The Kyler

From time to time I will have subs made at this grocery store deli by my house, usually when I’m tired from work or do not feel like rearranging my garage to access my grill.  There’s a mish-mosh of workers that man the deli/meat counter at the grocery store, but every time I go there lately, I only seem to get one guy that waits on me.  His name his Kyle R.  His friends and coworkers lovingly call him Kyler as in “Yo Kyler, makin a sub?” or “Kyler, wazzzup?”  He is taller than me and much younger, high school I think, and he’s working on a nearly complete mustache.  He’s got this cold stare that ruminates from two beady black eyes and skin that’s pale and populated with red and white pimples.  He is fat—not pretty.  From an outside view of Kyler, I like him.  I understand his awkward pain and his subtle rage towards the customer—the whole world even!  At first, the little things he does at the sandwich counter make me laugh.  For instance, he once ran his hands through his floppy hair and without gloves made a Club Sub.  Once, he dropped a whole loaf of bread on the ground and put it back on the cooling rack.  He shot me a smile, like yeah…I do that sometimes.  Things have been falling off lately though.  He’ll cough in his hands and continue crafting sandwiches.  When I asked for banana peppers last week, he looked down at the empty container that was filled with neon green juice, made a stop-gap cup out of his hand, filled his hand with the juice, and then dripped the juice over the top of my sub.  When I said “Really,” he looked at me and shrugged.  Hand to God he shrugged!  Yesterday though, everything changed.  This is what happened:

 I asked for two subs on white bread. “What kind of bread?” he said.  I said "white," again.  “On both?” he asked.  I said yes.  A manager-type lady was filling the chicken salad display to my left.  “What kind of cheese?” he said.  Provolone with extra provolone, I said.  “I have to charge you for the extra cheese,” he said.  The manager-type lady looks up and said “Kyler, we don’t charge for extra cheese here.”  He put the extra cheese on.  He finished my wife’s sub, and handed it to me, pushing it at me and dropping it before I could grab it—it fell into my basket.  When he was working on mine, I noticed the bread had seeds on the outside.  This is when things got dicey.  I asked what kind of bread he was using.  “Wheat,” he said.  I asked what kind of bread he used for the other sub.  “Wheat,” he said again.  “I ordered the subs on white bread,” I said.  It didn’t compute for Kyler.  “Did you hear me?” I asked.  “You said wheat,” he said.  I was horrified, but not totally surprised.  “I said white bread,” I repeated.  Now there was a short line forming behind me.  People were watching, I felt them.  Kyler rolled the sub up in the brown wax paper, not in the fresh sandwich wrapping paper, and he hands it to me nicely.  “You said wheat,” he said finally and moved to the next customer.  What happened next goes against everything I stand for, and I am not proud of my actions.  I walked up to customer service and I had a sit-down with the store manager.  I thought she would say, “oh, he’s on the school/work program” or “Kyler’s slow,” but the lady looked into my eyes and said horribly, “I’ll take care of it.”  As I was walking out with my groceries, I looked over and Kyler was laughing, he looked so happy.