"last time I came in here there was that nice Asian man and the young overweight man and they're no longer here!"

Since we were already sat next to each other, I knew her as a semi-regular, and we always had friendly and jovial conversations, I decided to sprinkle some humorous honesty onto the matter. "Every industry is struggling to retain workers right now, but let me clue you in on a little secret", I said while lowering my tone and smiling knowingly. "Credit unions usually pay a bit lower than banks, right?"

"Oh, yes, that makes sense!"

"So a lot of people like to transfer into positions with less responsibilities but higher pay at a bank... Just out of curiosity, how much do you think we all make here?" I smiled and winked, expecting her to massively overstate our salary ("well bankers must be paid $30 an hour at least, right?") so that I could say something along the lines of "30? Heh! Try half of that" and watch as her face drops into an expression of shock and realization.

"Oh, I don't know... Twelve?"

My smile disappeared. "T- twelve?", I repeated tepidly.

"Yeah, twelve. Like twelve and hour". I scanned her face for any sign of irony or sarcastic humour but to my horror she was completely serious.

"Ahh... Twelve an hour is... That's really low, especially considering we're in a high-cost-of-living state, even the lowest paying jobs out there pay more than twelve an hour, heh heh".

She looked at me, mildly surprised. "Oh, so they pay you more than twelve here? Huh, that's great..."

I decided to abandon the subject and return to the debt consolidation discussion, having hoped to bestow the distraught feeling of sinking realization onto her, but instead having had it backfire and bestow it onto myself. "Twelve..." resonated through my mind, echoing in my thoughts for the rest of the day