Las Vegas: Skin City » Places

         

2:30 pm

The minute seemed like it was never going to arrive to the present time period. A six hour shift as a restaurant cashier came with three consequences: hard labor, extreme sense of tedium, and the tiled ivory-complected flooring full of concealed tacks that caused pestering pain to one's heels after standing for long periods of time. Even worse, work began in the morning time, on a weekend. While Friday was the day that ended with the nightlife and addiction to dancing and alcohol so Saturday morning could be spent relieving the energy they lost, one individual was an unfortunate exception, having to sleep after midnight and waking up 6 in the morning with not enough zip.

Who was this individual? A young Afro-Latina with ebony black curls that accentuated more edge than the Lion from the Wizard of Oz. Even worse, her nonindulgent boss commanded her to wear a ponytail, not providing any fluff and body that she loves to strut in public with her natural hair. The girl figured she could make the best of this irritating rule by fastening her hair in a high ponytail. Curls flowed like lava over her ears to the top of her jawline.

Even with her hair styled up, she still looked a slothful mess. She rushed to work in the morning, forgetting completely about wearing makeup. The lack of sleep caused dreary, emotionless eyes. Even customers threw shade, comparing her eyes to a raccoon, concluding with a smile, but the girl's skull was not dense. She knew what trick they were trying to pull. A bunch of morning birds and roosters with no social life trying to put cashiers and other minimum-waged workers below their level. Thankfully a large cup of Vanilla Latte from Starbucks prevented her from knocking her forehead onto the scanner in front of her.

But the busy hours were finally finished, and the girl couldn't take any more seconds of it. After a middle-aged brunette took the register over her, she rushed with impatience around the many customers to the customer service area adjacent to the automatic entrance, clocking out with her timestamp. An alleviating grimace striking her face.

“Hey, Yasmin....”

That wakeless delivery in tone. The girl's moment of joy and peace, ruined in two words. This coffee skinned girl must have been Yasmin. The silver nametag pinned on her red work short was also the indicator. Her lungs forcefully pushed air out of her glossy lips, before she turned her whole body. A middle-aged Caucasian man with short dark brown hair. Layers of bangs combed away from his eyes. He had many clips of black hair along his chin and under his nose. The stubble look was used to have his casually rough demeanor overshadowed by his professionalism. This man was her manager. “Paul the Party Killer” for short.

“Would you be able to work tomorrow morning? Kim called this morning saying that she was still sick and won't be able to go to the doctor until Monday.”

Kim was as worse of a liar than Pinocchio on a polygraph. A short blond-haired football mom who liked to wear any trends rebellious adolescents were wearing: cutoff jeans, high ponytails, and cowboy boots. Of course, this was whenever she wasn't working.

Not to mention her skin. She tanned more than the entire population of New Jersey. She usually missed work to have her rest in the tanning bed. Yasmin knew the real reason she wasn't working. To recover from oversleeping in the tanning bed, causing her shoulders and back to burn and peel. These were words according to one of the other co-workers. Yasmin never understood why women and men went all of the way just to tan their skin. The possibilities of skin cancer were enormous from tanning beds. Even magazines like to promote light fair skin on women.

Yasmin, however, wanted rather spend her Saturday night strolling around the illuminating world than sleep early and work because of Kim being clumsy.

“Sorry, Paul.”, Yasmin replied with a shrug of the shoulders “I have to get my English paper done by Monday.”

The easiest lie in the book, and managers always fell for it, or at least towards students. Yasmin did not want to miss the Electric Daisy Festival, and needed any opportunity to spend the night hanging out with friends and wanting her body to be controlled by the word “Fun”, which work was not even close to achieving.

“Maybe I'll make up for it next time. Hasta Luego.”, Yasmin added with a concluding wave before exiting towards the double automatic doors. With her back turned, she rolled her eyes and gave out a disappointing sigh. She thought about slapping herself on the face. She should have just left her lie at that, but it was too late. With her last sentence, her manager was going to take that into consideration the next weekend, when she might actually have a paper to write.