A young man walks into the store.

That same man later tells me that humans prosper most in small tight-knit groups, but it seems to me that the social elite are meant to thrive in small groups. Social outcasts fare better with anonymity. Or at least, that's how it was in my new store.

The thing about life is that it doesn't give you a break because you need one, but rather it just keeps going anyway.

I had been living in Little Rock for almost three months and now that Cas hadn't come back I said goodbye to the disembodied voice and applied myself to my work feeling as though it had somehow saved me from something.

I stare at the paper for display in the break room.

"You're 18, right?!" Bryan gives me a once over and I'm just waiting for the sarcasm but it never comes. He's the night crew manager.

I try not to think too long before grabbing the pen Bryan offered and signing my name in ink as though signing my soul away to the devil.

Bryan smirks and takes the pen back, whistling as he goes. Bryan has a thick Mexican accent and a wild sense of humor, but he's a good manager, which makes his encouragement very valuable to me, even if he was the reason for my haste.

Bryan should know, I'm far from manager ready. The whole crew has witnessed the changes in me the last month and none of them have run away, yet. Some days I can feel the zombie in my step, mind ghosted somewhere else. I function, though. Maybe this isn't completely rash of me.

Of course, I begin to doubt that as I sit at a boothe a week later. They had taken the sign up sheet down in the break room for the interviews but it still sat in the office as if to say 'If none of you idiots do the job, we'll put it back up again.'

My heart is thumping as I wait. My hands automatically shake now when I'm worked up, like tremors of adrenaline. And it probably is adrenaline. I ignore it.

Heith is also applying for the job. He's a boisterous guy--a Little Rock native and a young newlywed who knows everyone. Not one to sit in silence if small talk is an option. Today he's dressed in a suit shirt instead of a baseball cap and he's even clean shaven which makes him look like he's actually 18. He looks over at me.

"I think you'll definitely get one of the two slots," he encourages. I feel like he feels sympathy for my plight even as a newcomer. "You've worked at different stores... That's unusual around here"

"You've got a baby to take care of, I'm just trying to make ends meet."

He smiles and decides not to comment on my dropout status. "You're responsible. You'll get in."

He surely convinces them that he's outgrown his wild Little Rock football years as he gives me the thumbs up.

Besides the fact that sitting across from someone you're wanting to impress and trying to make eye contact with them (maybe even having to shake their hand) isn't really an ideal situation for me in the first place, I haven't really felt very capable of much of anything lately.

Just going to the grocery store has become a monumental task for me that, while rewarding, causes my very bones to quake and is next to impossible for me until after dark when most of the crowds have subsided, and darkness brings its own problems.

I'm sure I'll mess something up, panic, start shaking, choke on my own throat, but I make it through.

I'm asked why I want to be a manager and I answer honestly: "I think I have something to offer."

Heith makes it to manager and to my horror I get the female slot, ousting some of the other Little Rock natives. And now I'm called to the front because a young man walks into the store who wants a job.

"Oh, I'm not the manager you're looking for. You'll want to come in tomorrow before noon and talk to my general manager," I explain, trying to sound managerial even though I don't have the answer he's looking for.

He's very polite as though respect was trained into him from an early age the way only a mother could do. "Alright. Thank you very much..."

"Michigan," I say.

"Thank you very much, Michigan."

It's amazing how much a manager uniform changes things. Crew members come to me with a billion different questions every day, and I act like I have an answer to all of them. And I'm good at it.

I sit in the office the next evening before my shift. That's the weirdest part: sitting in the office. It's a small box-like room with a window (outside which the grill is visible) and a single office chair that sits before the computer monitor, a money counter, and the safe.

There's a new name on the schedule: Blaze McConroy. There are numbers next to each name indicating the recommended position of each crew member which I've made it a habit to largely ignore because it doesn't account for things like absences, whether one crew member works well with another, if I need so and so trained on a specific position so I can put them there next shift, if so and so is ready to move on to a more challenging position or needs to be because they're more readily available, etc. I feel no one knows best where their crew members should be than the shift manager who works with them. I think my initiative kind of pisses my general manager off (he probably wouldn't use the word initiative) but like I said, I'm good at my job.

So I put Blaze on drive thru instead of back window like suggested. I don't know how to act like a manger any other way than to boast confidence. If I'm not confident in my own abilities, why would anyone else be? Which is why I don't stay a manger very long.

I post the list of names and positions for the night on the bulletin board and relieve the morning crew manager of their duties. I spot the new guy immediately and recognize him as the same young man who walked in the store the other day.

His eyes are bronze and he is shaved bald with stubble along his wide jaw and thick blonde eyebrows. He's six foot with a wide build and thick curly chest hair peeking out at his collarbone. He's also very fit.

"Blaze, is it?" I ask.

"Yes, Ma'am."

My lips go up slightly at the corners.

"You're going to be training with Alicia today on drive thru," I say.

I would watch and pitch in on training to make sure the job got done right. The other managers liked to blame the crew member rather than the training process whenever a new person wasn't adequate at a position. I want to set Blaze up for success.

That's the thing I love most about becoming a manager.

Before I can turn away Blaze asks: "Are you satisfied here?"

"What?" I ask, not because I didn't hear but because I don't know how to respond.

"Are you satisfied with this store?" His eyes probe me.

"Yes," I answer honestly, because right now I am.

There's a crew member who wants my job. Her name is Alicia. Maybe it should have clued me in to the kind of cutthroat environment my new store was that two managers had to get fired before I got promoted. If the determination of who goes and who stays was made based off of who worked the hardest than I might have been at the top of the "stays" list, but as it happened, I was unaware of the fact that I was actually at the top of the "goes" list.

I had been working in the service industry for a few years, and I felt I had earned my service smarts. And I liked the people I worked with: either people just getting their start or people who could think of doing little else despite the deep disdain many had for their chosen career. But in Little Rock, the service industry made up most of the economy. As it turned out, gossip was one of the requirements here something Alicia is very good at.

I'm nothing but offended when Alicia snidely comments that if I "helped out a little more," she wouldn't have as many responsibilities.

Unfortunately, I think nothing of it, because I've dealt with bullshit before: avoid instigation but stick to your authority. I'm not personally offended because I know she's wrong. I help my crew, but I also trust them to do their job. And silence in the face of aggression has gotten me through a lot so far.

Unfortunately, the bad judgement of the few sometimes sway the many with the help of a little bit of social tact which I've never quite mastered.

Never one to leave a loose end, I address the problem rather clumsily and angrily at the next manager meeting. It's not a problem with Alicia specifically, I assure, but a problem with challenges to the current policy, which I feel is crappy ( I refrain from actually using the word "crappy," but just barely).

"You can't expect dishes to get done in time when the responsibility of cleaning them is so ambiguous,'" I say. "Responsibility is assigned, not implied. I always did dishes when I was on drive thru."

The next day I'm demoted.

"If you were so good at doing dishes when you were a crew member, maybe you should be a crew member again," my GM tells me. "No one wants to listen to a lazy manager."

I can think of a few crew members who would say that, Alicia included, but certainly the whole crew didn't think it, I reassure myself on the drive home--which winds up lasting all night. I take a detour. As in, I skip my apartment completely and get on the freeway.

I'm not sure exactly what I intend, I just know I don't want to go home right now. So I drive. I feel the tears on my cheeks before I realize they're there and have to pull over.
And then I go back to work the next day in my crew member uniform. My new skill of faking happiness when I feel the shittiest (seems to be the only time I can actually fake a smile) is so convincing I have the whole crew going on about how I actually wanted to be demoted by the end of the day.

Less responsibility and more work. But I didn't want to be demoted.

I keep thinking about how Blaze asked me if I was satisfied, but he's gone the next day, too. As in, I got demoted and he quit, all in the same day.

And I feel as though I've unknowingly entered a popularity contest and lost. Destined to forever be the high school dropout who can't even get her GED.