A Normal Day

One evening, you're standing there behind the counter at your gas station job, bored. Everything is stocked, everything is clean, and your job for the last forty one minutes has been to just, stand around and be there. You can hear the clock ticking, second, after second, after second, as the evening slips by, all too slowly. The door bell chimes, and you prepare yourself to greet the customer, and find out whether they're grumpy and in a hurry, or just quiet and kinda bored like you are. As you're turning to face the door, before you've seen the customer at all, you hear the excited click-click-click-click of dog nails on the floor tiles!
 
You smile as you turn around, and see a human still making their way through the door, and a German Shepherd already way ahead of them, wagging and quickly walking up and down the aisles, sniffing all of the product.
 
The human approaches your counter with a grin, laughs, and says, "Hey."
 
Glancing down at the lanyard that has their job's badge hanging on it, you see the pins: he/him, bi, zoosexual, Philadelphia Eagles, Dungeons & Dragons, Hello Kitty. He's getting out his wallet.
 
You say to him, "Hello sir, what can I get for you tonight?"
 
He grabs a stick of beef jerky off of the display beside the counter, sets it in front of you, and says, "Just that, and the rest on pump 4." He sets a 20 and a 10 on the counter as well.
 
"Sure, no problem at all," you tell him, and begin ringing it up.
 
As you're in the middle of it, the German Shepherd has come around the counter, and is sniffing your leg.
 
You stop ringing up the order, and turn and crouch down to let this dog sniff your hands, see your face. The dog gives your face a quick single lick. You begin petting them, totally abandoning the order in progress. It's a matter of good customer service, to be polite to a customer's spouse. Plus, like, how could you not? This is such a friendly dog.
 
After a bit of petting and wagging, the dog turns away and leaves your space behind the counter, to go explore around some more.
 
 
You finish ringing everything up, tell the guy how much the beef jerky was and how much he has on pump 4, and wish the two of them a good evening.
 
As they're outside fueling, you look at them through the window, and see him hand the entire stick of beef jerky to the g-shep. The g-shep takes it from his hand carefully, and then chews it up with tons of interest and enjoyment.
 
The next day is a day off for you, but, you've been roped into attending a family gathering--you'd kind of rather just hang out at home. Not that you dislike these people, just, this was supposed to be a day to relax, and now you're listening to someone--aunt? cousin? you have no idea how you're related--tell you a story about her daughter Anna looking at different colleges for when she graduates.
 
As you and her are talking, her phone gets a text chime, and she looks at it. "Oh!" she says, "That's Anna now." She reads for a second, and then starts to excitedly scream, calls her husband's name.
 
He comes over from another conversation, and asks, "What, what?"
 
"Anna has a girlfriend!!"
 
He gasps, and says, "Really?"
 
She texts Anna back, "omg!!!! I'm so happy for you!! Who is it? Do we know her?"
 
A message from Anna begins loading. Seconds later, you and this couple are looking at a selfie of Anna and a Yellow Lab. Anna has her arm around the Yellow Lab, and the Yellow Lab looks to be very calm, undisturbed.
 
The husband remarks, "Oh, Kate's dog."
 
The wife types a response, "So happy for you sweetie :)"
 
A message comes back from Anna, "Kate knows, she gets it and she says I can take her with me when we all move out."
 
That night as you're playing video games with friends online, mostly commentating to each other on the game, one of your friends is telling the group about how much of a stinker one of his two stallion boyfriends was being today. Another friend is saying how much she can relate, her human boyfriend was being super stubborn and weird a week ago, but seems to be normal again now.
 
As you're walking to work the next day, you pass by several storefronts that have pride flags and other symbols in their windows--gay, lesbian, trans, bi, asexual, nonbinary, zoo, therian, and a lot of others you don't recognize.
 
As you're on your first break at work, sitting in the break room and scrolling through your phone, you see a post from one of the streamers you follow, saying that she and her donkey are making it official.
 
It's about time to get back to work. You stand up, tap a heart onto the post before putting your phone back in your pocket, and get back to it.
 
Article written by an anonymous author Eggshell Ghosthearth (May 2024)
 
 
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