I Hate My Job

Photo by william f santos on Unsplash

Click. Click. Click. Mary Jane shoes echoed on the tile. At the end of the aisle, a woman pulled along a girl with head full of bouncing curls and frilly dress. As the footfalls grew louder, my pulse quickened. Here comes another pageant mom, I thought. Pageant moms were the worst. The only thing worse was a pageant dad that I once had the displeasure of meeting.

He was in Lincoln, Nebraska, not a place I would have expected. A half hour before I was supposed to go to lunch, he showed up with a little girl in a fluffy pink dress lined with a crinoline. He dropped an over sized pink duffel on my display table, knocking half of the items to the floor. He never apologized or offered to pick any of it up.