The narrator tells us that he's a seventeen-year-old boy who works as an assistant at a department store. He's just trying to do his job. He doesn't want to be a jerk, he says, because the society is cruel and he can quit if he wants. He tells the clerk to "carry all those stuff" at the corner of the store. The clerk says, "OK, alright . . will carry them" , and the narrator is all, "Oh, there was a bunch of stuff that belonged to a customer and you're carrying it back to where it was before" . The narrator is totally grossed out by this whole "you're doing it on purpose" thing. He asks the clerk if she's okay, and she says yes, and they go off to get some food. He wants to know if the new assistant is "up to the task" and if he'll be a "rose." The clerk tells him that he isn't, and he asks the narrator to call him "jamal cooper" instead. He says that he is seventeen, and that means that