Just as Rainbow Dash had closed the paper one of her fellow employees showed up. "Hey Dash!" Thunderlane said as he walked through the door. Thunderlane was on the soccer team at CHS. She knew him pretty well, considering, she was the captain of the soccer team, and every other sports team there.
"Hey Thunderlane, how's it going?" she asked nonchalantly.
"Pretty good. How about you?" he replied.
"Eh, same as usual." she said as bored as she could.
"Where's the manager? Isn't he supposed to be out here making sure we're actually doing something?" he asked with a grin pointing towards the newspaper Rainbow had just put back.
"Hey, I was bored! And don't lie, you totally mess around whenever you have the opening shift." Rainbow said with a slight laugh near the end.
"You still didn't answer my question." he said.
"I don't know, it's not like he actually does anything either." Rainbow Dash said.
"The only reason he has a job here is because his dad, couldn't find him a job anywhere else." Thunderlane said.
"Not surprised. But the owner is really strict on the rules here, and he doesn't follow any of them." Rainbow said.
"I know I tease you about being a bit lazy sometimes, but he's so much worse." said Thunderlane. "He's broken every rule in the book. He always makes it worse though by trying to get us in trouble for petty stuff." said Thunderlane angrily.
"I know, I couldn't tell you how many times I've almost gotten fired because of him!" she said clearly upset.
"I don't think he's the reason you were almost fired." Thunderlane said.
"Shut up." Rainbow said as she punched him slightly in the arm. At this moment the another one of the store's employees walked in.
"Hey guys, sorry I'm a little late. 'Didn't realize what time it was." said Fleetfoot. Fleetfoot was another student at CHS. She was on the soccer team with Rainbow Dash.
"Don't worry about it." said Rainbow Dash.
"What're you guys talking about?" Fleetfoot asked.
"The manager." Thunderlane said. After a bit of talking Fleetfoot looked at the clock.
"Hey it's about 10:15. We should start doing something, before he shows up."
"You're right. " Rainbow Dash said in reply.
"It doesn't really matter what we do, he's still gonna pretend we did nothing." said Thunderlane.
"I know, but we're gonna be in bigger trouble if he catches us just talking. Regardless of the fact that nobody's here and we did everything else already." Fleetfoot replied.
"What are we supposed to be doing if we did everything?" Thunderlane asked.
"You don't really have to do anything. You just gotta look like you're doing something and hopefully he won't say anything. I do it all the time, gets you out of a lot of bad situations with teachers." Rainbow Dash said.
They all began to pick up stuff like pens and paper, they tried opening the cash register a few times, and just doing things like that to look like they were busy. That's when the manager arrived...late. He walked in the store and Rainbow Dash, Thunderlane, and Fleetfoot all looked over at him. His hair was a mess, his shirt was unbuttoned, and the pants he was wearing looked old and baggy. He looked tired and drowsy; like he had just woken up and got out of bed in the morning. He didn't even say hello.
They all just simply looked at him in disbelief that he actually showed up for work like that. He wasn't even wearing his uniform. He immediately made his way to one of the registers in the store. Like most stores, at each of the cash registers they had a small section where people could pick out small snacks and candy. Although most of it was protein bars and fitness gimmicks, he took one off the shelf and began eating it in the middle of the store. None of them could believe what they were seeing.
"Did he actually just do that..?" Fleetfoot asked.
"Uh huh..." Thunderlane replied.
"And of course a minute before we open too." Rainbow added.
"Should we say something?" Thunderlane asked.
"I don't know, he could fire us." Fleetfoot said.
"Yeah but, he can't just do that." Rainbow Dash said. She began to walk towards him, bit terrified that she would lose her job over a granola bar. "Uh, excuse me?" She said timidly.
"Is there something wrong?" The manager said. As he spoke bits of food flew from his mouth and onto the floor. It was a little disgusting.
"Well, uh...we're kinda about to open and-uh well, you um.." Rainbow began stammering. She had lost all control over her body at this point. "What, I mean is, that you can't just take food from the shelves. It still costs money...and-" Rainbow was cut off.
"My dad owns this place and everything in it, including the food." He replied snarkily.
"Oh-um..well uh, the thing is, we have customers coming in soon and we kinda need food to still be there so people who are willing to pay for it can buy it." Rainbow said with a bit of annoyance. At first she was nervous, but by the end she was straight up pissed.
"Why don't you shut up, and go do your job." he replied. There he was stealing food and making a mess that, they would inevitably have to pick up, and he was telling her to get back to work. As much as she wanted to say something more, she thought it best to leave the conversation while she still could. She walked back over to where Thunderlane and Fleetfoot were sitting and sat down with them.
"We saw the whole thing...'sorry he said all that." Fleetfoot said after Rainbow sat down.
"Yeah, that wasn't cool. 'Guy's a jerk." Thunderlane said.
"It's whatever. I'm surprised I had enough willpower to walk away." Rainbow Dash said.
"Yeah, if it was me I probably would've still been over there yelling by now." Fleetfoot joked. That earned a few chuckles from the other two. A moment of silence passes after the laughter fades.
"So, what should we do now..?" Thunderlane breaks the silence.
"I mean, I have an idea but I don't think we should-" Fleetfoot gets cut off.
"What is it?" Rainbow asked. This time there was a bit of excitement in her voice. Whenever Fleetfoot had an idea it was always a fun a day.
"How would you like to get a little revenge on the manager?" Fleetfoot asked with a mischievous grin.
"What'd you have in mind?" Rainbow asked.
"Well, I was thinking...what if we maybe, sorta, kinda accidentally lock him in before we leave..?" Fleetfoot said with air quotes surrounding the word accidentally.
"That is maybe, one of you best ideas yet." Rainbow said.
"Yeah, and it's not like he can prove we did it on purpose. He's supposed to have a key with him at all times, but he never does so...we can just say we thought he had it with him. It'll be hilarious!" Fleetfoot replied.
"Sounds good to me." Thunderlane said.
"Yeah, I'm in." Rainbow said. So that was their plan. Lock him in at closing time. But there was still one question that remained in the air.
"Wait, he always leaves early because he's lazy. How'll we make sure he stays on time for us to leave?" Thunderlane asked.
"How about we change the clocks?" Rainbow suggested. There were two clocks in the store that were checked regularly by the manager because he recently broke his cell phone and was getting it repaired at the time. So of course he couldn't just look down at his screen whenever he wanted to know what time it was.
"That's a great idea!" Fleetfoot said. So the plan was set. By the near end of the day, they would change the clocks in the store to about an hour and a half earlier than usual. This would mean that when closing time came around they would be able to grab all their stuff and leave on time with the manager probably still napping. They knew he'd wake up around 15 minutes after they left and realize that he was locked in. That is, if they played their cards right. They didn't want to get caught messing around with the clocks; that would be bad.
After they all agreed on a plan they began to try to find something to do that was work related. Today was an unusually slow day. Normally a saturday would've been busy, but today it seemed like there was no one around. Rainbow decided to walk around the store and make sure that everything there was in the right place and that all the sales signs were in order. Slowly people began to come in.