Shop Talk

Toby and I had one thing in common right off the bat. We both hated our jobs. He was the assistant manger of a convenience store and I was one of his cashiers. We both worked second shift along with another cashier but it was never the same person every night. Second shift was always hectic in our store. Most of the time we had to play catch up from day shift and we definitely had higher customer volumes than day shift because I had worked day shift and didn’t have to run around like a chicken with my head cut off as much as I did on second shift.

Although our shift was insane most of the time, we did have our quiet times and Toby and I loved it. It gave us the chance to joke around and talk about whatever was on our minds. Nothing was taboo, especially sex. Nearly everyone talks about sex at work but I didn’t have to worry about Toby sexually harassing me because he was gay. That didn’t bother me at all. He was my best friend and I was proud to call him that. Of course his sexual preference didn’t stop me from teasing him mercilessly that he had to help me lose my virginity before I was thirty. My being a virgin at twenty-six was one of the running gags in the store especially since everyone knew I didn’t talk like one.

One night, another male coworker, Billy, walked in and started talking to Toby and me about all the fun he had at a local strip club. I was on my lunch break and as I listened to Billy, talk, I fumed. When men wanted to have some fun, they could go to the strip clubs and brothels but where could women find entertainment?

‘Get some toys,’ Billy answered with a smirk.

‘No, I don’t think they’re very satisfying,’ I mumbled. ‘I honestly think someone should open a male whorehouse.’

‘A male whorehouse’ Hey, Toby!’ he called, ‘come here and listen to Beth’s crazy idea.’

‘Listen to what crazy idea?’ Toby asked, poking his head into the office.

‘I want to open a male whorehouse. I mean, think about it Toby. Guys can go to the strip joints for some fun and whorehouses to get girls but where can women go? Nowhere!’
Toby grinned. I knew he would like it. ‘Yeah, but is it going to be just a whorehouse, or are you gonna have another business running along with it? You’d get a lot of customers, that’s for sure.’

‘Yeah, Toby. What do you say we open one? I’ll run it. You can find me the guys and help me pick the name because I have no idea what I would want to call it.’

‘Beth’s Playhouse?’ he suggested and laughed.

While Toby was thinking this was just another joke, I was serious. I really did think we needed a classy brothel so that the lonely women of the city could find some entertainment of their own and so would guys like Toby too for that matter. I wasn’t discriminating if the place made me filthy rich.

‘No. We need to come up with a name that isn’t so obvious, Toby and a business on the lower floor that the cops wouldn’t think is a cover for a whorehouse.’

‘Like what?’ Billy asked.

‘A restaurant maybe?’

Billy chuckled. ‘Yeah. All you can eat upstairs and downstairs!’

We all started laughing so hard that our faces were red and we had tears in our eyes. Toby leaned against the doorframe to keep himself from falling on the floor and rolling around laughing. Brent, who was on the sales floor walked into the office to find out what was so funny.

‘Beth wants to open a male whorehouse with a restaurant on the bottom floor,’ Billy told him.

‘Uh oh. Stay the heck away from me then!’ he said as he tried to contain his own chuckles. He, Toby and I walked back out onto the sales floor, returning to our dour demeanors as the store began to fill with customers. The joking was over for tonight and it was back to business as usual.

But I couldn’t get my idea out of my mind. Toby was scheduled for his vacation the following week and I wanted to talk to him about it before he left, outside the store of course. I knew he had been saving money for years so that he could start his own business and his credit was good, as was mine. I was sure that we could get a small business loan to open a restaurant. We both had enough food service experience from previous jobs and he had the management skills we needed to operate one. As far as the house was concerned, I knew we would both would be very particular about which men would work well for us and which ones wouldn’t.

‘You’re really serious about this Beth?’ he asked me while we sat on his porch later the next afternoon. We both had the night off and this was as good a time as any to talk to him before he left for his vacation. ‘I thought you were joking.’

‘I’m not Toby. Do you want to be stuck in a dead end job the rest of your life’ I sure as hell don’t. We could staff the restaurant with some of the people from the store. They don’t even need to know what’s going on upstairs. We could get the guys from anywhere. College kids will do almost anything to pay their tuition. We could start there first.’

‘This is gonna cost a lot of money to start out Beth. I have some in the bank and so do you, but we’ll need a loan to buy the property, fix it up, and furnish it and all that good stuff.’

‘I’m willing to give it a shot if you are. If it doesn’t work out, we’ll just have to go back to the store, little as we might like it.’

‘Once I get out of there Beth, I intend to stay out. It’s a crazy idea and probably an expensive one but if it works it’ll be worth our while. Okay Beth, let’s give it a try.’

‘You won’t regret it, Toby. I promise!’ I cried as I embraced him.
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Shortly after Toby returned from his vacation, he and I drove around looking for our house and restaurant and found them on the outskirts of the city, right along the highway. We sat there for three hours, counting how many cars passed by them and there were a lot of them. Both buildings were in good condition on the outside but once the real estate agent took us we were inside, we saw that they needed some work done to them, but not much thank God. We had scrapped the idea of having the house and restaurant in the same building because we ran the risk of someone finding out about all the activity on the upper floors sooner than we wanted them to. If I lived in the house, no one would suspect a thing.

The bank agreed to give us a small loan to get started and Toby and I checked into small business grants. We still worked at the store but spent the hours before our shift started getting the restaurant fixed up. One of our former co-workers now owned his own construction business we hired him to do most of the repairs to the restaurant and house. As for the inside, Toby and I did most of the furnishing and decorating ourselves. We were always exhausted before we went to the store but we believed all the hard work we were doing was well worth it. Once the restaurant was ready to open, we started talking about who wanted to hire and put our notices in at the store. Most of our staff we chose from second and third shift at the store. The day shift people called off constantly and didn’t want to work when they were at the store. We were better off without them.

When we finally opened the restaurant, it wasn’t a success right away but we started gaining more and more customers through word of mouth. In three months we were making enough money that we could get started on our most ambitious project’my house of pleasure.
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When you walk into a convenience store after what seems to be its quiet time and see the salespeople laughing, have you ever found yourself wondering just what they were laughing at. Shop Talk is one answer to this question. Once you read this, I’m sure you’ll never look at a convenience store clerk the same way again. And in case you’re wondering’yes I am a convenience store clerk and yes there is a sequel to this story in the works’Charlotte