and on local marketplace websites. Whenever Peter found something he could handle, he picked up and went on his way. Since he had the free time, he was always able to find the best motel rates and cheap food deals wherever he went.
Even though Peter Mullins thought he was eking by with some adequacy, most of his friends and family thought he was just being lazy. More than once he’d been dubbed a “Loser” that couldn’t get a degree, hold a job, or even live in the same place for more than a few weeks. For a long time, it didn’t bother him. He was having a good time! And wasn’t that what mattered most?
True as it was that only Peter needed to be happy with his life choices, it did start to bother him. It wasn’t even that people spoke badly about him that broke him down. People started holding back good news from him. They called him less often. He was the last to know about anything, even bad stuff! Peter hated that he was being treated like a piece of trash that nobody wanted to pick up from the ground. He didn’t have any ideas about how to change course, or at least repair the relationships that he had clearly damaged through his rough patch of life.