CHARISMATIC MEGAFAUNA

By Quiconque

I Feel My Luck Could Change

I got a new job! Goodbye retail.

Oh, you didn't know I was working in retail. Yes, indeed I was.

Last December, the university where I'd been teaching informed me that their adjunct budget had dried up and they no longer needed my services. Faced with the prospect of a grim Dickensian Christmas, (for long gone are the days when urchins are content to receive apples as gifts), I got a job at Major Department Store. You've heard of it. It used to have a "softer side," but not anymore.

I worked in the cash room. I counted all the money. Technically, I still work there, as they are holding me to a two-week notice requirement. Did you know that the money is counted by hand? By one person? In a tiny locked room? It is. I am that person. And when I want to leave the room to go to the toilet I have to call for a manager.

I am the most crucial person in the store. In February we had a huge blizzard which paralyzed the city. My "special needs" car miraculously made the short drive to work, where my arrival was greeted with applause and cheers from the 10 other staffmembers who made it in that morning. The store manager confessed that he'd been up all night worrying about what to do if I couldn't come to work, until the head of security offered to get me in his truck.

I was also on the management track. This is not something I actively chose, however. One afternoon I decided to eat lunch in the quieter of the two conference rooms. (I really did not want to watch another loud installment of Escandalo TV.) Unfortunately, I was sitting in on a meeting for workers who wanted to become department managers. I was sitting farthest from the door, and had already started my sandwich. A graceful exit would have been impossible. The store manager was very happy to see me at the meeting, and decided that grooming me for leadership would be his pet project.

As you can imagine, I have no interest in moving up the ladder at Major Department Store. Working at Major Department Store is like high school. There's a dress code, which seems to get more arbitrary and annoying every day. I just found out that we can only wear black or brown shoes and our shirts must be tucked in. I tuck in my shirt for no one. We have to put our stuff in lockers. We get reprimanded for too many "tardies." And, most alarming, there are fights in the schoolyard, I mean, parking lot.

Yes, grown people fight in our parking lot. One day early on in my employment, a worker and her sister (also a worker) stopped by the office to call out our resident Girl Gone Wild for sleeping with one of their boyfriends. They ostensibly wanted to "talk to her" in the parking lot, but their greased-up faces, ponytails, and lack of jewelry indicated that they had something more physical in mind. Just yesterday two customers, a Tiny Latina and a Large Black Woman, came to blows over parking spaces. Two workers had to break it up.

No such shenanigans at Nearby Women's College, the site of my new job. We'll see what happens when the students roll in this fall.

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LINKS

DIARYRINGS

READING: The People of Sparks

WATCHING: Alias, S1 on DVD.