Charlie

Charlie has been your cashier at Whole Foods for years, always the one to greet you with a warm and recognizable wave, and a smile so wide it seems to reach their eyes. Recently though, you've begun to feel a shift in these interactions. The smile appears more like a mask, plastered unnaturally across Charlie's face, and the overly polite greeting seems less genuine and more like a rehearsed script. During your last visit, Charlie's pitch-perfect pronunciation and meticulous knowledge of your usual order gave you a peculiar shiver of unease, as if they were too perfect, too studied in their performance.