She was a head bobber.
She took a breath.
She was done burying herself in small, polite movements. From now on, she would shake her head. Even if it meant standing still. marks head bobbers serina
At 6:47 PM, three minutes before her break, a man appeared. He wasn't like the other customers. He didn't have a basket of ready meals or the frantic look of someone buying flowers before going home to apologize. He was tall, gaunt, and wore a long grey coat despite the July heat. He placed nothing on the counter. He just looked at her.
It wasn't an official title. It was the cruel nickname the floor managers used on their headsets. “We’ve got a slow patch on cheeses. Send a head bobber.” Serina knew this because once, Gareth from Bakery had left his earpiece on the counter. She heard her own description: “Reliable. Good for a nod. Makes the customer feel listened to without actually having to solve anything.” She was a head bobber
“Excuse me,” he said. His voice was quiet, like radio static.
Her only escape was the stockroom. A concrete box of stacked pallets and the industrial hum of the walk-in fridge. She’d take off her visor, lean against a tower of Percy Pig plushies, and pull out her phone. On the screen was her other life: SerinaDraws . A digital artist. Her world was filled with soft, melancholic women with flowers growing from their eyes and wolves sleeping in their ribcages. She had twelve followers. One of them was her mum. From now on, she would shake her head
The fluorescent light seemed to dim. The fridge hum shifted into a lower, more intimate key.
