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“A pig?”
“An emotional-support pig,” I said, reading the message. “His owner’s out of town. He has an automatic feeder and water bowl. My whole job is to open the hot tub and sit there while he swims for an hour.”
“Are you serious?”
“I am very serious. Look.” I scrolled up the thread to show him the picture I’d sent the owner yesterday. It was a pink hundred-and-fifty-pound pig in a Jacuzzi.
He was shaking his head. “Where do you find these jobs?”
“Online city groups,” I said, putting my phone away.
“What else have you done?” he asked.
“Lots of stuff. I’m a mystery shopper.”
“Really? What does that pay?”
“It depends. Once I took a job where I had to walk into a candle store and report back if they greeted me. That was it. Ten dollars. Sometimes you get free food if it’s a food place. You have to pay for the food up front and they reimburse you, which I don’t like, but I do get the money back. Sometimes all they want is pictures of things.”
“Of what?” He swatted away a bee.
“Whatever they’re selling. Like they want you to go into a makeup store to photograph the perfumes or something.”
“Why would they want that?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe to see if their product is being merchandised correctly? I’m also doing the snackle boxes again now that the ice is off the lakes.”
“And those are?”
“Tackle boxes with snacks in them. Cheese, candy, pickles, meat. They’re popular for fishing season. It’s a thing I’ve been doing for a few years. Want to see a picture?”
“Yes.”
I pulled up the social media page I used for my little business and showed him.
He stopped walking to look at it. “Wow. That’s cool.” He swiped up to the top of the page. “You have four thousand followers,” he said, sounding impressed.
“Yeah. I had a timelapse video go viral. See? It’s the pinned one.”
I studied him while he watched it.
“You could do this full-time,” he said, handing me back my phone.
“No, not really. It’s seasonal,” I said, putting my cell back in my pocket. “Also, it’s boring. I’m just putting snacks in compartments. It’s not exactly something you want to do for forty hours a week.”
He nodded. “I get that. So I’m guessing the thing with your dad never came off your credit, then?”
“No. I think I’m going to end up paying it—at least the part of it I can’t get the collections agencies to waive.”
We walked in silence a moment.
“Why not serve at a better restaurant?” he asked. “I mean, I love Donna’s, but you could probably rake it in somewhere more upscale.”
I blew a breath out through my nose.
I hated my job. But I couldn’t bring myself to quit, because if I did, I’d just be doing it to go do the same thing somewhere else. I wanted to leave to leave.
It wasn’t that I hated Donna’s exactly, I just didn’t want to wait on tables anymore. I’d been doing it since I was sixteen. I didn’t want to learn a new menu, didn’t want to do any of it. I was so burned out. My body was tired, my feet hurt all the time, I was sick of dealing with rude customers and waking up early or coming home late and smelling like french fries.
