Stephen turned around from stocking bottles of apple juice to face the older lady who had just addressed him. Even though she was more than a foot shorter than him, she was wearing a scowl large enough to show that she'd been looking for those breadcrumbs for quite a while.

Setting the box down on the shelf for balance, he thought for a moment, but ultimately felt unsure.

"Bread crumbs? Hmm, that could be one of two places. They could be in the bread aisle, all the way at the end of the store. Or they just might be in the baking aisle, aisle five. Might want to check both just to be safe," he answered, truthfully. Realistically, they could be in just about any spot since the store's recent reorganization.

"Well, which one is it? Bread aisle or baking aisle?" The old lady asked, impatiently.

"I'm not sure. I can come with you, if you like? Find it together?" He offered, hoping to defuse the situation.

"No thank you, I'll go ask someone who will actually know," she said flatly, turning heel and marching back down the aisle.

Stephen sighed, returning his attention back to his work. Generally, he enjoyed stocking shelves at the store. He could work at his own pace, usually alone or with a friend, and he usually didn't have to deal with customers to the extent that the cas.h.i.+ers did. Yet encounters like this reminded him why he disliked working with the public. If he had his way, he'd be able to work a more solitary job, but there was no plans on the horizon for anything different than the little grocery store. Not anymore, he thought sadly.

"What a b.i.t.c.h," came a voice from the other side of the aisle. Stephen looked back over to see the grinning face of his work colleague, Miguel Villalobos, who had obviously heard that entire encounter.

"She must be having a bad day," replied Stephen, offering a smile over to his friend.

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"From the sounds of it, every day is a bad day for that one," chuckled Miguel.

Stephen tried to stifle a laugh, but mostly failed. Lately, he had been getting the same s.h.i.+fts as Miguel, and it was usually something he enjoyed. Miguel was his age, paying his way through college, and basically a similar social outcast as Stephen. For that reason, they got along pretty well, and Stephen had been using him to fill the void left by... well, to fill the void.

He was jealous of one thing in particular about Miguel, in that at the end of summer, he would go back to college and leave Price Chopper behind. Honestly, it was not that Stephen hated Price Chopper; it served its purpose and put money in his pocket. Yet, he hated that he felt stuck here, especially after having to drop out of his own community college after just one semester.

What made things even worse was that it wasn't due to his grades: Stephen's first semester earned him a solid 3.4 GPA. No, the reason he had to drop out was the same reason he had to pick up extra s.h.i.+fts at the store: no money. Despite his mother picking up extra s.h.i.+fts, they weren't able to secure a loan in time to make the next semester's registration. With no cash to register for cla.s.ses, he had only planned a brief hiatus and a return the following year. But then his grandfather got sick enough to have be hospitalized, and their money situation just spun out of control. It was all the family could do to stay afloat, and for the time being, that meant no college.