Kill Me Now. An Insiders Look at Retail

  This is going to be long. Bear with me. I have been working in retail for 8 years now. Some of it has been good, but everything grinds together after a while. Shit breaks down. Policies change for the worst. Benefits are cut, you get new bosses and suddenly, things just aren't any fun anymore. You realize that retail is miserable as hell.

  In fact, several years ago, a group of my friends and I came up with a rating scale.

  The Stages of Retail Worker:

Stage 1: Freshly Employed
Soul Tarnish: 0-2
  Congratulations! This might be your very first job! Or you might just be an optimist. I won't judge you if you are (much). Things are great. Everything is shiny and new, you follow policy and procedure to the line, when people ask you how you are, you respond that you are "excellent!" or "great!". You are happy to be there, and you are happy to help everyone. You want to learn everything. Working past your scheduled time? No problem!! Doing the unpopular jobs? You don't know they are yet or that they are being dumped on you! You want to help *every* customer to your fullest ability! People like this are *adorable*.

  Stage 2: Seasoned
Soul Tarnish: 3-5
  You've been working retail for a while and you know when you are going to face bullshit. You still do the unpleasant tasks in the hopes that someone in management will notice your talent and you will be promoted or get that raise and everything will be gravy once again. You know how everything is supposed to work, but you also know how it usually works and you can generally work around it. You still pick up extra time because hey, being dependable means that maybe one day, you will be in charge! You are starting to get annoyed at the fact that you are the only one doing the unpleasant tasks, but you still do them. You might be asked to train new employees at this stage. Because you aren't a horrible person (yet) you try to shelter them as much as possible from the things that sometimes go wrong and make sure you are on hand to demonstrate how to deal with problems as they arise. You still help customers and know most of the answers. Sometimes the customers frustrate you but you can handle it. Management knows they can depend on you to do the right thing. You got this.

 Stage 3: Worn Out
Soul Tarnish: 6-8
  You need this job. You do. Rent/mortgage is due every month and you have to be able to eat more than ramen eggs and peanut butter taquitos or you will die of scurvy. You are reluctant to work extra hours despite needing the money. You wonder if an extra $8 is really worth staying another hour. You try to get other people to do the unpleasant tasks by pretending that you don't notice they need to be done or "being too busy" or "forgetting". You might pawn it off on a Stage 1. If cornered, you will do the tasks, but you might do them shoddily, and you will be resentful the entire time. You might make comments about how much you hate this job. You might even start looking for a new job, knowing that it won't be any better than this one. And then you have to worry about setting up your health insurance again and maybe changing doctors. If you can even *get* health insurance. You might call out of work frequently because the thought of going in and dealing with that place another day is just too much to think about. You might legitimately get a migraine from dreading going in. It might make you sick to your stomach. Your immune system may be compromised and you might get genuinely ill frequently because you are miserable. You will still help new employees but only if asked. You tell them a lot of what can go wrong in an effort to warn them to abandon ship without scaring them too badly. Management hasn't noticed your hard work. You got a 10 cent raise. Everyone else gets to leave before you do because you are dependable. You only do what you are told to do and nothing else. You see customers as a hassle, and you respond to them based on how they approach you. You go home every day and swear that you are going to get a BETTER JOB. It almost never happens.

Stage 4: No Longer Care At All
Soul Tarnish: 9-10
  You've had it. You are just there for your paycheck. You do not care. Customer doesn't have a receipt? Too bad. Aren't any more on the shelf? "We don't have anymore." Management is hesitant to assign you tasks because even if you do them, the way you mutter and scowl while you do them leaves them in FEAR for their lives. Any new employees are carefully steered away from you so they don't pick up bad habits. If one is inadvertently placed near you, you tell them about the absolute nightmare working there is and give examples of exactly how bad things WILL BE. Customers might complain about your bad attitude, but it's impossible to please those fuckers, right? You didn't even get a raise this year because the company "can't afford it". They also can't afford to pay you unemployment, which is why you still have a job. Management might start subtly making things slowly more frustrating for you in hopes you'll quit.

Stage 5: What The Fuck Is This Shit?
Soul Tarnish: Beyond Tolerable Levels
  You have transcended emotions. Things might be tolerable. Everything could be ok, you've calmed down, maybe the other day you just had a bad moment. Then something happens and you spend an hour in the bathroom planning on exactly how many police officers are going to have to escort you out of the building. You are cynical, blunt, and lacking in tact. You do your job because it's easier than avoiding it. You've ceased complaining about those tasks everyone hates because no one is listening and you are going to wind up doing it anyway. You probably swear a lot. You may say "Are you SERIOUS???" knowing that yes, they are in fact serious. You help the customers because you realize that they are in the same boat, but you reserve a malicious glee in being deaf, stupid, or blind to deal with rude hostile customers. One of the most satisfying times of the day is when you get to lock the doors as a customer is coming up to the door and you pantomime that the store is closed. Too late. Too bad. So sad. We open at 6am tomorrow morning. See you then! You hate the customers that come in an hour before the store closes. You help new employees and feel responsible for them. So bright. So shiny. So untarnished. It's sad, but they'll learn. You don't usually want to try to find another job, because you know exactly how much you can get away with and exactly what is expected of you.

Fuck it. Just. Fuck it.

 So. What is so bad that can turn a happy intelligent person into a cynical sarcastic worn out dusty shell of a human being?


Well, in a word, Retail. We'll go into detail in installments.

These are the topics I plan to cover in this series of articles:

*Self Checkout is a simmering hellhole
*When Customer lose their shit and start fighting each other (break out the popcorn!)
*Sisyphus. When the repetitive gets to the point when you can't tell if it's asshole or breakfast time or maybe just Tuesday anymore. Parts One and Two.
*Children. They are our future so let's keep an eye on them, ok?
*The Rumor Mill
*The People In Charge (either don't care or don't have authority)
*Staffing and Hours
*Why is stuff never where it's supposed to be?!
*College Degrees and the black hole of retail. Hahahaha. Student loans? That's cute. Minimum wage!
*When Customers go Insane

So yeah. Retail is a big topic. Granted that my experience lies solely with the place *I* work. Maybe the world is a different better place from where I work.

Maybe I'm just too cynical and jaded.

Maybe I'm just terribly terribly sane.

Bunnyworm's Breakfast Couscous

  Breakfast in my home is always a challenge. You can only eat so much oatmeal or scrambled eggs before your family (and your own stomach) rebel, regardless of how creative you get. I have made al dente ramen and then scrambled an egg in the drained noodles for breakfast before. Omelets, dried fruit in the oatmeal. Quiche. You name it. It gets more wacky and creative the less eggs we have. We buy 2 1/2 dozen at least every two weeks. We go through canisters of oatmeal. We utterly devour grits (Bunnyworm likes pureed beets mixed in with her grits).

  Today, Daddybeast is off work so I wanted to make something nonstandard. I woke up and I started digging through my supercook account to see what I could make that looked even close to being breakfasty. I also added a new ingredient to my list: couscous. I bought some on special at my farmers market and I wanted to try it out. Since it was new I figured, hey, it's a grain. It'd probably make a pretty good breakfast. All the recipes I found on supercook though, were for dinner dishes. A lot of them made me drool. Curry Lamb and couscous? YES PLEASE. 

   But not for breakfast.

  So I hunted and dug around google. I love google. Yeah, they've sold us out to the NSA hardcore, but I still love them. Let's be perfectly honest here. Could most of us find ANYTHING online without google? Sure you could use yahoo or whatever other search engine, but when someone asks me to look something up online, they ask me to "google it". That's some big shit right there. That's like how we refer to adhesive medical strips as bandaids or the phrase "kodak moment" even though as of 2012, they aren't even making cameras anymore. Google might not have invented the search engine (That would be "Archie" which was made buy this guy) but it is certainly the first one that pops into my head.

  Anyhow, I digress.

  I pulled up several different recipes for couscous as a breakfast food. Ultimately, I went with the most basic recipe I found. It looked ok. I figured I'd go for it.

  However, it seemed a bit plain and I wanted to spruce it up, so I added vanilla extract, golden raisins and craisins.

raisins, golden raisins, and craisins in couscous

  Then I decided it needed some nuts. Pecans is what I had at the time.

Pecans

  And lastly, because everyone in my home is nuts about apples, I chopped up a gala apple and tossed it in.

  I cheat when I cut up apples. I have one of those apple coring/slicing tools my Gramma gave me right after Bunnyworm was born. It is one of the most useful tools in my kitchen. Wash apple, remove stem, set on cutting board, then bring that shit down. That gives you nice uniform apple wedges. Then I took my choppin' knife and I chopped those slices up till they looked like the picture to the left.

  Then I mixed everything up. It didn't look like it would be particularly good. It actually looked kinda nasty, but that's how breakfast foods look. Have you ever looked at a bowl of oatmeal and said "HOLY SHIT! I AM GOING TO EAT THE FUCK OUT OF THAT OATMEAL!"? No. Because it looks like grey souless lumpy matter. It looks like it comes predigested. At least this is colorful.

  Anyhow, I portioned it out into 3 bowls. One for me, one for Daddybeast, and one for Bunnyworm. While I was doing this I had 3 crying cats pawing at my legs begging me for wet catfood. Bjorn likes to sit right behind my legs so I trip over him when i turn around. Remember: cats are assholes.

  For a sweetener, you can use just about anything. The original recipe called for either honey or agave nectar. We used honey, but there is no reason why you couldn't use sugar, brown sugar, maple syrup (yum!), stevia, splenda (except the fact that artificial sweeteners are TERRIBLE for you), etfc. Each will marginally change the taste, but without a sweetener, this tastes really bland with occasional bursts of raisin or apple or whatever.


Here is my modified recipe:

2 cups milk (we used 2%)
1 cup couscous
1 tbsp vanilla extract
1/3 cup raisins
1/3 cup golden raisins
1/3 cup craisins (dried cranberries)
1/3 cup chopped pecans
1 medium gala apple, chopped
honey/other sweetener to taste

  First, put your milk in a pot and set it to high CAREFULLY because milk will burn. This should never boil. You just want to get the milk hot. When it starts to steam, reduce your heat all the way down to simmer.You *could* just let the milk go on medium heat, but I'm impatient and you would be too if you had a toddler screaming at you because she was hungry.

  Put your c/raisins in a bowl and pour some water over them and let them soak.

  Add your couscous, stirring to make sure it's all under the milk's surface. Go ahead and add your vanilla extract now. Cover it and let it cook for 5-6 minutes (mine took about 7 minutes to absorb all the milk).

  While the couscous is cooking, chop up your apple and your pecans if they aren't already chopped.

Bunnyworm's bowl, with honey drizzled over

  When the couscous has absorbed the milk, remove from heat. Drain your c/raisins and mix them, chopped pecans and apple slices in. Then you can decide which sweetener to use. I sweetened each person's food individually because Daddybeast is diabetic. I always let him choose what and how much to use. Bunnyworm and I used honey. Be careful you don't add too much. I found that 2 tbsp was enough for my adult portion. Bunnyworm likes things really sweet so she also got 2 tbsp (and sticky).