Sadieandleo

February 27th, 2008

A comment on yesterday’s blog triggers me to want to tell you about my job. Ah, yes, my job. For all intents and purposes my job is my bane, my necessary evil, my crutch and my shackles. My job lets my buy stuff, my job lets me pay bills, my job keeps me from being homeless, hungry and a burden on society. My job is also brainless, a well trained monkey could do my job, save the language barrier, but most days that wouldn’t matter much either way. I am very good at many facets of my job, too good and although that may sound cocky, in reality, it’s a pathetic thing to be able to boast about.

Almost nine years ago I walked out of one retail hell into another. I had a brief stint in book selling. That sounds so lofty until you learn that I did it first in a strip mall, then in a mall, then in another mall, then in a strip mall, then in a Barnes & Noble. It wasn’t exciting and world changing like for a struggling independent book store. It was for the machine, the literary machine run by Oprah, pretty much. I remember that day, my last day “in books”, I told my manager where/how/and when he could “fuck” off and I quit. I walked out. I left it all behind (and for the record, I did throw my keys at him, something that I visualize doing in my head daily at my current job, but not to my manager, but just to the machine). I was homeless, hungry and a burden on society at that point. Mostly I just didn’t have money for gas, that I remember and I also remember vividly how awful it was to be living with my mother again, and at age 24 nonetheless. There was definitely a basement involved.

And for this reason, and for so many others, I find it so difficult to leave the Eagle. The Eagle took me in when no one wanted me. I was marked retail trash, that was worse than being a retail whore. A retail whore is someone who has worked for a myriad of retailers, generally in some sort of managerial capacity, but doesn’t stick it out in any given place for more than six months consecutively. Retail trash is someone who walks out on their job because their string of “bad” days have finally caught up with them and the job they have had for a substantial amount of time is now not reference material but instead useless, trash. The Eagle didn’t take me as an assistant manager at first, they were weary of me, I just walked out of my job, even though I’m sure I made myself out to be a victim in my interview, “My manager just wasn’t as dedicated as I was!”. And I had never done clothing retail. I guess my run as a wedding dress slave girl when I was 16 didn’t count. I wouldn’t count it, that’s for sure. That bitch of a job. Wow, that’s a professional therapy topic if I’ve ever had one. Anyhow, back to the Eagle.

Nope, I had to claw my way to the top, and I guess just needing money so badly, showing up for work whenever someone needed something made me the best candidate for management: I was promoted to key holder in under two months. Then something changed. I started to get really into it. I started to get excited about it. I started caring about it. The Eagle had me. It was turning a new millennium and there I was at the top of the heap, loving my new station in life. I worked for a couple of years there in NH at the Eagle, in Nashua and then in Newington. Yeah, it was the shit. I was learning things, and I’m not talking selling clothes, I was learning how to hire, how to train, how to teach, how to build relationships, how to speak up, how to form an opinion… you know things most people learn in high school. Whatever was happening outside of the Eagle didn’t matter because when I walked through those doors I was revered, welcomed and loved.

When Mike and I relocated to Arizona we didn’t have a home, we didn’t know a soul, but I did have the Eagle. I walked right through that door and I said, “I am a weary traveler and I am with the Eagle, do you have any room at the inn?”. They took me in! 3000 miles from every thing I knew and the Eagle took me in! They even promoted me within a week to assistant manager! Wow, the sky must have been raining roses and unicorns! And you are going to give me more money! I must be the luckiest person alive.

The worst thing that a retail manager can say is, “This is my last year”, it’s like the kiss of death. It is best not to go on about how this is really going to my last Christmas, this is only temporary, this is just to get by, because that is just living in your own little bucket of denial. The long hours, the unimaginable work load, the miscommunication between home office and reality, the misdirection of anything that used to make sense, it all takes its silent toll on you and then you find yourself one day either sucking down smokes behind the trash compactor or throwing back shots of tequila with every hope of your being that you will wake from this horrific nightmare. And no one put you there. No one forced you to take this job. There was never a gun to my head telling me it was this job or the kid gets it. And furthermore, no one forces me to stay there. No one is pressuring me to remain at a job that put me out for six months last year because the stress finally got the best of me, wrecking almost irrevocably, my immune system. What does keep me there?

Familiarity, comfort, monotony, and security. These are things that I have come to know at the Eagle. I never knew any of these things growing up. Never, and I cannot drive that home enough. I am familiar with what is expected of me at my job; and to expand on that, knowing what is expected of me even before it is asked of me and doing it gives me some sort of sick rush, a feeling of being in complete control, also something I never had. The Eagle is comfortable. The people like me and I like the people. Customers are disgusting and wonderful all at the same time and because I’ve been doing it for so long they are also faceless and I don’t take anything personal anymore; I’m numb. Monotony is a funny thing. I like routines, I like things just so. I like when things run like clockwork. This surprises people the most about me. I want monotony in my life above all else. I hate surprises, weak links, changes. I like to know what’s coming. And the real kicker is the security. I don’t make a ton of money but I make a lot of money for what I do. What I earn is justified and I have always felt that way. But the sad reality is I make more than a lot of other professions that are leagues more noble than what I do. I don’t save lives, I sell clothes. It’s not rocket science, it’s retail. We’re not here to change the world, we’re here to make our day. Yeah, I probably say those three things more than “Excuse me”, “Thank you” or “I love you” in any given week.

I found myself the other day thinking how great/miserable it would be to be with this company for a decade. I am well beyond worrying about how people may see that as the most pathetic thing they could think of. About six years beyond that. But I was calculating how fast I would accumulate my paid time off. As it is right now I earn 8 hours of vacation every two weeks. I don’t think the company really banked on people sticking around for as long as I have. I was thinking about the party and fan-fare the Eagle would host for me, “She made it ten years. I hear they are giving her a corner office!” By the way I refer to the bathroom at work as the corner office.

No. I won’t make it ten years. Instead it plays out more like the scene in Half Baked, where Jim Breuer proclaims, “I’m not gonna do what everyone thinks I’m gonna do… FLIP OUT… all I wanna know is one thing… who’s coming with me?” Because it would definitely be more Half Baked than it would be Jerry Maguire. But I will flip out. I will smash the stools through the windows, I will shove an entire table top of product onto the floor, I will tell a well deserving customer where/how/and when to fuck off. I will break things, I will scream, I won’t go quietly into that good night. Oh no, it never plays out well in my mind. It always ends badly.

And there you have it, the Eagle and me.