Chapter Seven: Hazing, Hazards, and a Hint of Charm

By day three, Callie had developed a theory.

Eli was charming but completely, utterly, and gloriously useless.

Not on purpose, maybe. He tried. He showed up early. He smiled too much. He asked questions with that eager, wide-eyed expression like someone genuinely curious about the deeper meaning behind price tags and stock room codes. But when it came to the actual mechanics of retail—scanning, stocking, surviving a Karen-level complaint? He was a walking, talking, khaki-clad disaster.

Naturally, she assigned him the worst jobs.

“Delivery’s here,” she told him that morning, handing over a clipboard and a neon vest.

Eli looked up from the shelf of shampoo bottles he’d just failed to alphabetize. “Already? I thought that was a Thursday thing.”

“Today’s Thursday.”

“Oh.”

She patted his shoulder. “Congratulations. You’ve unlocked the next level of BuyMore torment.”

Twenty minutes later, Callie watched from the stockroom doorway as Eli attempted to maneuver a pallet jack for the first time. He tugged the lever, turned too sharply, and nearly took out a cardboard cutout of a smiling baby in a diaper.

Callie didn’t intervene.

Mostly because she was curious how far he’d get before he broke something.

“Hey, uh,” Eli called. “Is there a reverse?”

“Only regret,” she called back.

He grinned like she’d paid him a compliment.

That was another thing: her sarcasm didn’t faze him. In fact, it seemed to fuel him.

By lunchtime, he’d somehow smashed a box of discount coffee mugs (“They were stacked aggressively!”), dropped an entire crate of dog food onto his own foot, and accidentally signed off on a delivery they didn’t order.

“I didn’t know what to do!” he argued as she glared at the twenty units of inflatable yoga balls now cluttering the hallway. “He looked confident! He had a clipboard!”

“You had the clipboard!”

“I panicked!”

Callie pinched the bridge of her nose. “You’re exhausting.”

“I get that a lot.”

After break, she sent him to the men’s bathroom with a mop and a bucket.

He didn’t complain. Just grabbed the supplies and gave a salute like he was going into battle.

Forty-five minutes later, he returned looking vaguely haunted.

“You didn’t tell me about the smell,” he said, dropping into the nearest chair in the breakroom.

“I wanted it to be authentic.”

He set the mop down like it was a cursed object. “Is it always like that in there?”

“That was a good day.”

He rested his head on the table. “I’m starting to think Brenda was right about the mop closet tears.”

She smirked. “Need tissues?”

“Only if they’re industrial strength.”

By day four, Eli still hadn’t quit.

Callie wasn’t sure if it was bravery, stupidity, or just a complete lack of self-preservation.

So she tested him again.

This time, with the most dreaded task of all: customer service.

Specifically—Karen duty.

It was a rite of passage.

BuyMore Karens were a special breed. They came armed with expired coupons, rage, and the belief that they were personally funding the store with their weekly purchases of Febreze and off-brand cereal. And today, one of them was already mid-rant at the checkout counter.

“She said the soda was buy one, get one free,” Marcus whispered to Eli as they stood nearby. “But it’s actually buy one, get one fifty percent off. We’re about five seconds from DEFCON 2.”

Eli blinked. “That’s… that’s not even that big of a difference.”

“Tell her that and prepare to meet your maker.”

Callie leaned over the counter. “Your turn, rookie.”

Eli straightened his vest. “I’ve got this.”

He did not, in fact, have it.

“Ma’am,” he said, with a too-bright smile. “I totally get why this is frustrating—”

“Do you?” the woman snapped. “Do you really? Because I don’t think you paid six dollars for a flat soda with no cap and an attitude!”

Callie sipped her coffee and watched the train wreck unfold.

Eli tried charm. He tried reason. He even offered a rain check. Karen was unmoved.

When she finally stormed off, vowing to leave a very detailed Yelp review and tag corporate on every platform, Eli slumped against the counter.

“Did I pass?” he asked weakly.

“You survived. That’s as good as it gets.”

“I think she aged me ten years.”

“She ages all of us.”

The funny thing was—he kept showing up. Every day. Slightly more bruised, slightly more disheveled, but never discouraged. He couldn’t scan without the barcode gun rebelling. He stocked like he was assembling abstract art. He kept forgetting to clock out on time.

But Callie noticed something else, too.

He paid attention.

Not just to her instructions—when he wasn’t misinterpreting them—but to the way the store ran. He asked questions, not just the obvious ones, but weirdly specific ones.

“Why are the greeting cards next to batteries?”

“What’s the logic behind aisle numbering? It’s not sequential.”

“Who organizes the staff schedule and why are Dan’s shifts always on Sundays when it’s slow?”

Callie gave him side-eyes more than once.

“You’re nosy.”

“I’m observant.”

“Same thing.”

But he didn’t press when she brushed him off. He just absorbed everything. Quietly. Like someone studying a very strange ecosystem and trying to learn its language.

That Friday, Brenda cornered her in the cleaning supply aisle.

“I’ll admit it,” she said. “He’s lasted longer than I thought.”

Callie raised an eyebrow. “So you’re calling off the betting pool?”

Brenda scoffed. “Please. I’m just adjusting the odds.”

Callie rolled her eyes and returned to facing the bleach bottles.

“Admit it,” Brenda added, “you don’t hate him.”

“I hate everyone equally.”

“Uh-huh. So you didn’t smile when he referred to your label-maker as your ‘emotional support gadget’?”

Callie turned slowly. “Are you following me around?”

“I’m just invested in your happiness.”

“That’s terrifying.”

But Brenda wasn’t wrong. Eli had a way of getting under people’s skin. Not in a bad way—just… sneakily. He wasn’t polished or efficient or even competent most of the time, but he was genuine. He listened. He asked how your day was and actually seemed to care about the answer. And Callie—well, she wasn’t used to being noticed that way. Not without it feeling like a setup.

Still, she wasn't about to say any of that out loud.

Later that afternoon, she found him in the breakroom, staring at the schedule on the wall.

“You planning your escape?” she asked.

He turned. “Actually, I’m trying to figure out who does all this. Like—who decides the hours? Why do Brenda and Marcus never share the same shift? Why does Dan always get stuck closing on Sundays?”

She narrowed her eyes. “Why do you care?”

He shrugged. “Because someone’s running this circus. And it’s weirdly efficient for a place that runs out of printer paper every week.”

“Are you investigating us?”

“More like… fascinated.”

Callie crossed her arms. “You don’t talk like someone who took this job because they needed flexible hours.”

He gave a lazy smile. “Maybe I’m just overqualified.”

That set off a quiet alarm in her mind. “Overqualified for BuyMore? Impossible.”

“Maybe I’m here for the human experience,” he said, like it was a joke. But his eyes lingered on the posted schedule a second longer before he turned back toward the door.

Before closing, Callie caught him in the back again, this time reorganizing a shelf of misplaced light bulbs. Badly.

“Those go by wattage, not alphabetically.”

He blinked. “Oh. I thought it was like books.”

“This isn’t a library.”

“Feels like one sometimes.”

She handed him a price gun. “Come on. Final test of the night. Markdowns.”

“Will I be graded?”

“Graded, judged, possibly mocked. Depends how you do.”

He took the price gun like it might bite him. “You’ve really warmed up to me, haven’t you?”

“You’re still on probation.”

“But you haven’t reassigned me to bathroom duty all week.”

“I’ve grown numb to your incompetence.”

He laughed. “See? That’s basically affection.”

Callie gave him a look.

And yet, as they started working side by side again, their rhythm kicked in without effort. She marked, he followed. He made stupid jokes, she made deadpan replies. Somewhere in the middle, the shift didn’t feel quite so long.

That night, just before she clocked out, she found a note folded into the drawer where she kept her box cutter.

It was scribbled in pen on the back of an expired coupon.

**Today I survived:

An avalanche of yoga balls

One Karen

Cleaning products that may or may not be sentient**

Still standing.

– E

Callie rolled her eyes.

And then she laughed.

Just once.

But that was enough.