#work antics

"Yes, I know. It's been deprecated for two years now. We told you to use the templates instead."

"But we have to change so many things each quarter that the templates are useless."

"... wait, then why were you copying everything? You'd still have to change-"

"Did you know your nose is bleeding?"

Julie loves her job at Spirit Halloween. That’s why she keeps coming back. However, this year’s staff is... interesting to say the least.

It’s a particularly slow evening, being that it’s a Wednesday and still about four weeks until Halloween. Julie’s slumped over the counter while Alex, her assistant manager, is checking today’s sales on the computer. They already finished putting away the shipment they received yesterday, so Reggie is breaking down boxes, and Luke is slowly wandering around the store pretending to be making sure everyone looks nice and neat.

“Ugh! I still have two hours left,” cries Julie when she takes notice of the time on the clock, feeling like she’s been here forever (it’s been three hours, but they’ve only had about four customers all day).

“You’re doing great today, Julie. Keep it up,” encourages Alex in the way that all the managers do, even if she’s done nothing spectacular that day. “Have you taken a break today?”

“Yeah.”

“I haven’t,” calls Luke from where he’s meaninglessly moving the children’s anime weapons around.

“You don’t work enough to get one today. And even if you did, you were late,” says Alex with a shrug.

“Ha, sucks for you,” Reggie laughs as he’s returning the boxcutter to the drawer in the counter.

Julie moves from her place behind the counter towards the vampire and witch costumes, always liking to admire the accessories there and do some personal shopping.

Beep. Julie hears her walkie-talkie clipped to her apron pocket go off, but no one says anything.

Beep Beep. She quickly turns her head to look across the store and sees Luke attempting to hide a smile while moving around mugs.

Another beep is heard, this time from -- presumably – Reggie, because Julie doesn’t see Luke’s hands move. She chuckles to herself before adding her own double beep to the strange game Luke has started.

“You guys are dumb,” Alex says while chuckling to himself then contributing a beepbeepbeep of his own. The rest all laugh at the fact that they got their manager to join in on their antics. 

They exchange rapid beeps for the next minute until Julie notices someone walking towards the front door and signals for them to stop with her hand mock-slicing her neck. She then turns to front the merchandise to look like she’s actually working to the customer.

“Hi, welcome to Spirit,” Julie greets with her best customer service voice once the man walks in, causing Luke and Reggie to giggle at how ridiculous she sounds. 

“Reggie, can you take out the trash? Then you can take your 10 if you want,” says Alex.

Reggie salutes him and then moves to pick up the trash bag behind the counter. 

The man is looking around the store, and Julie is waiting at her register for whenever he’s ready to checkout while “Youngblood” by 5SOS plays over the shitty speakers. Julie’s tapping a pen to the beat of it when Luke walks over to her.

“So, what’s your favorite scary movie?” he asks.

“What is this, Scream?”

Luke shrugs. “I’ve never seen that, so I don’t know.”

“You’ve never seen Scream?” Julie asks, appalled at Luke’s lack of quality movie taste.

“I know it’s corny as hell.”

“That’s the whole point. It’s a parody of classic horror movies.”

“Sounds dumb. I like Friday the 13th. How ‘bout you?”

“If anything’s dumb, it’s Friday the 13th. I mean, Jason’s not even in the first one. How does that work?”

“Ok, so what do you like then?”

“Well, as far as classics, I love The Exorcist. But my favorite Halloween movie is Hocus Pocus even though it’s not a horror movie,” Julie explains very thoughtfully.

“Fair enough. Well, if we’re talking children’s Halloween movies, the answer’s always gonna be The Nightmare Before Christmas,” Luke responds with a nod.

Julie rolls her eyes. “Yeah, you would say that.”

“What the hell does that mean?” Luke asks with a slightly offended look and a dramatic hand on his chest.

“Luke, go take your 10,” calls Alex.

“This isn’t done,” Luke says firmly, pointing at Julie as she lightly giggles while he walks towards the break room (which was just the dressing rooms of the previous store with a curtain in the entry).