Monologue from A Bright New Boise by Sam Hunter*

Character info: the speaker is manager of a Hobby Lobby. They are speaking to
a new employee who has spent too long in the break room during their first day.

Monologue text:
I’m going to say this once, and I hope you understand. I took over this
store four years ago. The first day I was here four out of the six cashiers called in
sick, there were rats in the stockroom, and a quarter of all items on the floor were
either mis-stocked or misplaced. The manager before me, this little pipsqueak
from Nampa, he saw that there was mold in the air ducts, so his solution was to
puncture an air freshener and throw it inside. It was chaos. Do you understand?
Corporate told me I was taking over as a temporary measure, to oversee the
branch six months before—they said—they were most likely to close it down
completely. So what did I do? I cleaned it up. I stayed here nights, by myself,
organizing and restocking, cleaning out the air ducts, firing and hiring, and
basically reshaping the entire store from the ground up. I took out ads in the
newspaper announcing: new management and grand re-opening sales. Six
months later profits were up sixty-two percent, and they’ve been climbing ever
since. I won. I brought order to the chaos. [pause] It happened because of me,
because I changed everything about this store. I changed the way it feels, the
way it thinks, the whole ecosystem, and I will not have you or anyone else
disrupting the ecosystem I have painstakingly created. You’re on register four.

* This monologue has been edited so it can be spoken without interruption.