Ass-Kicked

My allergies are acting up. This is not good.

After working four straight days, I am pretty out of it. My body is giving up on me. It decided that enough is enough. I closed Friday. Had a mid shift on Saturday. Opened Sunday, and then opened today.

Running on empty would be an understatement.

I don't usually open on Mondays and for good reason. There was absolutely nothing to do today, and when I wasn't off in a corner somewhere pretending to be busy (standing next to a shelf with a book in my hand with a puzzled look on my face, does the trick all the time) I walked up one aisle and down another. For exercise.

But I still felt all kinds of awful despite the lack of work. It's a mixture of allergies and body aches. By the time my break rolled around, I picked some corner in the cafe to re-read How to Breathe Underwater. In between reading a short story about a girl who survives a car accident and has to learn how to face her fear of water, I noticed a creepy guy sitting below me in some chairs we keep near cafe.

He kept looking into the cafe, where I was sitting, and turning in his seat. I ignored him for the most part because we get a lot of weird people in the store, and I was on my break. I wasn't being weird guardy bookstore girl. I was eating a bagel, reading a book, and listening to TV on the Radio.

But I couldn't pull my eyes away from him. He was just so weird. And we made eye contact for a second because I thought he was very shady, and he knew this. But he thought I was just some obnoxious customer who stares a lot. I mean, I wasn't wearing my name tag and in all honesty looked like I was skipping my high school English class (book bag and book didn't help).

The next thing you know, as I am mid bagel, the creepy guy gets up flips open his duffel bag and stuffs three very expensive boxes of chocolate in his bag.

Right in front of me!

I stood up immediately and attempted to jump into action, but he was gone before I could even utter "thief". I told a manager what happened, and then spent the rest of the day being questioned about what I saw. What did he look like? What was he wearing? What time did this all occur? Why didn't you do anything?

I won't even go into the fact that I am as petite as petite can get. He had no idea that I worked there, because I was just idly sitting in cafe. And I had no desire to test out what would happen if I approached this very large, built, duffel-bag carrying guy over the theft of chocolate (very expensive though. seriously). I put my safety before the damn candy.

After that incident I pretty much checked out for the rest of the day, and now I am at home hugging a pillow and typing at the same time. My head is all over the place, my body feels like crap, and I am sleepy. Very sleepy. I have a day off tomorrow and outside of a hair appointment, I plan on catching up on sleep and reading. Lots of it. No need to get out of bed tomorrow. No need at all.