Harsh Comunication

The shop sits on Palace Road and it’s been there for a few years. It’s a small place, mostly filled with glass counters and some shelves for mobile accessories. Every morning starts with the same routine, pulling up the heavy metal shutter and sweeping out the dust that blows in from the street. Palace Road is always busy, so there’s a lot of noise from the cars and motorcycles passing by. People come in mostly for recharges or to get a new screen guard put on their phones. Sometimes they just want to ask about why their battery isn’t holding a charge like it used to. We have a lot of different covers hanging on the walls, though the black and blue ones sell the most. Behind the counter, there is a small stool where I sit to work on the more fiddly repairs. I use a magnifying glass sometimes because the parts inside these new phones are getting smaller every year. The lighting is a bit yellow, but it’s enough to see what I’m doing. In the afternoons, when it gets hot, the fan on the ceiling makes a clicking sound but it keeps the air moving. Neighbors often stop by just to say hello or talk about the weather while they wait for their SIM cards to get activated. It isn’t a fancy setup, just a practical one that serves the people around here. By the time evening comes, the street gets even more crowded and we stay busy until it’s time to close up.