“Can I get a glass of beer?”

You can get a glass of shut the fuck up.

“Sure,” I say, giving the guy at my bar a wide smile even though I would rather throw the beer in his face. I’m on hour nine of a ten-hour shift, and my boss has been up my ass the entire time.

I just want to go home, smoke a joint, and play Call of Duty until I pass out in a pile of Cool Ranch Dorito crumbs.

I take a deep breath as I grab the beer from the fridge and hand it over. “Eight dollars.”

The guy peels off a ten from his fat wad of cash and slides it across my bar. I grab the bill and wait a few awkward seconds, hoping that he’ll say keep the change, but he just stares at me with big stupid eyes.

Ugh. I hate this job.

“Here’s your change,” I say with a big smile as I give him his two dollars. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a quarter and a dime. He tosses it on the sticky bar and leaves with his beer without saying another word.

“Asshole,” I mutter under my breath as I grab the shitty tip.

Just when things are going bad, my boss comes over to make it even worse.

“Can I get cut?” I ask, staring at him with hopeful eyes.

He rolls his eyes as he walks past me, ignoring my question.

“Asshole,” I mutter again when he’s out of earshot.

He stops and turns. Uh-oh. It’s never a good sign when his shoulders tense up like that.

“What’s this doing here?”

“Huh?” I turn to see where he’s pointing and take a breath of relief. For a second, I thought he found my stash of weed that’s hidden behind the bar.

“What’s that bottle doing out?” He walks over to the shelves of alcohol and grabs the old dusty tequila bottle off of the counter.

“I was just cleaning up,” I say with a shrug. I can’t tell him the truth because I pocketed the cash for the two Lucky 7s.

He holds the bottle up to the light and inhales sharply.

“What’s the matter?” I ask, feeling my heart start to race. I hate this job, but it’s all I have. I really don’t want to get fired.

“This expired four years ago,” he says, turning the bottle of Insane-O Worm-O Tequil-O around in his hands. “Look, the worm disintegrated. It turns into a narcotic and becomes toxic when it decomposes. It can really fuck someone up. Did you serve this to anyone?”

I swallow hard as I look down the bar to the place where the good-looking guy who left me a huge tip was sitting. The stool is empty.

“No.”

My eyes dart across the bar to the hot girl who was dressed like a sexy librarian—the uptight one with the fax machine up her ass. She was with him and had a drink of that poison too. I gulp when I see her at a table full of corporate drones, throwing her hands in the air and singing show tunes.

“No one?” my boss asks, eying me closely.

I shake my head. “No one.”

“Are you sure?”

I glance at her one more time and cringe when I see her with her shoe pressed against her face, talking into it like it’s a phone. The people around her look very confused.

“I’m sure, boss.”

He shakes his head as he takes the bottle and looks at the dusty shelves. “Go through the rest of the bottles and see what else is expired. I told you to do that last week.”

He walks away mumbling something about how nobody listens to him or something like that. I’m not really listening.

I’m too busy watching the librarian chick as she runs out of the bar with one shoe on her foot and one shoe on her ear.

Oh, well. I hope she doesn’t die.

I crack open a beer when my boss heads in the back and then duck down behind the bar to take a sip.

One hour to go.

Fuck, I hate this job.