Walking back to the registers, Midoriya found Bakugou on a register with an older gentleman loading his groceries on the conveyor belt.
"Stand at the end and bag for me, Deku," ordered Bakugou as he started to scan each item and slide them down the slick stainless steel surface. Catching each item, Midoriya swiftly bagged similar products together like he had learned through the computer-assisted training lessons he had to sit through during his orientation the week before. When several gallons of water slid down the line, Midoriya stopped.
"W-Would you like your water in bags?" Midoriya asked, his voice shaky during his first customer interaction. The condescending stare the older man gave him didn't build his confidence up at all.
"Don't you think that's just a little bit ludicrous? It has handles for a reason."
Remembering his training, Midoriya nervously replied. "Y-yeah, but we have to ask."
"And I'm sure some of those idiots say yes. Just leave them out." The rude customer focused his attention on sliding his card into the credit card machine as Bakugou bagged the rest of the groceries himself. Sliding a carton of eggs into a bag followed by a loaf of bread, once the man finished his transaction and put his wallet away, Bakugou held out the bag in one hand and the receipt in the other.
The old man snatched the receipt out of Bakugou's hand, and just as he reached for the bag, Bakugou let it go where it fell to the floor with a wet crash as broken egg whites and yolks started leaking at the guy's feet.
"What the hell? Why'd you drop my shit you little bastard?" the irate customer said as he tried to wipe the spattered egg off his dress pants. Panicking, Midoriya went to go look for paper towels.
"The bag has handles for a reason, pretty ludicrous of you not to use 'em."
Mouth drawn open at the audacity of the blonde in front of him, the customer snatched his bag of broken eggs and smashed bread off of the floor, threw them in his grocery cart, and stalked out.
"Kacchan! How could you do that? What if he complains to our manager?" Midoriya said as he busied himself cleaning up the mess next to the register.
"Deku, if you worry about what each of these sorry extras has to say, then you're not gonna last here very long. I just shamed that idiot so hard he won't even want to tell his wife why he's bringing home pre-made french toast in a bag," Bakugou said with a self-satisfied laugh at the end.
The rest of the morning involved Midoriya shadowing Bakugou at the register, learning how the scanner worked and eventually switching places to handle customers himself. It wasn't a very busy morning, which gave Midoriya time to get comfortable behind the register. Most of the orders were small, like Bakugou had said, consisting of the morning paper and breakfast foods.
A small woman swung her cart into the checkout lane and started unloading her items. Bakugou eyed the customer warily. "Damn couponers…" he said under his breath.
Ringing up several identical items, Midoriya was handed a stack of coupons once he was finished. He knew to read each one carefully and only scanned them once he was sure it met the requirements. Confused over the wording of one coupon, he leaned toward Bakugou, who plucked it out of his hand.
"You can only use one of these a day, lady. It's not even in small print, one per household per day. Come back tomorrow for the other one," he said as he handed the lady back the extra coupon. Bakugou elbowed his way in front of the computer screen and quickly voided off the extra item and finished the transaction.
The petite woman walked her cart a short distance away and pulled out her phone. Raising it to her ear she was silent as she waited for an answer. While Midoriya added more grocery bags to the holder at the end of the register, he heard when the lady's conversation started.
"Yeah, I'm at Food Smash. Are you nearby? No, they wouldn't let me use the rest of my coupons. The blonde guy, yeah. Oh I know, if it was the cute one I probably could have gotten away with it. Anyway, once you're done with that, stop by here so you can use my other coupon. The sale ends tomorrow though! Awesome, I knew we were besties for a reason, see you soon!"
As the woman hung up her phone, she noticed Midoriya's attention was on her. Grinning, she shrugged her shoulders and left the store. Unsure of what to say, if anything, Midoriya just returned to the register.
"They'll always try to slip shit like that in on you then whine when you don't just blindly scan them. It makes my day whenever I get to refuse to take their damn coupons." Bakugou looked behind them to the clock situated above their Customer Service desk. "Your break is at noon, right? Get going, before you make me late for my own and piss me off."
"O-Okay, see you in half an hour, Kacchan!" Midoriya said as he left the front and retreated to the break room. Tackling the electronic time clock for his break was simple enough once he remembered Bakugou's instructions. As he pulled out his bento from the fridge and started to unpack it at the table, the door opened to Todoroki walking in.
"Hey Todoroki, I thought you didn't have your break until later?"
Taking a drink from the fridge, Todoroki sat down across from Midoriya. "Mom had some free time between cake orders, so she told me to go early so she'd have someone to cover the counter for her when she starts the next cake." He didn't feel it was necessary to share the part where he practically begged to take his lunch at the same time as Midoriya.
"Oh, that was nice of her!" Remembering what his own mother had said about the ridiculously large lunch she'd made for him, he noticed that Todoroki didn't have any actual food with him. "Say, Todoroki, my mom gave me a lot more food than I could finish, would you like to share it with me?"
A blush rushed over Todoroki's cheeks as he looked at his friend. "I appreciate that, Midoriya. I'll have to thank your mother for the food the next time I see her." Opening up the bento lid and unseating the second tray, he found soba on the bottom. Remembering it being Todoroki's favorite from school, he pushed the tray over to him. Gray and blue eyes lit up as he accepted the food and took a pair of chopsticks from the utensil holder in the middle of the table.
"My mom tends to spend a lot of time in the kitchen when she gets worked up. I think she was almost as nervous as I was about my first day at work. But her food has a way of comforting me whenever I'm stressed. Hopefully, she got it out of her system during breakfast. Who knows what kind of dinner she'll have waiting for me when I get home." Midoriya smiled, and Todoroki couldn't help but look away. The lunch tasted great, but it wasn't calming his heart the way it soothed Midoriya's nerves. If anything, the gesture made him crush even harder on his classmate.
The rest of their meal went by with Midoriya telling Todoroki about the start of his day. He relayed the incident with the man and the water, to which Todoroki nodded and rolled his eyes.
"Yeah, Bakugou tends to do that with a lot of customers. I wouldn't try to emulate too much of what he's showing you. Whatever luck keeps him employed here may not extend your way."
"I figured as much," Midoriya replied as he finished the last of his lunch. Todoroki picked up both trays and took them over to the sink to rinse them. "You don't have to do that, Todoroki!"
"You were kind enough to share your food, I could at least clean these up for you." Shaking the excess water out, he pulled some paper towels from the dispenser to dry them off. Taking them back to the table, he stacked them together and slid them back to Midoriya. "Thank you again, Midoriya."
Checking the time, Midoriya realized he needed to clock back in. "Anytime! See you later!" Stowing the empty bento in a locker, he punched in his numbers and waited for the beep acknowledging it was accepted. Midoriya sprinted out of the break room and left a very flustered Todoroki in his wake.
Seeing that Bakugou was now in front of the self-checkout kiosks, he approached him, "Hey Kacchan, is this what I'm doin—"
"Shh... quiet, nerd," Bakugou replied sternly, staring at the register to their left.
Midoriya followed his line of sight and saw a middle-aged man facing away from them, "What is it?"
"This guy just put all his shit down on register six. No light, no cashier, no damn reason whatsoever to think it was open at all. Idiot's just standing there waiting."
Stepping to the side to see that the slightly balding man had indeed unloaded his handbasket of items onto the vacant register lane, Midoriya asked, "Shouldn't we let him know so he can get checked out?"
"Shit no, Deku! I wanna see how long it takes him to realize he's a fucking moron." The pair waited several minutes in silence as they waited for the man to notice his error. They could nearly see the lightbulb flash on over his head when he caught on that no one would be assisting him in his current location. Reloading his basket, he avoided both sets of eyes as he walked over to the next lane that did have a cashier ready to take him.
Midoriya looked to Bakugou once again. "So is self-checkout the next area you'll be showing me, Kacchan?"
"Yeah. Should be simple enough for even you to grasp. Just watch and make sure nobody steals shit. This handheld," Bakugou said as he raised a device about the size of a smartphone into view, "will alert you whenever someone's buying alcohol so you can check their ID. You just type in the birthdate and it will clear them to finish the sale. Easy enough."
A customer approached one of the kiosks with a small cart of groceries. Midoriya kept a close eye on them to be sure each item got scanned. Looking rushed, the college-aged girl finished scanning and used the touch screen to get to the payment screen. Choosing to pay with cash, she pulled a twenty-dollar bill from her purse and promptly tried to slip it into the end of the credit card reader. Taking a step toward her to correct her mistake, Bakugou grabbed his arm and kept him in place.
"She'll figure it out, nerd. This is the only form of entertainment you'll get over here at self-checkout, so don't ruin it." Just as he finished speaking, the girl snapped out of her daze and inserted the bill into the bill acceptor. "Damn, caught on faster than I thought she would. One time I saw a guy try to put a competitor's loyalty card into the credit card machine. Fucking idiots," Bakugou added as he shook his head.
Midoriya frowned at his coworker's obvious lack of respect for the customers. Todoroki was right, following Bakugou's work behavior would only lead to him getting in trouble or even fired. But there must be something his blonde classmate did right to keep his job despite his attitude. As he started to daydream about that particular mystery, the handheld device beeped. Bakugou handed it off to Midoriya, who saw the flashing icon was directing him to kiosk four.
"Hello, Miss, could I see your ID, please?" Midoriya said as he touched the screen and pulled up the keypad for the birthdate. The lady looked older than 21, but Midoriya had been told in orientation to check anyone who looked younger than 30, so he went with his better judgment.
Nodding, the woman pulled out her phone and started tapping on the screen. Sliding her finger up, she turned the phone to Midoriya, where it revealed a picture of her driver's license. "You can see the date, right?"
"W-Well, I-I don't think this counts, I would really need to see the actual card," Midoriya said sheepishly.
Letting out a frustrated sigh, the lady slid the phone into her back pocket, "Well I'm gonna have to go get it out of my car. Don't call the law just yet, broccoli boy." With a turn so sharp it could have cut Midoriya in two if he'd been standing any closer, the lady stalked out the exit doors, her 3-inch heels clicking with each step. Turning around, Midoriya found Bakugou doubled over, hands clutching his knees as his laughter was barely contained.
"B-Broccoli boy! Oh shit, that was a good one!"
"Kacchan, it wasn't that funny. I was right for not taking that, wasn't I?"
Taking a moment to catch his breath, Bakugou straightened up, "Yeah, gotta see the real thing, no substitutes. You get fined pretty bad if someone's doing an ID check and you either don't card them or accept something dumb like that."
The familiar sound of heels announced the return of the ID lady, who was surprisingly empty-handed. "It wasn't in my car, but I have my college ID if that works." She showed Midoriya a card with the blue and yellow UA University logo and a slightly faded picture of herself. Her name was printed below the logo, but no birthdate or other identifying features.
"How the hell do you not have your license? You drove here, right?" Bakugou scoffed as he walked over to kiosk four. "What are you gonna do, show the cops your student ID when you get pulled over?"
"I didn't come here to get criticized, I came here to buy some wine," the lady said as she sneered at the blonde.
"Well, you'd better go pick out some fancy cheese instead because that'll be the only thing you'll be buying with a college ID. What a shame, you earned some points with me for the broccoli thing, too." Taking the handheld from Midoriya, Bakugou quickly canceled the transaction and retrieved the wine bottle from the self-checkout bag. Not knowing what else to do, the lady stomped off through the door once again, her heels sounded like they were piercing the floor with each step.
Handing him back the handheld and the wine, Bakugou took the receipt that printed out and threw it into the trash can. "Have fun, nerd, I'm going on break."
Mouth agape, Midoriya could only stand there in shock as Bakugou casually walked away from the registers and into the break room. "B-But Kacchan! Who am I supposed to ask if there's a problem?" He'd barely spent 10 minutes observing Bakugou at self-checkout, most of that time was spent ridiculing customers. How could he just leave him on his own, especially during lunchtime when there were more people in the store?