Make the Most of Today

I was eating the kind of Dove candy that has a little inspirational fortune-cookie type message on the wrapper, settling into the couch to read To Kill a Mockingbird and that's what the message said to me. I looked at it for a moment and thought perhaps I should be doing something else, but I generally don't believe in fate or whatever telling me what to do, especially through candy wrappers and whatnot. So I read a little, and absently opened a second candy.

"Make the most of Today."

That's what it said. Two candies, same message, one right after the other. I, being the sucker I am deep down for believing in fate and signs and destiny, stared at the little gold wrapper with a feeling of swelling hope. Two candies has to be a sign that I ought to be doing something else with my day. I have errands I need to run, people I ought to contact. Maybe I should do that with my day instead of reading a good book and eating chocolate.

I'm sure I wouldn't be so easily persuaded by the mystery of the candy wrapper if I could see the manufacturing process. I'm sure looking at all those little foil wrappers with the messages pre-printed and generic lined up on some assembly line would ruin the sense that when I open the candy, the message suddenly comes into being, rather than having been there the whole time.

But then the reality of it sets in as I finish the thing up and the shimmering feeling of something around the corner wears off. If I didn't have any errands to run, what would I want to be doing to feel as though I'm making the most out of my life. And the answer really is that half the time I'd rather be doing just what I was when the candy started all this: curled up on the couch, reading a good book, eating a chocolate. So why shouldn't that be the most of my today?

New Year

Periodically I get unhappy with the direction my life is going. Read: I get jealous of other people I know who are doing things I wish I were doing. New year seems like a good time to explore these feelings. The new year always comes with a sense of possibility and change. I realize this is largely a construct, because what makes December 31st different from January 1st is about 30 seconds of sunlight, but it's good to look back and look forward at a significant time.

I never really want to go out and party for new year. Or any other time, really. I'd much rather have a private party with my friends. But this year, Andrew and I are in Phoenix essentially alone. So, the only option besides staying in alone with the cat is going out with strangers and feeling connected to the world at large instead of basking in the glow of friendship. But I imagine the hassle of getting there and back, the MONEY OMG it's not cheap to go to the Fiesta Bowl block party, and the boredom that comes from standing in a loud crowd for several hours doing nothing, and I don't really want to go. But I don't really want to stay at home alone. I feel like to make my life worth living I should be out doing interesting and unusual things to mark the passage of time.

Which of course brings me to my thoughts on the direction my life is headed in general. I love traveling. When I hear about friends who get to travel all over the place for their school or their jobs, or get to meet interesting people in the course of their work... I think about how I mostly watch Star Trek and surf the internet and wonder how I can make that into a jet-setting career path. I get so jealous. And what better time of the year than new year to think about changes I can make to have the life I want? Yet, it doesn't seem likely that getting my degree in rhetoric and composition will further those goals.

Not that I don't love my master's program! I do. But I wish I could make it more amazing. I wish I knew what I wanted.

American Bed

My dad’s life is simultaneously representative of the iconic American journey and a life of unusual stories. When I think of the stories he tells that stick with me, I think of the ones where he was sleeping somewhere unconventional. From his youth sleeping on a cot on the screened-in porch during the Wyoming summers (there wasn't room anywhere else in the tiny Wyoming homestead) to his feather-soft queen sized bed in Moses Lake on which he sleeps next to my stepmother these days (his back pains him after years of wrestling and flying, and two consequent surgeries), where my dad has spent his nights highlights the path his life has taken. 

The cryptic reference to the hotel bathtub he used as a bed in Hong Kong from his navy bachelor days represents a time in his life that remains largely hidden from me. The night my mom died, his bed was empty. He had rushed her to the hospital, and that’s where she died. That night, he didn’t sleep at all. And the next time he did get to sleep, she wasn’t there. Tonight he is about to go to sleep on my air mattress in my guest bedroom in Phoenix, Arizona. He and my stepmom are visiting me, and we’ve had a lot of time to just talk because I’m currently getting my Master’s degree and it’s finals week, so I can’t go out and do anything interesting with them.

It seems to me like where and how you sleep can say a lot about what you’ve been doing during the day. That’s why I think it’s interesting to imagine all the nights my dad has had in his life. Everyone shares the night, but my dad’s nights symbolize the stories that make up one unique American story—one of many American stories that make up this American life.

Breaking Point

I was watching an episode of Quantum Leap on Hulu the other day, in which Sam leaps into the life of an adult with some sort of mental disability and the IQ of a twelve year old. I'm sure that's not the PC way to say that, but I mean no harm. Anyway, he finds himself making mistakes and acting klutzy all the time as people treat him like he's less than human. It made me think about my time at Fred Meyer. Towards the end, I could hardly handle a day of work. Especially in the home department. I would go home and cry almost every night. I would even cry before work because I didn't want to go. This is an excessive amount of crying, even for me.

But I just couldn't take people treating me like I was less than human anymore. As I mentioned, I've been reading notalwaysright.com lately, and it's made me realize just how many truly horrible people I encountered. Almost every day I would experience somebody ignoring my polite small talk, rolling their eyes at me, questioning my answers, talking down to me, or doing something to make me feel like my life was worthless to them. Of course, the majority of the people I met were just shopping, neither evil nor good. But I think I took the evil ones worse than most people did. I think the work that I perform as well as my emotional reactions are very strongly related to what people expect from me and the way they treat me.

Towards the end I even started being nasty back to customers. I asked (in not a nice tone) that woman who wanted to speak to a boy why she needed to speak to a boy instead of me. And once, a customer came in while I was at the register in the home department and asked me if we had any tomato cages. I told him I wasn't sure, that they could be found either right around the corner on aisle 79 or in the small garden area at the front of the store. He became angry and asked me why I didn't know, insisted he didn't have time to look, indicated that it was my job to know the name and location of all (285,000 items) in our inventory. I asked him if he would like me to call my manager and ask if we had any. He yelled at me, "do you even KNOW what a tomato cage IS?!" I told him, yes, I do know what a tomato cage is, but I do not know if we have any.

He stormed away, yelling sarcastically, "Thanks, you've been SO HELPFUL."
I yelled something after him. I don't remember what I yelled, but it wasn't nice. I have to imagine he didn't hear me or I would have gotten hell from my manager, or the guy would have come back.

Normally you're supposed to just grin and bear it when customers yell at you, but I don't think that's fair. Everyone has a breaking point, and I think it would be better if retail employees were encouraged to say something like, "You are being rude and abusive, and do not have to serve you if you continue to act that way toward me." Just a statement of fact. That way it doesn't devolve into a shouting match, and rude customers don't get to just keep being rude to their fellow human beings.

Cashier Memories part II

So, I've been reading notalwaysright.com lately, and remembering how I once imagined writing down all my cashier experiences for posterity. I really don't want to forget all the hilarious, horrible, and wonderful things that happened to me. Here's a rundown of some of my "favorite" experiences.

When I was working in the electronics department, this woman came up to me and asked me if I could help her find a certain type of battery. She held up a AA battery and asked me if we had any "Ay-Ay minus 2010" batteries. I thought maybe she was joking, only she looked like such a normal baby boomer type woman. She was looking at the expiration date and the polarity and assumed that was part of the type of battery! I decided that I would explain a little about batteries to her, because I guess we all have to learn sometime. I walked her over to the batteries and showed her the four and eight packs, and she was so confused. She was so certain that she needed a AA2010, but the only number she could see was the 4 and the 8; she couldn't see the date on any of the batteries we had. I finally convinced her it didn't matter. She also told me that it came from her electric beater and she wasn't sure how to put the batteries back inside. I explained to her how most electronics have a little diagram showing which direction to put them in. She eventually left with some batteries after thanking me for taking the time to explain it to her. She was nice, but skeptical the whole time I talked to her. I told her we all have to learn sometime.

While I was working at the electronics department, I didn't really know everything that was going on there, because it was widely known that I wasn't going to be working there for more than a few months, and I never worked there more than 20 hours a week, usually less. Everything I learned was sort of on the fly. I of course asked a lot of questions and tried to learn as much as I could, but not being a big techy, I got asked a lot of questions I didn't know the answer to. My uncertainty was more a problem than my lack of knowledge. It always has been. That problem was compounded by the fact that the customers treated electronics customers like a virtual database of all things that run on electricity. In many ways it was nicer to work in electronics because the customers treated us with some respect because they assumed we knew something they didn't. People were often frustrated with me, and complained to my manager (who was awesome about it--really a nice guy who just wanted his employees to be happy and productive) a lot. But the worst was when people would ask me if they could talk to a male employee when they felt their needs weren't being met. Sometimes I really didn't know the answer, in which case it makes sense that they would ask if anyone else knew they answer, but the fact that they would say OUT LOUD that they wanted to talk to a male is just horrifying. How could anyone think that it's okay to say such a misogynist thing out loud to another human being? Even if men traditionally or statistically know more about electronics than women, shouldn't the question be "is there someone else who knows?" instead of "can I talk to one of the guys?" Not even "ask" one of the guys. They didn't even want to talk to me. I even had one woman (yes, even women did this) who wanted to know if we had a video in stock. When I told her we didn't, she asked to talk to a guy. What on earth would a guy know about our inventory that I didn't find on the computer? One time towards the end of my time there, when I was increasingly unwilling to grin and bear it when customers were horrible, a woman on the phone asked if she could talk to a boy, and I called her on it.
"Why do you need to talk to a boy? What can they tell you that I can't?"
She just stuttered at me. I eventually transferred her to my manager, who is male.

Not everybody was horrible. There was a homeless man who used to come in to the store pretty regularly and mostly just return bottles for money, sometimes buying a bit of food or something. He was always nice, although odd. One day while I was cashiering in the home department he came through my line with more things than he usually got, and less practical: I believe he had some beer and cookies. He explained to me that it was his birthday so he was buying himself a treat. I wished him a happy birthday and rang him up. He pulled out a little plastic bag full of coins and counted them out carefully. Then, when I gave him his receipt, he pushed the little bag with the rest of his coins toward me.
"Here's a tip for your service," he said. "You're a good girl."
I was stunned.
"Thank you, but I can't accept that."
But he insisted I take it, saying he appreciated me. So I did, with another "thank you." When he left, I wasn't sure what to do with it. I looked down at the little bag, with maybe $5.00 in it. The beer and cookies had been worth less than that. It was probably literally all the money he had, and he wanted to give it to me, on his birthday, because he appreciated me. I felt a little like crying as I finally dropped the money into the little box at the end of the checkstand that collects change people leave for a local kids' charity. It just didn't seem like that five dollars in change would mean as much to anyone else that got it as it did to me.

I still think about him sometimes when I feel overwhelmed by all the evil in the world. Even Fred Meyer had its good moments.