Multi-tasking

I was outside at work a couple days ago condensing the vegetables, (which I enjoy more than you'd think,) and generally minding my own business when a customer stopped me and asked for some sort of flower. I know nothing about flowers and there wasn't anyone from that department on hand so I went to the hut where we station the outside garden cashier to use the in-store phone to call for help. That phone's a cheap cordless setup and it only works sometimes, so I asked the cashier on duty, whose name isn't important here, if it had been working.

"I don't know," she told me from the shade of her hut, "but I'm dehydrated."

We've had some trouble with heat exhaustion among employees in recent years, so we're all vocal about being smart and drinking enough water, so I wanted to be sympathetic and responsible, except that this particular cashier has a long and famous history of whining and begging for more breaks than what she's allotted, so I was skeptical.

"Have you been drinking your water?" I asked her.

"No, but I need a break."

Poor predicatble girl.

I didn't have the time for the circular non-conversation that was coming so I told her to call a head cashier and I went back to my veggies. Not five minutes later I glanced back toward the hut and saw her seated on a lawn chair in front of the hut in the sun rolling up the sleeves of her tee-shirt up above her deltoids and sprawling out to expose as much of herself to the sun as she could.

"You're not going to convince anyone like that," I said. "We're all of us pretty smart. Are you dehydrating or working on your tan?"

She didn't miss a beat and neither, apparently, did she see the problem with the answer she offered. The poor little airhead grinned and squinted against the sun and proudly announced, "I'm doing both."