Quit the Scene

*I recently quit a shitty job in a shitty city. I met cool people. I met assholes. Some days, I'd come home and just write about what happened at work. All of the QtS segments are about work.*

Once upon a time, we could shirk off most of the shit that we’d catch from customers in between fixing and slinging bikes. Once upon a time, for me at least, I cared a little more.

When this game all started out, it was little things. At first, I’d put stickers on all of the repairs I’d do. Little stickers. Sometimes they were the same color as the bike, so they’d be really hard to see—unless you actually paid attention.

No one ever noticed.

The things that people did pay attention to, the things that brought complaints, were when we removed some of the original packing material that came on their bikes when they were first taken out of the box and assembled at some discount department store. And when they’d get their bikes back, working as well as can be imagined for an eighty dollar mode of transportation, they’d wonder why they didn’t run better.

Today, a woman comes in dressed in denim, boots, and a cowboy hat. She is short. She is loud.

It’s because she’s deaf in one ear, she says.

She’s wild. She flirts with anyone that’s male. She is five feet tall and looks like David the Gnome.

“I need rubbah’s!” she tells me.

“I’m sorry?” I say.

She wants tires; she needs tubes. She walked in holding on to a chrome plated bmx.

She leaves.

She comes back.

Now, she says, she needs training wheels. She’s mad that her bike is too hard to ride. She must be about eighty years old.

She goes out the door again, hops on the bike, and rides away like she’s about to die.