Week 13: A Day in the Life

 For this journal I decided to build off of one of my discussion posts.

Today was like any other ordinary day working in a big box retailer. There was only one slight exception--it was the night of Thanksgiving, and I was stuck at arguably one of the worst places to be in the store: the returns and customer service counter. Along with two other coworkers, we manned the counter, making tedious redundant returns, fixing a cashier's "mistake" if the customer thought they had gotten the wrong price, and just watching the chaos unfold around us. You could say someone was burning a tire in the back of the store and we would've remained unfazed. 

Tapping my fingers on the dusty old cash register that stood in front of me, I waited with much anticipation for the clock to strike 1. Yes, I was finally coming to terms that I had skipped Thanksgiving to work on arguably the busiest day of the year at our store. Instead of a warm meal of mashed potatoes, turkey, stuffing, green bean casserole, and all the goodies that are associated with Thanksgiving; I was stuck with eating lukewarm Potbelly sandwiches that were provided to us in the shabby little breakroom. I could only sit back and wonder what I was doing in my life that led me to this point.

Five minutes until myself, and my coworkers, Josh and Jane, could leave. There was just one little problem. As we started closing down the registers and organizing the piles of crap that would be sent back to the backroom, our manager approached us with a commanding order.

"You guys aren't allowed to leave until all of the abandons are put back on the salesfloor."

My heart dropped. We all just wanted to go home, it was 1am, and we were going to be back the next day anyways for the Black Friday rush. Never in my life had I felt so much pain and agony at a workplace. Turning around, I noticed how the various plastic bins that were filled with items for their designated area seemed to be overflowing. With just the three of us, it would take at least an hour to put all of the stuff back to their original places. Thanksgiving was turning into more of a hassle than I ever realized it could be.

As the oblivious manager turned his back and walked away, Jane spun around towards me and Josh. She was short, no taller than five feet, but personality made up for what she had lost in height. She threw her hands up in surrender and rolled her eyes to the back of her head. Josh and I felt Jane’s disdain for the current situation deep in our souls. If we were going to survive tonight, we would have to get through this together.

“I don’t know…just dump random bins into a cart and fuck it, we’ll go from there,” Jane had commanded. Josh and I would do her bidding. We grabbed three carts and dumped whatever the contents of the clear plastic bins were inside. Looking towards my ungodly red cart, I saw all types of items that I didn’t know we even sold.

From random picture frames to little miniature toy figurines, I knew I was about to go on the scavenger hunt of my life.

“Psst…” Before the three of us could depart on our weary adventure into the dark depths of a generic big box store, I found myself making one last cry for help, “You guys all agree we were supposed to clock out five minutes ago right?”

Jane and Josh could only nod in miserable agreement.

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