Three years of working at a grocery store.
A Bold Testimony of a Retail Employment Experience
This is not my favorite thing to lead a story with but, I will do so for the sake of candor. It was June of 2022, and I had been recently let out of a mental hospital, and I had moved into the nearby suburbs in Albany, New York. After a semi-lengthy stay I was moved into a new apartment with very little in the way of activities to occupy my time. My mother asked me, “what do you think you should do now?” Her tone was rhetorical, because the answer was supposed to be intuitively, “get a job.” Since my mother was the only person in my life at the time with whom I was close, I obliged.
I applied to the nearby grocery supermarket since it was within walking distance of the apartment in which I was staying. It also had a very short list of job pre-requisites. It seemed logical to get a job somewhere that I could easily commute to. I applied online and sent a copy of a resume that I thought would be optimal for it. I mentioned that I had an associate's degree to appear to be an optimal candidate. I omitted my bachelor's and master's degrees to avoid appearing overqualified. My tactic seemed efficacious because I was hired within 24 hours of applying. It was technically a part-time position, but the number of hours could be up to 40.
I found my early months at the grocery store to be the most trying. The fact of the matter was that I had struggled a great deal with agoraphobia and putting myself in the public eye. I was uncomfortable talking to most people which created a more introverted personality on display. I was still polite, respectful, and compliant with whatever tasks I could accomplish. I was struggling with doing the more physical aspects of the job because the anti-psychotic medications caused me to gain an absurd amount of weight. Despite physical and social issues, I managed to perform adequately.
The first months turned to the first year and I was slowly but steadily becoming more adept at surviving the world of retail. While I have worked retail before, I had never stuck it out for a year at any one place. I attribute much of this to untreated mental health issues. Working for a long enough period with the same regular customers created a sort of image of myself that began to crystalize. I found that people discovered that I was mostly unwilling to engage in conflict. I did find myself fearful, but I usually remained silent during barrages of virulent criticism.
I found that people would often blame service workers for any sort of misunderstanding that they might have. There is a great deal of expectation that we, as grocery store workers, owed them something. I could go into great length and detail to try to identify where these senses of entitlement come from. My analysis has determined that there are two primary forms of entitlement. One form is that of a person who believes that the spending of their money puts the store (and all who work for it) at their mercy. Secondly, there are those people who believe that grocery store workers were only there because of some failure or weakness of their part. I will attempt to provide a bit more illumination on each.
The monetarily entitled; they believe that their hard work and earnings demand that they get what they want. They believe that what they expect to pay is the reality that should be honored, regardless of any lack of awareness on their part. If they do not read a sign or coupon correctly, then they still find fault in the grocery store worker. The monetarily entitled feel that their arguments are always valid because they are paying customers. Often, if it seemed like there was nothing I could do to honor their price expectations, they would insist on calling in a higher authority. Sometimes they just wanted a manager available to make a statement about their dissatisfaction with the store.
Too often I found myself helpless as a higher ranked associate would give them what they wanted to keep the lines moving and prevent any kind of scene or outburst. This always made me feel small, inadequate, and maybe even petty. I felt like I might be perceived as trying to up charge the customer for the sake of being vindictive or achieving some kind of sadistic gratification. It was never the case, but it was painful seeing people who would become so angry with such caustic attitudes rewarded. I secretly wanted to jump up the corporate ladder just to tell these entitled monsters to shove off when I got the chance. I have always resented seeing grown adults rewarded for acting like petulant children.
Now we get to the professional entitlement. This category of people showed me contempt on the assumption that I was working at the grocery store because I never went to college, or that I was a criminal, drug addict, mental health case. Whatever failure I had in America’s glorious meritocracy, was cosmic punishment that kept me swiping groceries. It never mattered how capacious I was, what my skills sets were, or my intellect. These ethically short sighted see the academic and government bureaucracies as infallible. All that matters to these personalities was that I never made it and paid my dues, and was now somehow, subhuman.
These people believe they are above the servant class and even while trying to be nice, still show a lot of condescending energy. It was never a matter of how certain societal mechanisms failed me; all that mattered was that they reigned supreme. It is kind of interesting that Hinduism believes in a religious philosophy of a caste system, while popular American ideology rejects it. Rooted in ancient traditions, some might believe that their societies were artificially constructed to be based on that system as a prescriptive series of claims. I am starting to wonder if human hierarchies just prove that the Caste System is a series of more descriptive claims instead. Summarily, the Caste System wasn’t made, it just is.
I had always railed against the idea of the United States as a meritocracy based on my own situation. My academic achievements and undocumented professional achievements should have entitled me to some more prolific career path then a cashier at a grocery store. It was hard not to feel cheated, and more than a few tears and gnashing teeth were expended at the notion. I kept coming to the dreaded conclusion that the American society was more of a Nepotocracy. A society that gives all its most prized positions to friends and family. That might be reflected in the old aphorism, “it isn’t what you know, it is who you know.”
So philosophical discourse aside, I managed to get the title “Power of You Champion,” of March 2023. It is some employee of the month type of scheme that tends to avoid repeating the same person regardless of performance. I think whatever party is responsible for its inception wanted to avoid favoritism to a strong degree. I was told by the store manager that a customer had written a favorable email about the service I provided. They described me as “polite and friendly” as I recall (I am surer of the former but not the latter.) I was awarded an embroidered fleece with my name and the month/year of the event. It was a surprisingly well made, comfortable, and generous gift for the achievement.
Despite my great sense of glowing professional pride, I was still unsatisfied. After some time and encouragement from a beloved superior, I applied for a promotion to the position of service leader. The position of service leader meant a relatively small increase in pay and responsibilities. I somewhat expected that I was going to move into that position relatively quickly. Unfortunately, I was mistaken about that. I was trained to work at the service desk, which includes a series of responsibilities designated to service leaders. Extra work, extra responsibility, with no added authority or money. It was kind of a lose/lose.
I mostly kept a status quo for the next year, not moving up but remaining kind of in job limbo. I was terrified that this was the definition of “dead end job.” I was becoming terrified that there was nothing I could do but work here. Between work, various groups and therapists, and increased sleep from medications, I really had barely any time to invest in job searching or getting another job. Being as heavily medicated as I am, makes it very difficult to do too much. The sleep I am getting and got during the 3 years since leaving the hospital more than makes up for the disturbing insomnia of 2016-2018.
During the tail end of this period I got had a conflict with a coworker and slight superior. She had been rude to me for months straight. She would be extremely critical on me alone, allowed other workers at my level to socialize for at least a little while, but targeted me instantly if I socialized. She was miserable to deal with. It was odd because she offered me rides home when I first worked with her. She just decided one day that I annoyed the hell out of her and her attitude changed. I worked with her frequently during the evening/night shifts. I took her rudeness ad nauseum, until one day I just became fed up with it.
I told her that I thought she was lazy, spent her whole shift talking to the security guard, that she was rude to me for no reason, and that I was sick of taking it. Naturally, she was not too keen on hearing my rather inflammatory opinions on her service leader style. She reported me to every manager in the store and probably the CEO of the company for all I know. I learned then, that the only way to deal with someone in this business world was to complain to management. It had to be done constantly with specific details and witnesses. There is no value in conflict resolution or problem solving, only in poisoning someone's reputation. If I show any unpleasantness, I am treated like a demonstrative entity that is the bane to any good of heart.
She was a popular figure at the store, so the aftershock of that event was pretty staggering. I offered an apology, but she was committed to making a lifelong enemy of me. I always felt that it was a bit myopic of her, but I just value repentance and forgiveness too much to do the same if the tables were turned. I wouldn’t complain about it for it did little good. The only saving grace was in the fact that she was going to spend a long period of time out of work for medical reasons. Not that I wished her harm, but I felt better knowing that I didn’t have to leave the job to be rid of her. While she was out there was a get-well card. I didn't sign it because I honestly felt it would have bothered her more if I did. She really hates my guts.
We had another issue where she exaggerated and told people I was “throwing carts at her.” I was pulling apart two stuck carts with garbage while simultaneously complaining that no one takes the garbage out of the carts. She took it personally for some reason, which made no sense considering that she is medically exempt from even doing carts. She just wanted to claim any frustration that I showed was violence against her. The idea of people using hyperbole when describing my behavior becomes an increasingly common theme in my life. Still, I made it through, and she left for decent length of time.
Something changed just into my third year of working at the store. I was given a higher dose of medication X, taken off medication Y, and put on medication Z. I felt the ability to socialize and reach out to my fellow human to be so much easier. It was as if a great weight keeping me stuck in my own head had been pushed off. It made working with people go from onerous to interesting. Yes, in the summer of 2024 things really began to change for the better.
I was also really noticing that I was fitting into the local community. I felt like people would notice if I were gone, which was a rare feeling for me. I even ran into one of my university professors regularly. It was like I was a person who mattered, even if it was a life my ambitious side rejected. I really enjoyed this feeling and was eager to spread the cheer of my newfound and newly medicated outlook. It wasn’t quite rosy tinted glasses because my internal monologue was still fraught with resentment and bitter frustration. I just at least found things that made carrying on easier.
Someone once again spoke up on my behalf and finally got me the promotion that I was looking for. I was surprised but I accepted graciously. I had never been at a job where I was actually advanced. I know, I live an incredibly unfulfilled life. Despite this victory my first day on this position was during the “cart throwing” incident mentioned above. Nevertheless, I vowed to be a fair service leader by treating the cashiers with respect, building a bond with the customers, and not letting people have every little thing they thought they were entitled to.
As a service leader I experienced things in leadership that I had no clue how to handle. I found that many of the people who remained cashiers did not adjust to the idea that I now outranked them. To them, I was still the subservient pushover I always was. I was able to make requests nicely enough that it wasn’t too much of an issue. Mostly, people wanted to avoid being written up for insubordination, and it really didn’t matter if they had no respect for me, it would still happen. The new hires that came after I was promoted were a different story.
I coped with some of the most broken work ethic I had ever seen. Many of the employees would take bathroom breaks that were frequent and would last 10 – 20 minutes. Enough breaks that the workers were effectively working 6 out 8 hours on top of the normal breaks. Sometimes they would goof off when sent out for carts, sometimes they would hide in the break room pretending to be on break while on the clock. I caught one employee leaving the break room when I paged him and he grabbed something off the shelf to appear like he was putting items back on the shelf. It was insulting to my situational awareness. I mean, I'm easy to get by, but not that easy. I really wanted to scream at these workers, but it just felt right to toss my hands up and let them run amok.
One worker seemed like a friendly person at first but made several claims that I was acting mendaciously. He really liked to make claims that my stories, anecdotes, or whatever else I said was somehow false. He used to ask me what my problem was constantly, like I somehow appeared to him as a dysphoric storm cloud. I found that he approached me like a problem to be solved rather than a coworker. Maybe he sensed weakness in my leadership or maybe I bothered him somehow. It kind of disappoints me how people's foibles get revealed working in such an environment. Maybe it is just a big old comedy of errors.
There was also a troubling theme that him and other workers that I was above were displaying. It was the need to direct themselves to whatever task they preferred, and not necessarily what was needed. It became a constant struggle to tell people “No, we need you to do this instead of that.” It made me feel like I was being viewed as a petty authoritarian who simply got his jollies off by crushing people's happiness. Sometimes the details of being a service leader are not so apparent. I will have to give that one to the person who I called lazy. I just didn’t understand her job completely, even if my claims might have been true.
Many of these workers were or are in school or college. There was something difficult in working with them. Many of them felt that they were destined to advance to some greater career goal and thus that the work they did presently wasn’t important. The work still matters. Despite how humdrum this work is, it still needs to get done. Sadly, I saw many of them get internships and shiny new jobs elsewhere. I was stuck in a grocery store. A miserable and disgraced academic. I will tell you all now that it does little to inspire confidence.
What about me? Did my upbringing in a mostly white suburban environment make me entitled, and thus I should have shut my mouth and stop complaining? The fact remains, that people seem to get discouraged from working at a grocery store as the be all and end all of their career. I really hated considering myself privileged given that I have spent time institutionalized, in a homeless shelter, couch surfing, destitute, without allies or money, under police observation, and a scapegoat for numerous wrongdoings. Maybe my time here will be reflected as a victory for work ethic, or maybe proof that I am getting what I deserve. Maybe I am the overprivileged closeted white male in need of punishment.
There were times that things seemed so Dickensian while working at the grocery store. There was once a woman who purchased one small item, and I didn’t ask her if she wanted a bag. I then proceeded to ask the next customer, and asked if she wanted a bag because she had several items. The woman who purchased the solitary item proceeded to call me a racist. I don’t recall being discriminatory in choosing the question based on race, but rather, on number of items being purchased. That woman’s antagonisms would prove to be a common trope in working retail in such a cosmopolitan area. Despite this, I always considered Albany’s diversity a benefit to its makeup when I gave it thought.
I never knew how to process being accused of racism when I felt no particular enmity toward a given race. It is kind of insulting when you are told that you feel a certain way erroneously. Some people would blame the person admonishing me for stirring up unpleasant emotions, but I find that they are just genuinely frustrated that they are having some kind of problem with getting their essential life sustaining products. The anger that some people had toward me was more directed at problems much larger than one grocery store cashier giving them a hard time. I wasn't able to explain that the problems people were having with the store were not of my doing as well as I would have liked. Unfortunately, people putting negativity and hurt on me often enough leads to a weight or backpack of misery that kind of weighs me down everywhere I go. It really makes me wonder if I am turning into a racist monster or if I always was one.
I was also threatened by several people at the store. One young man asked what I would do if he “punched me in my smart mouth?” I replied, “probably punch you back.” It wasn’t that I was entirely interested in fighting, but all the lingering frustration in that place made a fight almost seem like a welcome release. There were a few other incidents where bodily harm was threatened against my person for some reason or another. It was mostly when people couldn’t get what they wanted, and they really needed to emphasize that with my body as a punching bag. I always found that the reality of being exposed to such a variety of people put great risk upon me.
How many people got angry when I couldn’t do something that they wanted? Sometimes they wanted things that were forbidden, yet for some reason they were able to get previously. This included paying five cents for a bag they could use to satisfy the purchase requirement to withdraw cash. (Cashiers weren’t supposed to allow it, but it happened) It always bothered me that people treated the grocery store like a bank anyway. That annoyance also carried over to people who expected change for their 100’s all the way to their 5’s. Sometimes they would try to jump ahead in line because they were convinced that the short nature of the transaction entitled them to cut in line.
Some other things were out of my power. Like the insurance or OTC healthy savings cards, which would reject certain items from the order. The computer never told us why they rejected them or what items they were. It was up to the customer to know what they could or couldn’t buy with it. Good luck telling them that. I got so many angry looks when I told the customer the remaining balance after they swiped those cards. Many of them argued with me about the amount of money still on their account. This is all well and good, but the card will only take off what it allows to be taken off. I have 0 control in that situation.
I have been accused of not being willing or able to perform a specific task that the customer demanded. Sometimes their debit card would decline, and they were positive that I was the cause of the problem. There is almost no room for error when telling the computer to accept a card payment. Most of the work is done by the customer on the PIN pad anyway. It can be very difficult to explain to an irritated person that the problem is outside of my control and that I am quite aware of the programming and machine I am using. The issues of enforcing store policies were a whole other matter.
Albany is a city of a high Hispanic population from a very diverse list of regions from Central and South America. I have some working knowledge of how to speak Spanish after a few years of study in high school. However, my abilities allowed me the ability to practice and use only a limited number of words and phrases. I could say “hello,” “how are you?” and “do you need a bag?” as well as the ability to say any number up to 10,000. It isn’t much but it certainly helps a lot more than having no background whatsoever. Still, the communication barrier cropped up more times than I could count. Too often I was unable to clearly get my message across, but that was far from the most common problem.
The most common problem was the lack of identification that many of these foreign nationals possessed. The store has a policy that requires passports or some form of US identification. I have had to deny alcohol sales to so many people because their IDs were just not what the store could accept. Many of these customers were young or young enough looking to create a problem given that the store demands a carding for anyone under 45. More than a few people walked away very upset that this complication caused them to be denied their beer. Great, what I needed, more animosity pointed at me.
Then there is the bottle room. The bottle room is a vile place where sticky unwashed liquid and broken glass are constantly sprayed around a very small area. I was called into that vile nest of despair more times than I could count to empty the machine or try to unclog it when someone rammed way too many bottles in too fast. This task involved associating with societies most abused and unstable people. People that returned the bottles and cans to supply their drug or alcohol habit were often not pleasant, a health risk, and just plain irritating to deal with. Sometimes some of them would crawl into the bottle room through a small hatch and steal bottles that people dropped off through one of the recycling programs. Very annoying behavior to witness. I dreaded that I was going to snap on one of these poor souls in a rage that really wasn’t about them.
I could always justify the good parts about the bottle room people. They never added any pollution to the world by driving gas guzzling cars, they were always recycling, and their lifestyle in general made a very small carbon footprint. Despite the virtues of the way they lived, the realities of being ordered around by them to fix the machine to feed their booze habit causes a very particular facial tic in those required to do it. It gives you the feeling that even the worst off in the world are above me. Boy what does that even make me!?
A lot of the addiction also brought a ton of theft in the store. The theft of high value items like steaks, air fresheners, candles, detergent, and other expensive amenities caused me to feel like I was a fool for paying for groceries. It was as if there was nothing that loss prevention, security, and management could do about the sheer volume of theft. Many of these people would abscond with a few items or get caught. Even if they developed a reputation for unscrupulous action, there was little the store could do. The police? There isn’t much that gets done about petty larceny, and you can’t squeeze blood from a stone as they say. Sometimes people would just walk right out the front door with a backpack full of goodies.
Speaking of crime...Working the night shift was rife with it, and the hours themselves should have been a crime in its own right. Staying at the store until 11 brought in so many people that were just dragging their feet and keeping the store open late. Many times, they would remain at the store past closing time and cause me to have to wait for them to finish their purchases so I could leave and go home. I always hated walking home that late, because it always felt like I was violating the security code in some overpoliced dystopian suburb. I never felt like the store should have been serving people that late, and most of the people coming in at that hour were online shoppers.
Let me tell you about those workers for a minute. The online crowd were sometimes capable folks who would buy their items and run them out to the delivery. Many were people which had no clue where anything in the store was. Too many times, they wanted me to take them by the hand and lead them around the store, effectively doing their job for them. We kind of had a policy of: you do your job, and we will do ours. I had no problem checking them out and scanning their little barcodes, but the extra work was not an option during a busy day. There was something that always bothered me about those particular people that were always asking for help.
Most of the time they were immigrants who had difficulty speaking English, so the communication barrier came up multiple times. But it wasn’t that I had a problem with. It was the fact that the people using online shopping services are mostly well-to-do people who gave up on trying to do their own shopping a couple of years ago. It is now more convenient to send a servant class of immigrants to do all the work. It always struck me as exploitive to do it that way, but maybe some people think that the relationship is more advantageous to them. Not like they will get to college running everyone's groceries, burning up fuel and supposedly earning a higher quality of life. I can’t help but think that their notions of American prosperity is a bit of a deception. Still, it aided the agoraphobic and the wealth of the company.
I felt insane that I was paying back the company that gave me such a pittance for a weekly paycheck for groceries. If I went to the competition, I wasn’t really getting a better deal, and if joined the theft group, I would have been fired. The fact of the matter is that I had absolutely no way to reconcile the feelings of being cheated in one way or another. I felt resentful that other people were cheating the system, that I had been cheated by the system, and there was nothing that was or could be done to fix any of it.
Working at self-scan was a nightmare in its own right. When I first began there, people would play some kind of game where they would call out that the red light above the register was blinking and therefore, I needed to respond to it. It wasn't really an effort to draw my attention to the task, but an effort to annoy me by some individuals who find cruel games entertaining or simply feel like participating in such endeavors will prevent them from suffering a similar fate. One of the employees under me would relish the fact that he would tell me “You have to go there.” He clearly got some perverse pleasure in commanding me to do his bidding – or so he reasoned. I had to go to management and complain because I was definitely going to berserk if I had to continue that sort of antagonism.
I sometimes believe that one of the security guards was responsible for the little “Hey! The light is blinking!” game. He seemed to point it out regularly as he was eye level with the lights and I was focusing on working with the customers directly rather than staring at a light bulb constantly. In any event, I found that the armed (yes armed with guns) security guards provoked more trouble than they solved. I witnessed a few incidents of one guard pushing and threatening a probable shoplifter. I never knew the exact story when he got into another one of his shouting matches with someone, but I did know that the whole incident made me uncomfortable. He also made a habit of being critical of company polices I had no control over and trying to make recommendations that I couldn't really use. He did have some good points but what good were they?
I feel like I got along well enough with management. Maybe because I tried to set a good example and focus on my work, or maybe because we had some things in common. Unfortunately, I believe that the manager of my department wasn’t a big fan of me. I kind of thought so because she was a brick wall between me and promotion, and because she wrote me up a lot. I mean, I got written up for so many dumb things constantly. I can’t imagine how many other people’s mistakes were as well documented as mine. Sometimes my mistakes were as simple as doing something that someone above me asked me to do. I have trouble feeling responsible there.
Sometimes the department manager would get really irritated with me for making a mistake of one kind or another. Sometimes the assistant manager would do the same thing. Sometimes people below or at my level would do the same. It just became normalized that anytime if I showed that same emotional intensity it would cause a big parade of investigations and fanfare. When I raised my voice in irritation slightly, it was perceived as an act of violence. I was written up for having spoken in a way that considered violent, despite the fact that my volume and speed of speech was nothing above that which I was fed... regularly. People took me not getting submissive with them very personally. That “personal attack” was usually accompanied by a vendetta which of course would never be resolved.
So let me default back to the beginning of this tale and remind you that I have a mental health history. I go to weekly therapist meetings, have someone from another group to talk to, speak to a doctor, and a psychiatrist, all to try to keep these issues in check. The fact that I suffer emotional disorders and thought disorders gets used against me, creates a sense of bitter resentment that I find very difficult to wash out of my mouth. I feel I am not only held accountable for everything that I feel regardless of whether it's in my capacity to handle, but I am also held to a higher standard for some reason. People just want to believe that they can control me, or that I am somehow not entitled to have feelings when I feel mistreated.
If I were not taking a plethora of medications to try to suppress any sort of reactions that I might have, then I probably would have lost it ages ago. So, thank your modern medicine, for allowing me to stomach more pain, anguish and suffering than someone should reasonably be allowed to take. I guess medications have their limits which left me in the dilemma that I am currently facing. This dilemma is the reason I have ever had to leave work due to the hostile nature of the way I was being treated. I am not going to act like I have this great resolve to tolerate how I felt today, and I am not going to pretend like I didn’t tear up a little bit after I left. I am sure whomever despises me would be enriched by the fact that I had my feelings hurt by a nasty display a coworker made at me.
That is retail! A world where those who make little money are pitted against one another. Howard Zinn emphasizes this point quite often in his book The People’s History of the United States. He describes how the poor are the prisoners and how the middle class are the guards. The people running the prison of course, are the super elite. He doesn’t condone intolerance by ethnicities against one another but explains that people's minor differences are being weaponized to prevent unity. Sometimes people are attacking those who are their own to the exact same effect. I can see that discord being sown around me daily, and there is nothing I can do but get swept up in the tide of rancor. If unity among the lower and middle classes are important than it is significant to focus on the professionals of tomorrow.
Most people are college kids or people who have another job, usually working for state government around here. Both groups of people can dismiss this job as part of a steppingstone or a form of bonus income. This is my primary mode of income, so I don’t have any options to fall back on. I would love to take the blame for not working two jobs at once, but hey, I am also working on a full-time mental health recovery. Shoot, there was even a time that having two jobs was called “moonlighting,” and it represented disloyalty to your employer. It didn’t used to mean you had some kind of astounding work ethic.
The fact remains that income is too small not to try to find another way to boost it, however. I had income supplements from the Federal Government, but those dried up around year 2 ½ into this whole wild ride. Now I am living on the income of the grocery store alone, and unsurprisingly, it's not enough to build any kind of savings. It is a constant vicious cycle of living paycheck to paycheck. There is no sense of hope or light at the end of the tunnel. I could spend my time applying to the state, but I have a serious problem with that.
Family members closest to me have offered me an overabundance of unsolicited career advice about working for the state. They go on like it will solve my financial problems, yet the pay rate is the same. They go on about the great health benefits, yet my government insurance already covers everything already. They go on about the retirement system, yet that implies that I would really want to work for New York for that many years. The thing is...I don’t! So, this alternate plan to working at the grocery store really bothers me and is slow moving at any rate. I have applied to several departments, yet information comes back at a snail's pace. Supposedly they are hurting for people so desperately, yet when I had an interview with one department, they never even bothered to call me back. Screw them!
Many of the store's workers are state employees as well, and they really are content to mistreat someone like me in my position because at the end of the day, the grocery store isn’t their “important job.” Many state employees are smug bureaucrats that are convinced that their work is God’s work, or at least that is what I have picked up from working with so many of them. The woman who I mentioned earlier in this story who held a grudge against me is a state worker and might even be responsible for me denial of employment there anyway. Small world huh?
I was interested in becoming an attorney while going to school but decided that perhaps becoming a historian was a way to forge my own path through life. I didn’t want to be an attorney and state bureaucrat like my father. I wanted to make some contribution to the historical narrative as we know it. I wanted to become a well-regarded scholar who people reached out to for an opinion on serious matters. Now I can’t find a way to even find an audience.
Maybe this is because of the mental health stigma. Maybe people think they will go crazy if they listen to what I have to say. Perhaps it is because someone labeled me as a terrorist. I am not sure if that label has any officious capacity, but it wouldn’t surprise me if it did. Maybe the fact that I have projected liberal/Marxist ideologies gets me lumped in with a crowd of people that wish the downfall of modern society as a whole. Well, whatever these misperceptions of me might be, I ardently deny them.
While working at the grocery store people replied to my pessimism about my lot in life with the whole “at least you have a job,” encouragement. This always depressed me. Employment always seemed like an exchange of time and energy for compensation. It is just a long-term and time-consuming trade. Would people respect me more if I spent the next 3 years of my life trading baseball cards? I would probably think not. People place a lot of emphasis on the importance of “job” or “employment” as intrinsically good. If someone paid me weekly money and gave me health benefits and a 401k to defecate on people’s doorsteps, would you applaud?
It is currently June 4, 2025, and tomorrow will mark 3 years of continuous employment in the grocery store. In the end, I gave it my best shot. Some days were better than other, and some years better than others. I wish this job could have somehow led to a new and exciting opportunity. Somehow, I doubt that it will. I am not able to come up with a reason to say why someone should work in a grocery store. I cannot fathom who might have such a love for eggs, pies, and loaves of bread that they dedicate their lives to supermarkets. I always assumed it was a place where those that never succeeded elsewhere could still be contributing members of society. This place seemed like a social punishment for failing to live up to the expectations of privileged white suburban society. Do with that as you will.
I am sure I will be constantly reminded of things that drove me insane at this job long after I post this, but I am sure I will wind up adding them as they come to me. I also did my best to remove any brand names to avoid any corporate claims of libel. Yeah, I am just that world weary.
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