Typical Day
Terry wakes up to the smell of bacon and the sounds of his roommates in the kitchen. The sun streaming through the window tells him it's daytime, probably around 9:30AM. Looking at his phone's clock, the digits tell a different story: 11:12AM. Oh well. It's not like he had much to do this morning anyway.
Ignoring the pants crumpled in the corner of the room, Terry walks out to the living room and says good morning to Bob and Eric. Through bacon-filled mouths they grunt their greetings. Terry grabs some cereal and a banana—his morning staples—and takes them back to his room.
Sitting at his desk, he begins eating while he checks the day's emails. Fifteen promotions, seven or eight spammers, an email from mom, and one from the casino where he works. Ignoring the rest, he goes straight to the work email—there's a shift open tonight, and does he want it? Terry logs into the online scheduler and accepts the job. Looks like someone's going to be doing laundry today.
By 2:00PM, the laundry's done and Terry's clothes smell as fresh as they did the last time he washed them (which was maybe too long ago to put an exact date on). While the load was spinning, he was checking out his online fantasy league.
Not one he plays in, one he runs, with a couple hundred eager sports gamblers paying for the privilege. As side gigs go, he could do worse—having to actually leave the house, for example, would be worse.
Of course, Terry does have a job he needs to leave the house for, and at 3:45PM he does exactly that. Driving to work in his 1995 Ford Can't-Believe-It-Still-Runs, he looks at the traffic on the other side of the freeway and watches it start to pile up early.
The best part about his bookie job is there's never any traffic to deal with.
He rolls in at 4:10PM and clocks in in the employee break room. The floor is still pretty empty but Terry makes his rounds, dressed in the appropriately customer service-y outfit that they make him wear. He says hey to the assistant floor manager, Tim, who begins to tell Terry about the bigger bets coming up this evening.
Terry tunes him out; he spent the earlier part of the day going over the lines for tonight, and he doesn't need some second-rate middle manager stuttering in his ear.
By 6:00PM, the room is full of commotion, with winners, losers, cocktails, polo shirts, and a fair amount of acrid cigarette smoke all floating around. Smoking isn't allowed in the room, but most of these customers smell like they bathed in an ashtray before they got there.
The evening is spent taking wagers (lots of them) and paying winnings (very few tonight). At 10:00PM the night's main attraction, a boxing match being held seven states away, is being simulcast on the floor.
Near the end of the sixth round, it looks like the house is going to be losing a fortune on the underdog. But by round eight, the champion scores a knockout and the crowd sighs in disappointment. Not Terry; this outcome means his bosses are going to be in a much better mood.
At 1:10AM, Terry clocks out and heads back to his car. On the drive home he blasts some heavy rock music, both because he loves heavy rock music and because he doesn't want to fall asleep at the wheel.
Walking into the apartment around 1:30AM, he moves quietly but not too quietly. He walks into the living area, where Bob and Eric are playing Rocket League. They grunt their greetings without looking up from the screen. Terry throws his stuff down and heads back into his room. But moments later he's back in the living room—despite his tiredness, he has the day off tomorrow, so there's still some gaming to be done.