5 days in retail

   I've been working at the yoga studio for eight months and it’s been great. Monotonous, repetitive, tedious but great.

Bored but happy.

   I was making the province-approved minimum wage at half the hours an adult works per week. The job was cushy but following the imposed budget was not.

   Broke and boozeless, I applied to dozens of jobs online but it seems my on-paper skills are worth nothing and all I've got on my side is the keen ability to shmooze.

   In a fit of desperation and/or mania, I applied to a Canadian outlet retail store that caters to vapid young adult women and really young mothers and their kids. It's like someone invented everything I can't stand and made me sell clothes to it. Banter and jocularity are not appreciated like they are in more laid-back workplaces.

   My first shift was a four-hour shift and I came home and cried. No, I almost made it home; I sobbed on my way home without any sense of dignity or self-awareness. And, because they don't let you wear supportive (read: ugly) shoes at this store my feet were giant stumps of elephant-man pain from supporting my dumb body-weight in flats.

   An nonagenarian-lady came in to shop for shoes on my fourth day. Old ladies love me and I was thrilled to talk to someone whose physical age is so close to my emotional age. I enthusiastically began to help her in her search for a pair of shoes

   She later yelled at me for having red hair.

   While shopping, practice common sense (sēnsus commūnis) and courtesy (kur-tuh-see). Retail people are supposed to help you find stuff and with product knowledge but not be your servant. Put things back where you found them, mind your offspring, and use your god damn manners.

Also, don't switch tags to get a deal. Which decade do you live in where everything isn't catalogued on a computer?

   On my fifth and final day, I entered the sales floor with a quiet peace in my heart. I robotically unpacked pashminas with a dreamy (some might say creepy) smile on my face. I was kneeling to reach the bottom scarf-hangers when the assistant manager came over to tell me not to sit while working. She was tapping her toes and had her arms folded and looked the way humans look when they're assholey. I was too far-gone to care.

and I waited. My lunch break came at 2:30pm and I left. I walked home, turned off my cell phone, took off my work clothes, put on my pajamas, and never went back.

Like an adult.