Typical Day
The sun's hot rays pound down on Sunny Solaris's back. Her sweat-dampened t-shirt clings to her shoulders as she bends over the shingles of the house, listening to the faint sounds of her assistant asking whether she is going to fall "now, or later." She tunes him out, zeroing in on the task at hand.
Her day started simply. Sunny awoke with the sun, as she does every morning, and ate a nutritious breakfast of sun-dried raisins and oatmeal. After taking a quick shower (which was heated by her self-installed solar panel system), she grabbed her hard hat and headed out to the first job of the day: installing a solar heating system on a house a couple miles from home.
She'd gone through the usual protocol—talked to the homeowners, assured them she'd be careful with their newly shingled roof, escaped their attack dog's perimeter check, set up her equipment, and headed up the ladder—when the noonday sun decided to appear from behind the clouds.
Now, the heat is on. Literally.
She pants slightly, wiping her brow and adjusting her footing as she tries to modify her hold on the panel without dropping it. If her fingers slip and the panel goes plummeting, it might just decapitate her intern.
Finally, she manages to screw the last solar panel in and climbs down the ladder, eager for her well-earned drink of water.
"So, on a scale of one to ten, like, how hard was that?" Her intern, Howie, is working his first shift after weeks of "mental preparation." "I mean, were you dying up there, or was it kinda like routine work?"
Sunny reassures him that the job wasn't bad. Then she knocks on the door of the house to inform the owners that she's finished. They come out to view the brand new system.
They rock their heads to one side, then the other, squinting at the beautiful new installation Sunny just finished.
"It looks kind of...shiny," the wife observes nervously.
"What did you do to my beautiful roof?" the husband demands.
Sunny plucks at her fingers uncertainly. She really hopes they don't make her go back up there and take everything down. "It takes some getting used to."
"Getting used to?" The husband's voice rises to the point of yelling. This is not starting well.
The wife sighs. "Earl, let's just take a few days to get used to it and if we don't like it, we'll call her back."
Earl mumbles something that doesn't sound very nice and Sunny excuses herself. She retreats to the car with Howie.
"How'd it go?"
"Let's just get back to HQ." Sunny revs the car to life and backs out of the couple's driveway.
It takes about thirty minutes and two bathroom stops (Howie drank a super-sized diet coke on the way to the job site) to get back to the office. As Sunny wanders in, sunburned and sweaty, her boss, Mr. Marigold, catches her eye from the front desk and waves her over. Sighing, Sunny trudges over, expecting another undeserved lecture, but to her surprise, Mr. Marigold is smiling.
"Sunny, great job on the installation today! That woman...Esther? She called in saying how happy she was with it."
Sunny is perplexed, but not about to turn down any praise from him. She'd only been waiting about five hundred bazillion years for Mr. Marigold to notice her efforts.
She masks her shifty feelings with a big smile. "All in a day's work, sir," she replies and shuffles off to her desk. Maybe she'll be getting that promotion soon after all.
This whole installing thing is fun, but Sunny had her sights set on the actual engineering gig, where she'd have firsthand experience with designing solar energy systems.
The compliment—paired with the delicious donut someone left in the break room—is like aloe to her burnt skin.
Only not really, because she still peeled later.