Retail Abhors A Vacuum

(It’s the first week of my first job: a closing shift on a Friday.)

Supervisor: “Grab the vacuum from the back and clean the store while I close one of the registers.”

(You know how you vacuum your house? You methodically clean the entire floor, making sure to overlap so you get everything. Well, after about ten minutes of me cleaning and getting about ten feet, a coworker comes over to show me how you vacuum in retail.)

Coworker: “Only clean the big stuff. If it looks clean, it is clean. This should only take you ten minutes for the whole store.”

Me: *embarrassed* “Oh, I gotcha.”

(None of us realized how naive I was until that moment. They made sure to explain the tasks for me if I hadn’t done them before from then on.)