Limited Oof.

[illirica]

Mina Claret had done two notable things this summer. One, she had become a supervillain. And two, she had gotten a part-time job. She guessed she was kind of a part-time supervillain, too, or maybe a supervillain in training. She hadn't done a whole lot of supervillaining, at least, not on purpose, but she had a cool name and a cool cape. Cloak? It had a hood, did that make it a cloak? She was not actually sure. It also was warm and had pockets. Supervillain Mina was very practical.

Regular Mina was, unfortunately, also very practical. Hence the summer job. If she told people she worked at the Infinity Gym, it sounded impressive. People were very impressed. This was probably because they assumed she was some sort of kickboxweightlifting instructor. This was not the case. Mina considered a full milk jug to be weightlifting. She was pretty well acquainted with kicking boxes, though, because they kept falling over back by the dumpster.

Mostly, Mina cleaned things. Gyms needed a lot of cleaning. So, she wandered around with a rag and a squirty bottle of... stuff. She had not asked what was in the squirty bottle, but it could not be worse than whatever else she was squirting it on. People, Mina had learned, were gross.

Her parents had been worried that Mina would... she was not sure what they were worried about, exactly, only that it seemed to involve the men's locker room. Mina had informed them that the quickest way to lose any interest whatsoever was to clean the men's locker room. Also, the women's locker room. People. Were. Gross.

Also, she frequently informed patrons that she was seventeen, actually, and was considering whether she should get a nametag that said that. "Hi My Name Is: Mina And I'm Seventeen You Gross Human." Gross in a different way than machine sweat gross.

But whatever, it was pocket money, and she got to buy all the new albums now, and no one cared if she listened to them at work. Her parents had made some comments about saving for college, but they were not nearly as fun to listen to as music.

Another patron wandered off, and Mina entered the room once again, armed with squirty bottle and humming along to the music. Not singing, though. Not that she couldn't. Just that those lyrics were definitely going to get her fired. And then she'd be down to only one accomplishment for the summer, and...

...Well, the supervillain thing still needed work. And the pay was awful.

 

[Phoenix]

Sam was having trouble keeping staff on. There wasn’t anything that seemed to be the exact problem– they said she paid well, they loved the environment, and that everyone was friendly. It just seemed to be that people were gross. Sam had an arrangement where everyone, even herself, took a turn at cleaning. This was to avoid overwhelming their two actually janitorial positions. Sam thought it was only fair that everyone put in the time to keep the place clean and running.

Unfortunately, not many others agreed with this.

So far, she’d had two instructors who had been signed on full-time and stayed after the first month. So at least she had that covered. In anticipation of their current receptionist leaving, Sam had hired a third “janitor”, so that she could train one of the other two to run the front desk. It might have been a little rude, but the face that they first saw when they walked into the gym needed to reflect the energy the gym had, and well. Marc was simply too tired and annoyed looking– though Sam knew it wasn’t his fault, this was the kid’s third job– to run the front desk.

That left Mina. Mina wasn’t a bad choice, Sam was just worried about subjecting the actual kid to whatever came through the front door. She had a strict policy about staff harassment, so if anything got particularly bad, Sam would kick the member out. She’d prefer not to have to do that, but it was what it was. People were gross sometimes.

As she finished up the self-defense class with the women that she hosted every week, she set off to find Mina. She wasn’t hard to find. She was a small person, one of the only small people in the gym. Her short wavy hair was noticeable from across the gym. Mina was noticeably pretty– it was part of the reason she wanted the girl at the front desk, but also one of the reasons she didn’t.

Well, right then, she needed someone she knew wasn’t going to quit.

“Mina! How are you doing today?”​

 

[illirica]

"Oh! Hi, Ms-" Shoot, what was her name? She'd said 'call me Sam' but were you actually supposed to do that with your boss? And Mina was supposed to know her name, right? It was on the paperwork and Mina had definitely signed the paperwork and it was probably in about twelve other places and not one of them was Mina's brain because she had no idea at this very moment. "Um, Sam."

Right. Play it cool. Like she'd meant to say that. Or, like she was saying that because Sam had said to call her Sam and not because of any other silly little reasons like not being able to remember her name, no, not that, definitely not that.

Mina slipped her headphones down around her neck - not that she'd had the volume up high, because then she wouldn't have heard the question, and gosh that would have been awkward - as opposed to this, which was also actually awkward. But! It was at least polite to take your headphones off when people were talking to you, at least according to Mina's mom, who was usually right about these things.

"Um, I'm doing pretty good? I think? There hasn't been anything too too gross today." Just the usual amount of gross. Tolerably gross? Wait, was she allowed to say things were gross? Because Ms - um, Sam - owned the place, and maybe she'd be offended? Except, like, she had to know, didn't she? You couldn't run a place like this and not know, unless you were, like, super oblivious. Sam wasn't super oblivious. Sam knew Mina's name.

Actually she'd just said 'Mina' so maybe she'd forgotten Mina's last name too? Probably not, but Mina could hope. No, wait, that wasn't a good thing to hope for. Bad. Bad idea.

"Did you need help with anything?"