Hard boiled son-of-a-bitch!
Scraping away on the down hill grind
It’s a means to an end – a mean end for most
– Lamb of God
This has to be one of those days which has epiphany written all over it.
One thing I don’t want to be doing is languishing in retail for fuck-knows-how-long, going through the motions in these eight-hour stints. Some days I can bear the stint – other days, I see my current position for the dead end that it is. A thankless task be this, save for the financial replenishment at the end of the month; responding to each and every cry for help; marching to the sound of monotony, back- forth-back-forth; having to follow the conflicting requests of an ungrateful, chaotic menagerie of managers.
Let’s not forget the ever-so-competent customers, half of whom seriously need to go back to school and learn that ‘entrance’ and ‘exit’ are not synonymous! As for the other half? It’d be nice if they actually knew a little bit about what the fuck they were buying, instead of expecting my colleagues and I to do all the work for them. Seriously! Vague, wanky questions like: “Which is the best kettle/DVD/ iron?” will not garner the desired response – for the love of Lucifer, do your soddin’ homework and know what you’re looking for in said products.I’m a stock runner, not a fucking promo video!
Saying all that, I realize I have it lucky, working at said store for only half the week – I shudder to imagine the mindset of the poor bastard reduced to working five to six days at Currys, or any sort of service industry set-up, for the majority of their lives. Imagine putting one’s foot through the door, with the express intention of walking through it, only to have said door slam shut upon one’s foot. Rolling the same boulder uphill ad infinitum, for capricious Gods in suits ‘n’ ties, soon deadens the spark that once danced in the eyes of the seething, servile Sisyphus. And what awaits him once he staggers his way toward retirement? No doubt a gold watch, or some such trinket – a paltry sum for decades of degradation. A case of: “You’ve been ever such a good boy, Mr Sisyphus – now take your gold watch and greying hair and fuck off!”
How many of my colleagues will fall into a similar cycle of shit, I wonder? One thing’s for sure – I do not want to become another Sisyphus, seething at the life rolling further downhill with each slip of the boulder….
~MRDA~
::sigh:: I’ve felt this way about almost every job I’ve ever had. I don’t believe I’ll live long enough to retire, the boredom will kill me, or I’ll start to feel so trapped that I gnaw off a limb or two in hopes of escaping. My current job is not going so well right now… and I thought it had a future, once.
don’t think of it as ‘getting out of retail’. think of it as ‘getting into career x’ where career x is the career you’ve chosen to spend your life as (i don’t know what it is cause i haven’t read your lj enough, but i assume you must have one).