Exhaustion

Jonathan pushed another cart across the aisle, filled to the brim with assorted goods that needed to be pushed on to the floor. As usual, there wasn't any particular methodology or order to how the items had been thrown into the cart, nor had they been accurately put into the carts designated for the different areas, meaning that Jonathan was going to have to be running back and forth for the next hour trying to figure out what went where.

He had been doing this repeatedly the whole day over, the only real breaks coming from when a customer would stop him on the floor to ask him a question about where they could find something, or if they could somehow get a discount on an item that he was quite certain that they weren't supposed to be able to get. But he greeted them each with a smile, and very politely answered their questions or directed them towards someone who was more likely to have a satisfactory answer for them.

He hadn't expected much different, to be fair. This was his life, and it had been for several months now. Pushing one cart full of stuff until it was empty so he could replace it with another, a never ending supply of items that had been misplaced and haphazardly thrown together. The problem was simply that he had been doing it for so long. Day in and day out it was carts after carts after carts, answering questions, and generally trying to work as hard as he could on an endless stream of miscellaneous garbage.

That day in particular had been an especially long shift. He had taken a lunch already, but it hadn't really done much for him. He had had to fight off the exhaustion throughout that was threatening to plunge him into the realm of the unconscious, which had prevented him from really being able to relax. He vaguely recalled people making conversation, and he was fairly certain that he had even replied to them, but the words were completely washed away in his memory. He was more going through motions than anything else.

His solace laid in the knowledge that the following day he didn't have to report in for work. For once, he would be able to sleep in, turn off the alarm clock, and massage out the kinks in his legs and back. He could relax for more than a few seconds at a time. Maybe get some work done on a book that he had been reading for far longer than it should have taken him to get to the ending.

But for the time being, he still had a cart in front of him, stacked so tall he had to carefully look around it as he maneuvered his way around so as not to hit anyone who might be running up to ask for help. He stifled a yawn and rubbed at his eyes as he came to his first stop. He had a feeling it wouldn't be long after he hit the bed that night that he would pass out. He just had to hold out until then.