.

The label on my blouse calls it electric blue, but the dark tones never bring to my mind the bright crackle of live, high voltage. It’s a size too big because stocks were low, and five minutes ago half the buttons were undone for a boy I am proud to call my own.

It’s the second of two, because when you’re working at someone’s beck and call and crashing out at the end of each shift, there’s sometimes no time for washing. It lacks the stains of a day’s hard work and a lunchtime’s ice cream in the sun, it lacks any of the always necessary pockets in the typical and ever so annoying fashion of female clothes. It’s two days old, worn for only one of them, and it identifies me as the bitch of some big corporation, or the loyal worker of one – take your pick.

I hate retail. Nobody enjoys it, you barely earn enough to scrape by, you hours and workload vary by the second. The customer is always right, your co-workers always have someone who will hate you, the customers will always complain about everything you have no power over.

This is my first job, and two days in I’m already half-dead from a flu and have lost my voice for the first time ever. I wish I had actually been hit by a bus instead of just feeling like one, because then I’d have a reason not to show up.

I’m Emma Maree Urquhart – a writer, not the slave to minimum wage, and yet I’m showing up when sick to impress the managers instead of slacking off and trying to write with my head weighing my neck down – and I today, I taste like medicine and too little to eat.

My boyfriend’s calling me, my foot is going numb, and I have to get a bus in a few minutes so I can wait around for another four hours until my shift.

But I’m making money, I’m being someone, I’m helping others – and I guess that, really, I have no complaints about any of it. =]