Work Text:
.
.
.
.
.
Three weeks into his new job, and Zoro knows: he hates doing customer service.
Maybe working a minimum wage retail job would be more bearable if he wasn’t working at this emo-ass shop. (Hot Wheels, or whatever. Zoro actively avoids looking at the storefront sign when he comes in for his shift, just because he isn’t sure he can take the undignified reminder of (1) working in an emo shop, (2) working in an emo fashion shop, and (3) working in an emo fashion shop owned by his long-time self-declared rival Mihawk. How the fuck is the god-like fencing champion in their neighbourhood also a retail business owner. Zoro doesn’t even want to know.) If it weren’t for the fact that his pockets contain little more than miscellaneous bits of string and crumpled up receipts—the receipts aren’t even his, they’re from all his friends, do they just hand him their receipts when there’s no garbage can around? More importantly, why does he even take them?—he wouldn’t even be at this job, but as it stands, that’s the reality, so here he is. Last week he had to borrow money from Luffy to get a burger, that’s how tragic this has gotten. But Zoro really, truly fucking hates working minimum wage retail. It sucks. It sucks so fucking much.
Moodily, Zoro flicks a piece of lint across the cashier counter he’s stuck manning for the next few hours. So far, the shifts Mihawk assigns him are always non-rush hour, presumably to give Zoro the space to learn the ropes without fucking anything up. But this means that Zoro never has anything to do. He flicks the lint again.
A pair of scissors jams down just slightly left to where his finger used to be.
‘Will you stop that,’ Perona snaps. ‘I could feel your sulking from the other side of the store!’
‘Jesus Christ, woman,’ Zoro yells, staring at where the pair of scissors are stuck upright into the wood of the counter. ‘What the hell are you trying to do, cut my finger off?’
Perona rolls her eyes. ‘Oh, please,’ she scoffs. ‘I wasn’t going to actually maim you. Now hurry up and help me with unpacking and labelling the new shipment of clothes that just arrived.’
Grumbling, Zoro hauls ass and gets to his feet. He yanks the scissors out along the way.
When they unpack the boxes, however, it turns out the new items that just arrived are not clothes, but instead dozens and dozens of different kinds of Sanrio merchandise.
‘Omg, these are sooooo cute!’ Perona squeals, picking up a Badtz-Maru plushie and cuddling it. ‘Are we selling these now?’ Meanwhile, Zoro has picked up a hairband with Cinnamoroll ears perched atop it and is squinting dubiously at it.
‘Ah, I see the new shipment of merchandise I ordered has arrived,’ a voice says from behind them.
Zoro yelps and whirls around to find their boss—and Zoro’s long-time eternally declared rival— standing behind them. When did he leave the STAFF ONLY door. When did he walk up behind them. Fuck, is he a ghost?
Meanwhile, Perona doesn’t even bat an eye. Are goth people just like this. ‘I didn’t know you liked this sort of thing, Mihawk!’ Perona gushes.
‘I don’t.’ Mihawk is unmoved. ‘But it seems like they sell well, so I thought it prudent for our store to have some for business.’
‘And how… do you know that?’ Zoro asks, carefully. He is almost afraid to find out. But he has to ask. He has to.
Mihawk turns his unnervingly unblinking stare to his direction. ‘I did some on-the-ground market research with the plushie stores around here.’
As Zoro tries to work through the jaw-dropping cognitive dissonance that is Dracule Mihawk standing in the middle of like, a Build-A-Bear, Mihawk adds, ‘also I did some googling.’
‘That doesn’t seem like a very sound business strategy,’ Perona says, haughty.
Mihawk turns his car headlights gaze to Perona. ‘Is that so?’ He says. ‘Perhaps then I’ll simply return these.’
‘What? No!’ Perona swoops down over a box of plushies as though they could hear. ‘They’re too cute to send back! We have to keep these.’
‘I doubt you’re the one who gets to make that call,’ Zoro snorts.
Perona sticks a tongue out in Zoro’s direction.
‘I would like to have these up in a display by this afternoon, please,’ Mihawk says. ‘Somewhere that can be seen from the entrance, but not right at the entrance so as to lure them in.’
Lure them in. Jeez. With the way he talks you’d think he was talking about something more sinister than a cutesy Japanese-chara display.
Whatever Zoro is feeling must be showing up on his face because Mihawk narrows his eyes at him.
‘I trust that you are more than capable of handling the display by yourself, Zoro?’ He asks.
He sweeps away before Zoro can even respond.
‘I can’t put up the whole display by myself!’ Zoro splutters. ‘There’s so much of all this!’
Perona cackles. ‘Serves you right. You should know better than to let your thoughts show around Mihawk. He’s fucking psychic, I swear.’
Zoro turns to look at Perona desperately.
‘Sorry, I don’t think I’m the one to make that call,’ she says, sweetly. Zoro snarls, and swipes at her. ‘But don’t worry! As you’re working I shall be right next to you the entire time, offering necessary and much needed moral support. I might even chip in an idea or two, if I feel like it. Ooh! What if we had three of these plushies right at the top of the display, to represent the three of us?
‘Badtz-Maru is me, obviously, because it’s the cutest! We can give it a little pink clip for my hair, or something. Mihawk can be Kuromi, since that’s the only other black plushie in the pile. And as for you—’
Perona snatches up a Keroppi from one of the opened boxes and shoves it into Zoro’s face. Zoro jerks back.
‘You can be this one. Look, it matches your hair!’
‘I fucking hate it here,’ Zoro tells Keroppi.
.
.
.
As if the world has not inflicted enough damage. Another one shows up.
‘Oh my god,’ Nami says. ‘This is like, the best day of my life?’
Zoro scowls at her. ‘Are you actually here to be a customer, or just to make my goddamn life miserable?’
‘Why can’t it be both?’ Nami replies smartly, waltzing her way over to where Zoro is. ‘Unlike you, Zoro, with your single-minded stupidity, I’m capable of doing two things at once.’
Zoro growls under his breath. But he’s already on thin ice with Mihawk for scaring away two customers this week (in his defense, one was an accident), so he can’t do much but let his long-time friend and thorn in his side peer with interest at the row of silver charm bracelets displayed at the counter.
Perona floats by holding a stack of denim cut-offs. ‘A friend of yours?’ She asks.
‘Bane of my existence, more like,’ he says flatly.
Perona rolls her eyes. She does that a lot with him, he’s noticed. Zoro hopes it makes her dizzy. ‘Well, regardless of what she is, did you greet her properly for coming into the store?’
Nami tilts her head. There’s a gleam in her eye.
‘Yeah, Zoro, aren’t you going to welcome me into the store?’ She asks gleefully.
See, Zoro’s an atheist, because shit like this has proven to him that there is no just and fair god in this world.
‘Welcome,’ he intones through gritted teeth, ‘to the store. May I help you with anything?’
Nami clicks her tongue even as her grin widens to Cheshire-cat-like proportions.
‘Weak on the delivery, but given that I wasn’t expecting a greeting at all, I’ll let it slide,’ she says. ‘Anyway, I’m just browsing for now, so all’s good, little clerk!’
She has the gall to pat him on the head, before flouncing off. Zoro narrows his eyes at her. Then sputters as denim is plopped onto his head.
‘What!’
‘Your friend doesn’t seem much like the type to be shopping in a place like this,’ Perona comments, pushing down on the pile of clothes on Zoro’s head with a chin propped up with one hand. ‘She’s too…preppy.’
‘Just because you dress like a little freak—’
‘My fashion sense is impeccable, how dare you! And don’t you forget who got you this job in the first place! Anyway, that’s not what I wanted to talk about. Be a dear and take these to the front display, will you?’ Perona coos. ‘I’m gonna take my break now.’
Zoro gapes. ‘You can’t take your break after you put these down?’
‘Nope! Because I just realised the special deal on frappuccinos at the café here closes in ten minutes instead of forty, and I’d rather die than not try their latest creation.’
And before Zoro can even come up with a retort, Perona’s gone, speeding out of the store so fast it’s a wonder her platform-booted feet aren’t levitating above the ground.
Zoro sighs. There has been way too much standing and walking for his taste for what was supposed to be a non-rush-hour shift. It took him three whole hours alone to make that stupid Sanrio display. Further proof that retail work sucks and is a lie.
After Zoro puts away the cut-offs, he wanders off to find Nami. She’s flitting from rack to rack, holding up one item of clothing to her torso or legs occasionally and frowning down at herself. Without much else to do, Zoro just follows her around.
‘Wow, your sense of customer service is really bad,’ Nami says, after about ten minutes of this behaviour. ‘Didn’t they teach you it’s bad to pressure customers like this?’
‘Like what.’
‘Like with all this hovering. Especially when added with—’ Nami gestures to Zoro’s entire being.
‘The hell am I supposed to do about it?’
‘Well, you could start by—’
Nami pauses, and gives him a long, appraising glance.
‘You know what? You’re right. Sorry I mentioned it!’
Only Nami could make a cheerful acquiescence sound somehow even more offensive. Zoro wants to bite her.
‘Don’t even think about it. I’ll tell on you to the rest, and where will you be?’
‘Tch. Whatever.’
‘So how’s the part-time job treating you?’
‘Sucks.’ Zoro growls. ‘Mihawk runs this place.’
‘So we’ve all heard.’ Nami cuts him a glance. ‘Why not take this as a learning opportunity? Find the chance to ask him his secrets to being great at fencing, or something.’
‘How,’ Zoro says flatly, ‘would that topic ever come up.’
Nami shrugs.
‘I dunno. That part’s gonna have to come from you, you know it the best. I could help you think, but I charge for that kind of service, you know?’
‘Don’t even. I owe you enough money as is.’
‘ So glad to be doing business with you, as always. Oooh, this is cute!’ Nami squeals, pulling out a pink tank top with a studded rhinestone butterfly on the front so sparkly it fucking hurts Zoro’s eyes to even look at it. ‘Does it come in my size? Great! I’ll take it—of course, I expect there’s a friends’ discount?’
‘There isn’t a friends’ anything. Don’t get your hopes up.’
Nami rounds on him, wagging a finger. ‘You’re telling me that you don’t have a special employees’ discount? And that you won’t use it for your bestest friend ever?’
‘Mihawk told me not to use that discount for anybody but myself.’ Though it’s not as if he would ever buy anything from this store. The one time he thought he’d found a normal pair of black jeans, turns out it had zippers at the crotch. ‘Also, “bestest friend ever”? What are we, eight?’
Nami’s eyes narrow.
‘What’s more important to you, Zoro,’ she says, sweetly, ‘this job or our enduring, wonderful bond of friendship?’
Zoro glances between Nami and the STAFF ONLY . He knows it’s crazy, but he swears Mihawk is looking right through the dinky plastic to stare daggers at him. A man less than him perhaps would be feeling panic right now. As it stands, all he feels is irritation.
‘Stuck between a witch and a bitchy place,’ he mutters out loud. ‘Just my luck.’
‘Did you just call me a bitch?’ Nami gasps, affronted.
‘I called you a witch. Though honestly the other term applies too.’ Zoro smirks.
‘That was very patriarchal of you. Now you owe me the discount, for your slight against me and womankind everywhere. Including your very nice co-worker!’
‘No.’
Without ceremony, Nami turns on her heel, and knocks over the cardboard display of new Sanrio merch Zoro had painstakingly set up at the start of his shift. Zoro lunges to save the situation.
‘You—!’
‘Gee whiz Zoro, that sure looks bad!’ Nami says, skipping away. ‘I won’t bother you while you’re putting that all back together. I’ll just go ahead and check this item out for myself, ’kay?’
Zoro, with his hands full of Hello Kitty hairclips and Pompompurin keychains, can’t do anything but just stand there. ‘No, stop— wait— how would you even know how to use the cash register, dammit—’
By the time Zoro is done putting the display back together (decidedly more wonky than it was before, with a suspicious dent to one of its legs at the back), Nami’s long gone.
At the same time, Perona strolls back in through the storefront, twenty minutes over her allotted break-time, drinking up a large iced blended coffee. ‘Damn, what happened?’ She asks, eyeing the display.
Nami left a piece of paper tucked in the corner of the cash register, which, upon unfolding and inspection, ends up being the printed receipt for one sparkly butterfly tank top. She’d applied a sixty-percent discount to her purchase. Zoro hadn’t even known that existed as an option. At the bottom of the receipt, she’s written #FEMINISM next to where a signature should be.
Zoro curses. This shit’s going to be cut out of his paycheck.
.
.
.
.
.