It was a cold rainy April day when Chardi Sodhi stopped at the restaurant he had been working at to check on his schedule. He had just gotten out of his Nursing Chemistry class and had enough time to stop in at The Italian Pantry before his next class. But, it still meant a sprint across campus to the nearest bus stop, which of course had no cover. So, he had to stand in the freezing rain until the bus rumbled up to the curb fifteen minutes late to take him into town. The restaurant was hopping with the lunch rush, but Chardi pushed past it all to get back to the kitchen and the little cork board tacked up outside the tiny office. The cramped office just barely held the owner's ancient dell tower PC and their precariously stacked paper files. It was Monday, so the new schedule was already be up and Chardi hoped his hours that week would be better than the last.
Chardi was constantly behind on all his bills. It had been a constant state of being since he turned 18, so he was used to it. But, he had been cutting it especially close the past few weeks. He had just given the entirety of his last week of pay to his roommate to cover his rent for the past month, but he was still behind on most of his other bills. His boss had been steadily cutting his hours back at the restaurant for months. Really, he should just get a new job, but he was so close to graduating. The hassle of having to learn a whole new job, learn a whole new set of faces, and a whole new set of skills felt like the most exhausting thing he could imagine.
He just wanted to squeak by with this shitty job until he could graduate and get a real fucking job that paid real big boy money.
Judging by the schedule that Chardi was looking at, that wasn't about to happen.
"Hey, Chardi! My favorite dish boy! What are you doing here? You're not on the schedule today," shouted a large tattooed man cheerily. He threw his arm around Chardi's shoulders, the sweat of his underarms fragrant and damp against Chardi's shoulder. He tried not to tense up and failed.
"Yeah, I'm barely on the schedule at all," Chardi snapped, still staring at the schedule.
Two days. They gave him two days next week at only six hours a shift. That was twelve hours. He didn't even have money for food that week, how was he going to pay his rent or anything with twelve hours of pay?
"Ah, yeah, it's too bad," said Ray, the head chef. He was a handsome guy, with a thick head of dark slicked back hair and lean muscled arms and a perpetual five o'clock shadow. "With Gregor just starting and Mika not ready for line cook yet, it's tough to balance all three of you. Once Mika is shifted all the way over to line cook, your hours will pick up."
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"You've been saying that for weeks," Chardi growled, shrugging Ray's arm off his shoulders. "Why the hell did you hire a new guy before you moved Mika?"
Ray's face darkened. "Why the hell do you care?" Ray asked with a wrinkle of his nose as he looked down at Chardi. "You can't tell me you won't be out of here the second that you graduate. With you leaving soon and Mika taking on a new role, I need to get my new guys trained up."
Chardi felt his face going red with frustration, but tried to bite it back. He needed this job, he reminded himself. But, his anger was burning bright, a familiar feeling of outrage and violence that he had struggled with since adolescence.
He clenched his teeth and tried to breathe through his nose. "But, I'm not graduated yet. And, I can't pay my bills with these hours, Ray."
Ray shrugged, the distaste smoothing out of his face as if it was never there. "Talk to Barb, I guess," he shrugged. "She handles all the scheduling." With that Ray swanned off back into the kitchen, already shouting at someone to watch the fryer.
Chardi clenched and relaxed his fists over and over, he counted backward in his head, he focused on the feeling of his scratchy wool jacket against his neck, of the sounds of stainless steel utensils clanging against pots and pans in the kitchen. Slowly, his rage receded, as steadily and reliably as it always did once he had a second to work on willing it away. What took its place was a feeling of sickness and desperation.
Charging through the back door, Chardi threw himself back out into the cold wet midday gloom. The biting cold of the air outside was a welcome relief from the smell of fried food and the constant cacophony of the kitchen behind him. But, it didn't solve any of his problems.
Sitting down on the stone steps leading down to the alley behind the restaurant, Chardi ignored the feeling of rain seeping into the seat of his pants. He put his head in his hands and tried to breathe. This time, trying to work through the steadily building nausea in his stomach rather than uncontrollable rage.
He had nothing in the bank. He wouldn't even make it through the end of the week. Even once he got paid, it would be a little bit of nothing against the mounting past due notices he was accumulating. He could promise his roommate he would pay him back once he graduated, but he was on such thin ice already that he had little hope that he would hear him out. Despairingly, Chardi started thinking about sleeping in the college library, showering at the gym, storing changes of clothes in his backpack. He was no stranger to living rough, but it had been a few years since he had had to.
He had hoped college would be a new chapter in his life and in a lot of ways it was. But, if anything, his life felt more uncertain than it ever had while he was in foster care.
