There are no sick-days at a pizza shop. There’s no allowance built into the schedule for valuable employees to not show up. If you’re sick, you either find someone to cover your shift or you are expected to drag your sorry ass into work and work. I tried to find someone to cover me — Sketchy’s been losing hours at his other job, no answer; Jamal lost his other job, but was job searching today, even if he’d answered, he wouldn’t have worked; Silent Bob was probably sleeping off his nightly acid hit, and his parents weren’t home to wake him up.

So I dragged myself into work. The good news is that I woke up with the sore throat gone, so I’m left with a rather intense sniffling, a somewhat severe case of rhinorrhea and a lack of my usual abundant energy. Today was slow — four runs, $11 in tips — and I spent most of the time in the back of the store washing dishes and folding boxes. Gary bought two new units to replace the aging sub and pizza-makelines. That was almost enough excitement (Gary don’t like to buy stuff) to get me over the hump of being sick … but not quite.

Bart Sr. and Bart Jr. stopped in for food at varying times during lunch. Apparently my car had frame damage. I found this out when Bart Sr. told me, “We just took it off the frame rack today.” The estimated return of my car was also cut by 1/3rd — I should have it back in about a week (which is very good news).

So I suffered through a three hour shift, and Gary got me out rather promptly. I ate a bannana. Yum. I’m going to go sleep on the couch for a few hours, then back to work I go.