“Tosomepeople,” Sheryl said.
CHAPTER 8
Sharon
“Can I get a tall latte, please?”
“Sure,” Sharon said and rang the man up for his coffee before she moved to the espresso machine and started making the drink.
She stared out the window in front of her as the milk steamed and the espresso poured down in parallel streams. Shehadto find a job across the street from the main office of the company that had laid her off nine months ago. Of all the coffee shops in the world, she had to get a jobhereand not at any other one. She’d been a recruiter in tech before this, and when the economy had taken a turn for the worse, the company had stopped hiring, which meant that recruiters like her had no longer been needed, and she’d been given a box to pack up her desk and had been walked out of the office like all the others they’d let go that day.
Her severance had been one month’s pay, and she had started looking for a job right away. All the other recruiters in the world were fighting for the same jobs, and she hadn’t been able to find anything in her desired field since. Sharon had needed to branch out, so she’d opened herself up to just about any job to help make rent until she could find what she wanted. Having applied for coffee shops because she’d worked at one during college, she’d expected to get hired on, and she had been,but the coffee chain she now worked for hired for the whole city and put them through training before assigning them to a store, and when she’d found out that she would be working at this one, she’d assumed it had been a cruel joke.
She’d been here for six months now, and despite continuing to apply and having interviews, she hadn’t been hired yet. She wanted to work in tech again, but she’d take anything at this point because at twenty-seven, she didn’t want to spend the rest of her life making coffee and staring across the street at the company where she used to work.
“Can I grab you for a minute?” she asked her boss, the store manager.
“Sure. What’s up?” he asked, turning to her and away from the computer.
“Um… I need some time off,” she said.
“Okay. You can put in the request.”
“We’re required to give at least two weeks’ notice, but I need it sooner than that.”
“When?”
“Tomorrow and for a week after that. I got selected to attend this event for a university alumni thing. I hadn’t been selected initially, so they just let me know,” she lied. “I’m not on the schedule for tomorrow technically, but I know you call me in sometimes when you need someone to cover.”
“You were selected for an alumni thing?”
“It’s an… exclusive event where there will be speakers in my field. You know I want to be a recruiter again. It could be a big deal for me. I’d make some connections there.”
“But you workhere, Sharon. I want to be supportive, but you’re on the schedule for five days this week, like always.”
“So, I can’t get the time off?”
“Not unless you can find someone to cover all of those shifts. I’m sorry. I can’t rework the entire schedule and screw everyone else over because you just got selected for something.”
“Right,” she replied. “But if I can find people to cover the shifts, that’s okay?”
“Yes, if you can find coverage, you can have the time off.”
“Thank you. I’ll work on that when I go on my break.”
“I can’t see you being able to get five shifts covered, but if that’s what you want to spend your break doing, it’s fine by me,” he replied.
Sharon had gotten the call from Nia two weeks prior, and she’d filled everything out, but even still, she’d been planning on canceling and getting at least a partial refund because it was silly. She’d applied for a spot before she’d lost her job, seeing the website and thinking it would be a fun thing to do since she was single and hadn’t had much luck in dating. She’d had a job back then, so while she hadn’t been wealthy by any stretch of the imagination, she’d had a little saved and had planned to pay for the week-long trip with that money, have some fun, and say later in her life that she’d done something that was completely unlike her to do.
She’d forgotten all about it for the most part until she’d gotten that call, and she’d been too excited to have something else to do other than apply for jobs, interview, get rejected, and make coffee drinks all day to say no to Nia. She’d put the trip on her credit card and would regret that later, but she hadn’t requested the time off because she knew that if she did, she would go, and she was still a little nervous at the concept of meeting these women and sleeping with maybe some of them or all of them, so she’d put it off.
On her break, Sharon decided to get smart. There were three chain locations in the city that were only blocks away from hers, so she started by calling the closest one to ask ifthe manager had anyone asking for more hours. That store had someone who was part-time and wanted to go full-time, so the manager gave Sharon her information. Sharon called her next, and the woman was able to take two of her shifts. She continued to check with the other locations and was able to find someone who could take either part or all of her shift until she had their names and the hours they’d work written down on a napkin.
“Here you go. I was able to get them all covered.”
“Who are these people?”
“Employees from the other stores. I wrote down their store numbers next to their names. They all needed the hours and were more than willing to take my shifts. So, am I good to take the time off now?”
