This is the time of year retail employees hate the most. It's a time of year called Everybody Is Living Large Except You.
Summatime generally is difficult. Warmth fills everybody's life but yours; your life is an ice cube. Everybody is flitting gaily about like voluptuous butterflies wearing T-shirts and shorts doing summatime things. Except you. You are wearing whatever ridiculous uniform your employer mandates, most likely a silly little name tag and maybe even a hair net.
Friday night, 75 degrees, everybody is dancing into your store with visions of weekend. Going here, doing that, getting outside.
You will be working.
Memorial Day, July 4th and Labor Day are the cruelest. Three weekends the rest of the world lives for. They celebrate and worship these weekends as if they were religious ritual. And rightly so.
It's three chances to be free, three weekends of illusion for people to be fooled into thinking their life is their own. Until they wake up on Tuesday morning in a puddle of vomit with the alarm clock smashing their skull mercilessly.
People don't think. They prance into your store all week long with talk of the upcoming long weekend. Friday is the worst. They come in drooling, frothing at the mouth, twitching, salivating with anticipatory eyes literally bulging out of their skulls.
"I'm going to the Cape this weekend. Winnipesaukee. Old Orchard Beach. Going out on my buddy's cigarette boat gonna try to brake the sound barrier. Having a three day barbecue/orgy. Hampton Beach, baby, Hampton beach. Going hiking. Kayaking. Working in the garden. Going to a concert. Going to two concerts. Going to our favorite restaurant and a movie for starters. Taking a long drive in my brand new refurbished 1969 Corvette.What are you doing?"
"Well let's see. Hmmmmmmm. I'm working tomorrow. Yeah, I'm working tomorrow. But I do have Sunday off so that's something. Gotta work Monday too. Yeah I'm working on Memorial Day/Pseudo July 4th/Labor Day. But that's OK. I got Sunday off. One day in a row. Looking forward to it."
At this time of year everybody in the world is having fun except for you. Even your dead mother is having more fun than you.
At this time of year you want to kill every customer in existence so there will be no one to wait on. But that is impractical.
This is a cautionary tale. You long weekenders beware.
As you're exiting the store with whatever precious prize you have purchased and you say to the worker bee "Have a nice weekend", don't be surprised if he or she reaches under the counter, grabs an eight pound dead fish and slaps you across the face with it.
The only appropriate response you can utter at that point is "Thank you. I deserved that."
I wrote recenty about finding your site via finding one of your cards. I have to say I enjoy a lot of your posts. This one, however, hit a nerve.
ReplyDeleteYou seem to think that everyone who wishes you a good weekend is about to go out and hove one themselves. Well, not me.
I would give anything to be working Friday night, Saturday, Sunday, or any day for that matter.
I recently lost my job, am about to lose my house (really my family's home). If I were to stop into your store and buy even just a nip, I would leave with the words "have a nice weekend" because that is what I would wish for you.
Before you generalize that eveyone is about to gou out and have a great time without you, how about thinking about those of us that would give anything to have what you have.
Like I said in my last comment, I truly hope that you, somday soon, realize what you have and learn to enjoy it because someday you could end up like me with not much left to be happy about.
"Have a good weekend!"
A concerned new reader