Hurry up and wait

The irony of rushing to work was that the day began to drag so much sooner when you got there on time, Adam reflected.

And of course, working the day shift meant there was no chance of watching a favourite film on his portable DVD player. Not for the first time, it struck him that this job would be perfect, if it weren't for McGregor looking over his shoulder ... and most of the customers, of course.

Not that there were that many customers today, he thought. Great. Nothing to make the day go slowly like having nothing to do.

Five minutes after his shift had started, the day had seemed to stretch infinitely before him, a desert of nothingness. Five minutes before his shift ended, he took little comfort in having been pretty accurate in his prediction: he felt his almost constant re-arranging of the cold shelves had been a masterful - if tedious - bit of work creation, a fine charade of pointless busyness.

Wait, there had been one minor moment of interest. At one point, as he was shuffling the sandwiches around, he'd become aware of eyes on him. He'd looked around to see two old women looking intently at him. It was the way they continued to stare, long after it was obvious he'd noticed them, that unsettled him.

There was no nervous smile, no hasty looking away or self-conscious wave; just continuation of that steady gaze. Eventually he grinned sheepishly and turned back to what he was doing. It was then that he heard one say to the other, "yes, that's definitely him."

He assumed that whoever had said it was a little hard of hearing: while she spoke as if she'd meant to whisper, what came out was more of a bellow.

He'd turned, ready to ask what they wanted ... to find they'd both disappeared. He wouldn't have thought they could have got to the door so quickly - and he didn't remember hearing the "bing bong" of the door warning sound.

Turning back to the tedious task, his sense of puzzlement soon moved on to wondering why people said "hard of hearing" anyway. No-one was ever "hard of seeing", were they?


Story starts here.