My Fearless Leader | Leonardo x Reader

It's Brutal Out Here

Second POV

"Is there someone... other than you that can take my order?"

You smile at the genius across the counter from you. The guy who ordered an unnecessarily complicated meat lovers pizza with no pepperoni or bacon, plus peppers, olives and onions. Because that made sense. "If there were, I wouldn't be here taking your order." You answer in a thin voice that treads the line between cheery and threatening. "$16.11."

You rip his receipt with his order number from the printer. The next customer immediately replaces him, and for the millionth time you wish you could take a breather after struggling through the vast order screen, but a long line is still stretching across the floor all the way by the doors.

As much as you tried not to, you were getting stressed out. It turns out two of your coworkers have the flu so they called out last minute, which is why your manager just put you on registers up front—all by yourself—since the rest of the front of house team was missing.

Not only did you have struggle through taking everyone's orders when you've never done it by yourself, you had to handle the already-seated customers that would come interrupt, asking for something because there were no napkins left at the lobby counter or the soda machine had gone flat or whatever their complaint was.

And because the orders were going through so slowly on your end, the pizzas were coming out faster. And every time you had to step away from a new customer and call out the food, nobody heard you through the loud overlap of conversations and complaining and loud children and Christmas music playing through the speakers. It's gotten to the point you were falling behind on getting the food out so it was just sitting there in the opening between the kitchen and up front, about to get cold. You can mainly hear customers in the line who are waiting to put in their order and the ones out in the lobby waiting on their food all complaining because they're waiting longer than they usually have to, and the constant rise in volume was starting to put you on edge.

Another toll of the bell rang as more people come in and the noise had you ready to rip the thing off the door. That is, until you walked back to the order monitor and saw it was Camila who entered.

"Uhhh what is happening in here?"

"Oh my god Camila save me from this hell." You beg as she walks behind the counter.

"Where is everyone el–" she jumps when you grab her by the shoulders.

"Camila if you care about me at all as a person you will help me."

"What is going on? Why's it so busy–and how come you're the only one up here?"

"Oh it's not busy, I'm just the only one taking orders and handing out food right now." You explain with the strained smile of someone about to lose it.

Her face reflects the exact level of confusion it should as she hurriedly takes her coat off. "Why would they have you up here without someone else?"

"Because Jake still has the flu and now Angela has it, too! But it wasn't even that busy till like half an hour ago and now Julia left me up here to take orders because she's trying to fix one of the oven's in the back and I'm getting just a liiiiiittle overwhelmed," you explain, laughing in a high voice that clearly indicates you're not about to snap at all.

"Ooh," Camila grimaces and takes her layers off faster, hanging her stuff in the back wall. "And how has it been with just you up here?"

"Well it takes me forever to put in any complicated order and everyone has a complicated order today, we're getting low on everything out in the lobby, there's no one running out people's food and–HEY!" You turn towards one of the closer tables seating a family whose three year old hasn't stopped wailing for the last five minutes. "Shut your kid up before I do!"