I stand in the corner between Boho and Summer, patiently watching the blindingly white plastic table where a young boy sits, spinning on top of the sweaters I had just folded. My right jean jacket pocket slightly overheats from holding my phone that’s hasn’t been granted the wifi password, but regardless, has been overused. The same Macklemore song vibrates my ear drums, providing a theme song to my slow drift into absolute internal oblivion. The bright yellow lanyard with a missing name tag that should be declaring me a “SALES ASSOCIATE” behaves as a perpetually scratching reminder of the debt of student loans and my personal forgetfulness. Despite not calling for approximately a week and a half, praying that the lack of contact might give a Forever 21 that I do not want to work there, I was put on the schedule again.
The transition from the constant creativity required by the flower shop I was last employed by to retail is enough to convince myself that I wouldn’t really mind if a clown snuck out of the woods lining the Stony Brook campus, and grabbed my handlebars to MC Hammer his way back to his murder cabin with me as I bike to the Smith Haven Mall. But my tuition bill is due by October 15th, I have $5.08 in my checking account, and this is the first place that offered me a job. So I pedal anyway.
Enter the vortex of human nonsense. Hangers thrown onto a shelf I need a 12 foot ladder to reach, purse dogs chewing a hoodie with “Pretty AND Smart” printed across the front, mannikins with both arms stuck in the torso of a Kurt Cobain T-shirt, and nothing else whose consequences equal the value of $9-an-hour plague every second of my 6+ hour shifts. Although most teenagers find themselves lured into the realm of retail when searching for their first job, or any way to secure a constant income, I cannot fathom a world where a single person exists who wants to do these jobs.While I contemplate how long I can stand facing a unceasingly dripping hose in the toxic scented bathroom, or count the stolen minutes after my break ends when I sit unflinchingly in the plastic folding chairs in the bowels of the store, I can’t help but feel grateful. Even though I spent 2 hours waiting in the freezing rain to catch a bus to get here, and even though I’ll tell you to hit “add to cart” when you show me a skirt online that you want to find in store, I appreciate the 10% of brain power it requires to pretend like I know what I’m doing. Folding, refolding, and folding again becomes incredibly tedious after the first 10 seconds of doing so, but it’s not like I’m breathing in coal dust in order to provide a nickel and a loaf of bread to my family at the end of each week. There are definitely worse things I could be doing in order to just go to school.