Retail Life Sentence
Today’s young adult population is comprised of broke students, who can’t even afford peanut butter, and infestations of over-privileged millennial parasites. Meaning we have a bunch of hangry twenty-somethings working their butts off while other similarly aged individuals get hammered and sext their exes. Obviously only a portion of these plebeians will understand hard work, though it doesn’t necessarily guarantee success – that’s typically reserved for mortals of the silver spoon.
A focus on those who work will reveal that they also have a greater grasp of common decency. They are, however, an endangered species. Those who have nothing better to do with their time than complain about not having any, yet don’t feel it necessary to seek employment, are taking over the planet. This can be seen when a person, like myself, is forced to work over four part-time jobs at a single time while juggling full-time school work and fellow students come complaining about being unable to manage a simple social calendar full of booze and sexcapades. And this happens on a daily basis.
These facts hopefully depict the prudent need for drastic societal shift in order to orchestrate a fully functional populace composed of cordial human beings. The solution to this conundrum and our country’s desire for change is to make six months of retail work mandatory for every of-age citizen. This would result in the killing off of every person’s soul in the most appropriate portion in order to yield more humble, considerate anthropoids. The fact that my nights are filled with dreams of angry customers and the beeping of cash registers, yet I still find it impossible to pull myself out of bed, means that I have no desire to fight against the masses. If everyone were in the same boat then there would be no mass to fight against.
Once a person works retail, the polite spiel they are required to regurgitate upon meeting each new customer will become deeply ingrained. Doesn’t everyone appreciate being thanked for simply showing up, fielding inquiries about their well-being, and being asked if they are in need of any assistance? Wouldn’t it be nice if this were a more common and natural occurrence? It would also result in fewer exchanges fettered by hipster slang, or more accurately, non-ironic grammar discrepancies, and pardons for horrible French.
As a retail employee, one must treat customers with respect and do everything in your power to keep these patrons happy. In other words, workers are designed to suck consumers into a black hole that results in the spending of vast amounts of money on useless possessions of inaccurate monetary value. Repeating these behaviours time and again turns compulsiveness into the practicing of appropriate actions. This will result in the same performances occurring beyond the walls of each job site, despite workers forgetting that the real world exists, as they have no time to see the light of day.
Not only will these niceties lead to more considerate attitudes, it will also lead to individuals becoming more habitually humble. If everyone has similar work experiences while growing up, people will finally be sympathetic when it comes to retail workers being forced to work evenings, weekends, and holidays. No longer will people come in exasperated over their hectic week and tell people who are working, how grateful they are that it’s the weekend. They will start to understand that even though some people have two days off in a row others don’t get time off no matter the day of the week.
It would also minimize the risk of retail anxiety experienced by shoppers, the symptoms being extreme anger towards employees, screaming about unfair prices and policies, and brash exits over lines that are too long. Remember, mental health is an important part to the overall survival of our species.
Let us join together and support a retail life sentence as a way to put society back on track. Every person can be rehabilitated, so why not an entire society that has appeared to have lost its way on the road to retribution? Or something like that….
Caitlin Graham
Caitlin Graham prides herself on saying she graduated university without debt, after working up to six part-time jobs at a time. However, she can be classified as a glass-half-empty person with a tendency to be straightforward. She hopes to become a glass-refillable person after grasping a stable career.