Most people have proper nightmares about being chased by monsters or falling out of an airplane. I have nightmares about my years of working in retail. These nightmares make me long for the good old days of my childhood when I dreamed of werewolves, plummeting from a cliff or aliens bursting out of my chest. But in my current nightmares, it’s always December. There’s a framework of twinkling red and green lights to illuminate the horror.
Just the memory of these nightmares is enough to get my heart pounding and my stomach acid churning. How I managed to get through my years in retail alive and in nearly one piece, I’ll never know. Now, every time I pass by Kmart or Macy’s now I think, “There, but for the grace of God…” I’ve survived five years of being homeless and I can honestly say that I’d rather be homeless than go back to working retail at Christmastime.
Learning the Hard Way
You can learn incredible skills in retail, whether you are behind a cash register or stocking a shelf. You learn the skills all employers look for — showing up on time, prioritizing, following a dress code and keeping a fake smile plastered to your face. You also learn to be polite, to have a tough skin, and to keep your revenge fantasies completely to yourself. You also learn how to recognize a shoplifter … and then realize that retail security personnel are never armed, unlike a lot of the shoplifters.
I also experienced the priceless moment of a customer threatening to come back with a machine gun and mow everyone in the store down, starting with me. This was all because we were out of stock of a Polaroid camera that was on sale. I just blinked, nodded and said, “What an interesting mental picture that would make.”
That was in the winter of 1987. I wonder now if that fellow ever did go postal with a gun on one of the many mall or fast-food restaurant shoot-ups that have happened since.
Trail By Fire
Admittedly, I didn’t like my retail years, either behind a cash register or working the graveyard night replenishment crew. I did not like having to put up with haphazard schedules, rude customers and idiotic supervisors. It was especially hard when I had two college degrees but still could not find a better job than retail.
In ancient societies, the test of adulthood for a young man or woman of the tribe was to go out in the wilderness alone and do something incredibly dangerous like hit a bear with a stick or get bit by a rattlesnake. When the child returned, they had permanently put away their childish ways and were treated as adults from then on. This tradition has never passed. Only now, we send our teenagers off to survive the wilderness of Christmas season retail jobs.
If you can survive retail, you can survive almost anything.
