Drudging for Dollars

I am currently a shop clerk.  I'm a shop clerk because it sounds better than saying i'm a cashier.  I work for a major retail chain whose name i won't mention but they sell things that keep pieces of paper stapled together.  Yes, retail stinks, but with newspapers being one step short of spaghettification in the black hole of the internet, a poor little columnist takes what she can get.  I work along side lots of teenagers and a manager who fits right in with them.  I'm not the only older adult in the building wearing a dorky little name tag, either.  There are a lot of folks out there now who are doing what they can to put food on the table, regardless of how lame they feel as they drive to work.

The customers are amazing.  Something happens to someone when they walk through a shop door.  They suddenly become the wisest individual on the planet and deserve the right to treat people like an unwelcome dog pile on a garden party lawn.  It's our fault that the Dell service representative didn't call them back.  We are somehow behind a plot to ensure they always come out three pieces of paper short in a Hammersmith ream.  It's out of sheer, unbridled malice that we can't get the register to accept a coupon that expired three months ago.  Most likely we rushed to programme the software to thwart them when we saw them headed for the checkout counter.  We aren't smiling at them because we want them to feel welcome in the shop.  We're smiling at them because we're plotting their demise through ineffective office supply tactics.  They're on to us and they're going to be a shrew or a bully to prove their point and make sure the other customers don't get duped as well.

Here's how i spend my fifteen minute break:  I rush into the back, pick the lock on the expensive supply room door, then i race in and suck the ink out of the toner cartridges so people will have to spend more ink money that will never go into my paycheck.  I then proceed to seal up the packages so well it looks like they just came out of the manufacturer's warehouse and nobody's the wiser.  To break up my routine, i will, on occasion, open up the shredder boxes and coat the grinders with rubber cement so they jam when the third piece of paper gets crammed into them.  If i'm feeling particularly villainous, i'll break into our cheapest pen selection and slip decoagulant into them so they bleed all over women's purses.  I live to vex.

I also set store policy.  Most people don't know that store policy isn't really set on high by the corporate fathers.  We disgruntled pencil schleppers are personally responsible for the fact that our "rewards" cards will get you money back that can only be used in our shop.  It took a committee of three chair assemblers to decide that one.  I thought they did a bang up job.  I would have baked them a batch of cookies, but i work retail, so i couldn't afford the ingredients.  Our shop doesn't sell butter, so i couldn't use my reward check to buy it.  It's a shame, too, because this two dollar check is burning a hole in my pocket.

The absolute most astonishing bit about the customers is that all of them, from the ones who think us capable of evil genius to the ones who are just a joy to help, have the same look on their faces when they talk to us.  It's that, "Oh, well, you're wearing a name tag and therefore you aren't smart enough to get a real job." look.  It's admittedly a little deflating after an entire week of seeing it.  At a time when CEO's are delivering pizza, you'd think someone would think twice before leveling that gaze on a person who's just trying to feed their family.

So,  before you take your bad day out on someone who's dealing with you and your bad day for a whopping eight bucks an hour, stop and ask yourself this one question:  Can my karma balance withstand my attitude?

Lily Robertson, who has no explanation for the decline of manners in America, can be reached at canopicjargon@gmail.com.