Well, again, I am guilty of not posting for a long time. As a writer, there is just no excuse, except for the plague of homework I’ve suffered over the past four months. Now I’m done for the semester, and am facing the onslaught of Christmas retail. Not just shopping, but working it. I get to sell sweaters at a mall kiosk on the busiest shopping day of the year – Christmas Eve! Fun fun fun!
Somehow, I manage to get sucked into these crappy jobs because I’m used to torture and abuse; they’re all I know and understand, and I always end up working for the kind of managers that make you feel guilty for asking for a day off, even if the shift is only for three hours on the last Friday evening before Christmas day and is the only Christmas party you’ve been invited to. Make you feel guilty for not wanting to work a crappy job where venue is in the middle of a busy mall hall, where there are no walls to hide from customers and they can see your butt when you bend over to open the cupboard below to get at your purse, where you work a shift alone with no breaks, where you have to ask another store employee to watch the kiosk when you need to use the washroom, and you still feel guilty just for leaving it cuz he gave you a dirty look when you returned to his surprise visit.
And you feel guilty cuz he yelled at you for accepting a returned sweater that had a hole in it, telling you that the return policy was explained “in the manual” (but never verbally), and now he’s out ninety bucks. The customer who returned the damaged sweater said it was like that when she bought it, and didn’t notice it until she got home. What am I supposed to say? “Sorry, lady, you’re lying, and you ripped it. We can’t take it back.” What kind of customer service is that? I’ve never worked at any retail store or even a hotel where they did not provide a refund or compensation to an unhappy customer, and I’ve worked for ten years combined in each industry. Hm. I guess my standards are too high.
And even if you manage to get a better job, he won’t let you quit because you’ve left him “high and dry,” and he can’t find anyone else to work Christmas Eve and the night prior to Christmas Eve, both which he expects you to work with glee. He wants me to work the crappy job so he doesn’t have to lose his dignity like I do – furiously hand-writing receipts for impatient customers and counting checkmarks to add up all the sales. So I have to close this Saturday night, and I won’t get home until 11 pm because the buses don’t run very often from North Vancouver, and then get up at 6 am to get ready for my shift the next morning at 9 am.
Closing isn’t just locking the door when I leave. It means tarping seven sections of sweaters with bungee cords, awkward wire bike locks, cheap padlocks, fifteen teeny, tiny keys, and massive, royal-blue plastic sheets. You know when you arrive late at night to a campsite, and you’re cold, tired, and hungry, but you have to put up the tent first? That’s what it’s like, with dozens of people watching and laughing at you while you drape the sheets across the floor and stretch them over the racks with all your meager strength, and you still need to balance the cash float and credit card slips. You need to tarp up first, or else people see the sweaters while you’re trying to balance and want to buy them after closing time. And then when you open the next morning, while half-asleep, you have to unlock all these sweater tents, barely held together by the bike locks and padlocks, with the teeny, tiny keys that keep slipping from your carpal-tunnel induced hands.
The Christmas Eve shift will be so busy I won’t have time to pee, and there will be no one to cover for me if I need to pee cuz the other stores will be super busy too. What will I do? And if I ask for help, he looks at me like I’m a useless, lazy slacker who is asking way too much for a measly ten bucks an hour. It’s almost as if he expects me to pay him just for the incredible opportunity to advance my sweater career.
I always find myself surrounded by these types, who when you describe the situation to people that know them socially say, “Oh, but he seems like such a nice guy! I’d never have guessed,” like you’re making the whole thing up. Typical? Maybe now that I’ve recognized this pattern in my life, I can learn to walk away, and surround myself with employers who respect me. I’ve learned to get away from these types of boyfriends, now it’s time to do the same for people I work for. It’s so hard to retrain your brain to a life pattern that is functional and healthy, and to a place where you feel empowered, not martyred.
blaak sheep 