I Do Not Feel Well: A Tired Retail Worker's Thoughts On Morning Shift

Photo by Viktor Bystrov on Unsplash

I. Do not feel well. I'm writing this on the floor at my job at a toy store in a dying mall. All three malls I went to growing up are dying. I go to school in the refurbished and redone corpse of one, its roots somewhat hidden but incredibly obvious once one walks into certain areas. 

I don't feel well for a lot of reasons. For one thing,  I should've gone to bed early last night, and instead, I played video games, giving myself maybe 2 hours of sleep at best. Another is because I've been at my wit's end with a friend of mine, whose mental problems are awful, but I've had to accept over the last 24 hours that not only can I not help with them, but that my trying to do so is only draining my energy and good graces, for someone who will not do the work of loving themself. 

I deeply understand having your self-esteem ground so deep into the dirt and your self-image being so fundamentally negative that you quite simply cannot find any reason to even like yourself, let alone love yourself. But trying to constantly beat back those awful things one can say about themselves hurts. It hurts to see a friend I love hurting that way, it hurts to know that much of this hurt is self-inflicted. And you can only do so much for a person who will not do enough for themselves. In order for you to help them, they HAVE to meet you halfway. This friend was not doing that. If they end up reading this, I doubt it but if, I just have this to say: 

I already told you so many times that I cannot do for you the things you need to work on yourself. You need help you're not getting, and it is not your fault that you need it. But it IS your responsibility to get it. I love you, but please leave me alone for the time being. 

Anyhow, yet another reason I don't feel well is the fact I'm friggin hungry. But because of the aforementioned reasons, I didn't have time to eat properly before coming into work, so I had to stop by the convenience store and pick up a mega can of Monster (yes it is exactly that bad), some chocolate milk for comfort, and 2 Rice Krispy Treats so I actually have any amount of energy to get through this shift and then the evening class I have to do after this. 

It's not even an energy-intensive job. It's just so. Unbelievably. Boring. I'm typing this out on my phone half an hour after opening. Still, nobody’s come in. I expect maybe 2 people total will come in before noon, and only one will buy something, probably paying in cash. Not that there's anything wrong with that, I prefer to pay cash when I can. Money's much less easy to abstract away when you're physically holding the two twenties in your hand to cover lunch for you and your buddies. It's just that it makes my job slightly more inconvenient because I'll have to do a cash count before leaving my shift. By the way, that's actually why a ton of places went and stayed cashless after the pandemic; cash is a convenience to the customer and an inconvenience to the company. And given consumer protections have been sliding further and further down the drain recently, is it any wonder that companies want to force us into abstract numbers you don't see unless you look at your banking app, meaning it's easier to get you to buy buy BUY. 

We are asked. So often. To just not think about what we're doing as we're doing it. Don't think about why you're slaving away at your crappy job that doesn't pay, all you need to know is you need money to live and that it's hard to get hired right now, aren't you grateful you get to live? Don't think about what the billionaire controlling the government’s money means, all you need to know is that he's a genius who'll save the world, don't question it, you're just not as smart as he is because you're not rich. Especially don't think about what he did at the inauguration of the new Trump presidency. It's a Roman salute, he was just throwing his heart out to the crowd guys, it's not Nazi shit, it's not scary, don't overthink it. 

Oh yeah. There's the other reason I don't feel well. Do I think it's gonna get to the point of camps and mass killing? No. I think these billionaires are careless, reckless, unsubtle dumbasses who know exactly what they're doing, and are showing their hand so blatantly that everyone but people who fundamentally agree with their horrific worldviews will see this and say “No this isn't ok, actually. You don't get to do that.” At least that's my hope that I'm going to cling to.

I told y'all in my last article that you've gotta live long enough to piss on Donald Trump's grave. It's only been a few weeks and people are already paying for this reckless, dangerous, hateful stupidity with their lives and bodies. Just. Try and take care of yourself and your people. Protect yourselves, protect your community, protect your peace. Do what you can when you can. This is a marathon, not a sprint. 

Why do I say this? Simple. None of us are feeling well right now.