As you dart into the entrance of Footlocker, dodging gigantic shoe boxes and monstrous feet, you're forced to navigate what feels like a forest of immense shelves and displays, each packed with mountainous shoes. The booming footsteps of customers are like thunder, and their conversations are deafening roars. The cold, imposing atmosphere of the store compounds your anxiety.
Your tiny frame zeroes in on the all-too-familiar, towering figure of Kayla. Her name tag, once easily overlooked at normal size, now gleams like a massive neon billboard. The once average-looking 18-year-old Footlocker employee now stands, to you, as a monument to teenage imperfections. Pores seem like craters, minor acne appears as grotesque mountains, and the faint smudges of yesterday's mascara resemble dark streaks across a vast horizon. She has a healthy, athletic build, her years of casual sports evident in her sturdy legs and somewhat broad shoulders. To your shrunken perspective, the curve of her calves, accentuated by the tight black Footlocker uniform pants, looks more like the sweeping landscape of rolling hills, and her feet in those snug, worn-out Nikes could easily pass for a pair of titanic battleships.
She’s busy fixing a display, strands of her imperfectly bleached blonde hair hanging lazily in her face. Her voice, complaining to a colleague about some customer, resonates with such volume that it makes your heart race even faster.
"God, why are some customers such a pain? I swear, if one more of them gives me a hard time over our return policy, I might just lose it," she declares with the kind of inflated angst only a teenager can muster.
Drawing in a shaky breath, you weigh your choices.