Occupying My Job

Tomorrow, this hippie supporter of Occupy Wall Street gets to return to his place of employment after three days of pure bliss. I shall reenter the world of big box retail, where I serve a sentence alongside some coworkers who have been trapped there for years. You can see the lost expressions on every face that is aged beyond 20 years.

Those of us who try to treat it more like a social club can endure the suffering somewhat, but those who have health insurance to protect or children to feed are imprisoned. There's no other opportunities. The only escape is their mind. Their perpetual fantasy of telling every single-brain-celled organism in management that they're mad as hell and they're not gonna take it anymore, walking out the door, and picking up a decent bottle of liquor at the local Rite-Aid doesn't go beyond the vast lost hope of their minds. They are the 99% and many are unaware.

Customers are encouraged to treat us like shit and we are discouraged from telling them where to go. Using "go to hell" in a big box retail store is kind of a redundant statement, anyway. I joked just last Sunday that churchgoers leave church and go straight to hell. You know, for their shampoo and hamburger. You can get everything at stores like this now. They've attained some sort of "SUPER"star status after sucking all competition through their monolithic fangs.

We can't even unionize. Special task forces from corporate headquarters are dispatched at the mere mention of the word. The entire 8-week management training program is dedicated to teaching their new lackies how to put the fear of corporate in all of their sweaty, underpaid and overworked employees.

But, tomorrow I shall put on my biggest smile and pretend that I owe my life to this corporation for giving me employment at one of their many camps. Maybe, just maybe I won't be called "[Company Name] Man" or called like a dog when some customer straight out of "The Walking Dead" needs assistance with spending what little money they have left in this tanking economy. Maybe, just maybe my list of tasks will be short and all the pompous robots, programmed only to take the task of making the rich richer seriously will have called in or have the day off and my 8 hours will go by smoothly. Then, I can hurry home to continue work on my Associate's degree and periodically comment on various Occupy Wall Street sites, where I will be told that I should go out and get a job.

I still don't know why I chose poverty as a lifestyle, but I am not prepared to accept the consequences for it much longer.