At the small hardware store in Belize City the owner saw me shopping and waved me into his office. When he got off the phone he said, “Good morning, Mr. Dennis. How is life in San Pedro?”
“It’s good Abram. How is business?”
“It’s almost too good,” he said. “I say that because I can barely hire enough qualified workers to keep the doors open. I run advertisements in the newspapers, and I have a sign in the window saying, ‘Help Wanted,’ too. I interview eight or ten a day but very few of them have any experience or knowledge of the hardware business.”
The store cashier came into the office and said, “Abram, another young lady for an interview, you want her to wait?”
“Send her in,” Abram said. To me, he said, “This won’t take long, I’m sure.”
After the young lady introduced herself and took a seat, Abram said, “Now Shanice, this job requires a certain amount of responsibility.”
“Don’t worry about that, Mr. Abram,” she said. “On my last job, every time something goes wrong, they say I’m the one was responsible.”
“Will you be able to handle a lot of different kinds of work?”
“Oh, yes,” Shanice said. “I had seven jobs in the last ten months.”
Abram sighed and then asked, “Do you know anything about hardware?”
“I worked at the computer store for two weeks selling software. Maybe it’s not much difference.”
Abram sighed again and shook his head.
“Miss Shanice,” he said. “Do you even know the difference between a bolt and a screw?”
“Not really,” she said. “I ain’t never been bolted.”
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