Autumn Leaves

The fall usually meant a few things for Kieran. One: pumpkins and all pumpkin-related items would be selling very well for a while at the store. Two: he would be busy restocking said pumpkin-related items and directing people to them until the end of the season. And three: he would have to deal with the fallen leaves that just kept piling up outside the store and getting in.

You see, Kieran's boss wasn't too fond of anything outside the grocery store getting into it (besides customers, of course). Leaves, dirt, mud, trash--anything that wasn't supposed to be in there would need to be cleaned up with haste. And who had to do that job? Well, Kieran. He'd been working at the store for a long time, and did a variety of jobs due to the small size, so cleanup duty naturally fell under his job requirements.

Not like he minded, though. He didn't mind a lot of things, so this was just another thing he just had to do and was fine with doing. Mopping the floor, stocking shelves, checking customers out... None of it bothered him.

So when his boss told (demanded) him to go out and rake up the leaves because they "were an eyesore" and "could get inside and then we'd (you'd) have to clean that up as well," Kieran went to go get the rake from the cleaning closet and do his job.

Now, the raking part wasn't exactly difficult. Just go out there, shuffle the leaves around and away from the entrance or into a garbage bag, and then deal with the aftermath. Nothing hard there. The real hard part was for Kieran to stay focused on the task.

Usually, with any other task, he could just zone out and do it automatically. But with raking up the fall leaves... Something just triggers in him that makes it impossible for him to focus solely on getting it done.

Maybe it's the beauty of the changing colors from green to vibrant and warm shades of orange, red, and yellow.

Maybe it's the satisfying crunch of the leaves whenever he accidentally steps on them or rakes them into the bag.

Or maybe it's just because there's a lot more things going on outside of the grocery store than in it, and he's just getting overwhelmed by all the senses.

Who knows, because Kieran certainly doesn't. All he knows is that he has to get this task done or else his boss will yell at him for "slacking off" and "being lazy even though the job isn't that hard to do."

Yeah... Kieran doesn't want to go through that rant again. The last time it happened, his boss managed to yell for 30 minutes at him, and anytime he seemed to space off or nod off (which was often), his boss would yell some more. Not a pleasant experience, and he had to actively take on more work than usual to placate his boss so that they would go back to normal. And granted, his boss's normal is still grouchy and rude, but angry grumblings are better than angry yelling any day of the week to Kieran.

So, to avoid all that hassle and to keep his boss somewhat happy, Kieran dutifully rakes up the leaves. And once he's thrown them away and declares it a job well done, he'll be able to go back inside and resume his regular duties.

...That is, of course, until the leaves inevitably fall down again, and he has to repeat the cycle of raking the leaves up, thinking about not wanting to get yelled at, and then going back to his usual job again.

But hey, at least he hasn't gotten fired yet, and he still gets a good enough paycheck to make up for the troubles of working at this grocery store. And that's good enough for Kieran to just keep going on.