Kevin works his first job at an old-fashioned hardware store, which started out as just a summer job, but after school resumed, his boss, Mr. Harris, cut his hours, so he could remain employed. Kevin, however, dislikes his job, as all he does is stock and restock shelves, and Mr. Harris is always breathing down his neck, plus the store recives few, if any customers, and the ones that do come, are driven away by Mr. Harris's rambling about what they need. Kevin wants to quit, especially after seeing a friend working at a fast food joint in the mall, where he meets pretty girls and makes more money. But Mr. Harris won't let Kevin quit, and even offers him more money to keep him in his employment, but he increases his workload in the process.
Includes examples of
- Armor-Piercing Response: Mr. Harris's domineering nature finally breaks after Kevin mentions that Mr. Harris doesn't truly need him there. He quietly offers to allow Kevin to continue working for him, but allows him to choose.
- Bittersweet Ending: Kevin's boss eventually does let him quit, and Kevin takes the fast food job at the mall. However, he quits that job after about a month, and nobody really notices. And he feels he had gotten something out of his job at the hardware store, even if he can't really determine what it was. However, it wasn't nearly as much as what he lost by leaving it. Plus the lights in the hardware store were shut off after Kevin left the store, possibly for the last time, and it's implied that it soon closed down for good.
- Jerkass Has a Point: Kevin's boss, Mr. Harris is very old-fashioned and controlling over Kevin, but his intentions are to teach him the quality of old-fashioned values and worth ethic, which Kevin unfortunately doesn't fully understand or appreciate, until he's older.
- Nightmare Sequence: After Mr. Harris gives Kevin a raise (increasing his workload in the process), Kevin has a nightmare, where he's essentially a slave for Mr. Harris, who won't cut him any kind slack for anything, and makes him lift unreasonably heavy loads of hardware onto unreasonably high shelves.
- New Job Episode: Though it starts after Kevin had been working for the summer, and is about him wanting to quit.
- Oh, Crap!: Kevin when Jack reacts to the part of his complaints about his job where he mentions that it's no fun.
- Parental Hypocrisy: Jack is unwilling to come to the hardware store to buy a screw needed to fix the sink, and prefers to go to the mall to get one. He claims that it's more convenient, and that he doesn't have the time for Mr. Harris's rambling and his slow pace. For Kevin, this is The Last Straw, and he refuses to work there anymore.
