I was slow.

I rang you up too slowly for your tastes. You didn’t sigh with impatience- I do appreciate that; you don’t know how much- but you bounced on your heels and looked away and when I said goodbye, you interrupted with “THANKS,” and snatched the receipt out of my hand.

I didn’t want to slow you down.

That’s the dumb part. The thing that makes me cry- man, am I exhausted- is the thought that maybe you believed I wasn’t fast because you weren’t important.

I don’t think you noticed that the light for my register was off. I don’t think you noticed, because people usually don’t. They just get in line. That’s what I like to think. That you didn’t see that I had been trying and trying and trying to leave, that my shift was over, but I didn’t want to turn you away.

I rang up a bad rain check one hour before. 2 bad rain checks. The people had falsified them, they weren’t stamped, the signature was someone who didn’t work here with us, a Bethany? A fake- and I didn’t know enough to stop them. The service leader told me, and said, “Next time…just this once…” and I had to look into the eyes of people I knew were stealing from my store, making me help them steal from my store, and I had to finish helping them.

Ten minutes later, my hands were still shaking, and my voice still sounded like it was coming from a tunnel.

Normally, I stretch my shifts as long as I can make them, but I knew if I stayed today I would only mess up. I would only slow people down. The couponers had sunk their fangs into my soul and I was still bleeding. I turned off the light 2 minutes before seven. But they kept lining up. You lined up.

I’m sorry. I did my best. I honestly could not be faster today. But it wasn’t because you weren’t important. If you weren’t important, I would not have been there. You would have been in the other line, and it would have been another 20 minutes, and I didn’t want to make you wait. You were important.

Have a good week.