Tales of a Retail Nothing

I have been trying to write about working in retail post 2016, it has been very difficult, I've started this chapter on the page four or five times and in my head hundreds of times. It's difficult, because no matter how you feel about politics, whether you're completely a-political or you're as deep in the American Lore as I am, it's hard to look at the state of our country and not feel a little defeated.

This is going to be very American centric, I mean all of my chapters about retail are but for this one I'm going to discuss politics, and I'm going to discuss politics from a leftist standpoint. If this isn't your thing you can move on, if you want to start discourse in the comments I just ask that you stay civil.

I'm going to take you back to January 21st 2016, the day of the Women's March, the day after Donald Trump was inaugurated into office. I was working at an independent camera store, the staff leaned left with the exception of a few, however the customers leaned right.

Now, I had processed this thing for a long time, I was still mourning however when he came down that escalator in 2015 I could have told you that he was going to win. When Hillary Clinton won the primary any doubt or hope in my mind was quashed. I live in a blue state (though I'd argue it's more purple), I saw what was a pretty significant cross section of the American psyche on a daily basis, there wasn't a doubt in my mind that the day would come where we would be watching Donald Trump taking the oath of office.

I digress. On the 21st, while most of the people in my life were out protesting I was at work. The first thing that was said to me by a customer was "I couldn't keep my eyes off the screen yesterday, this is so exciting". All I could thing was did you listen to what he was saying? It was fucking terrifying. In retail it is decorum in the face of rudeness that's valued above all else though, so I swallowed my words and some pride and nodded while making eye contact with my coworker. We were miserable, and scared, the people who were our regulars were showing their colors and it was then that I started noticing how big the cracks were getting.

It was more obvious the longer Mr. Trump was in office, and when I changed jobs to Mitchell's I was spending a lot of time with each customer. I was a confidant and a fairly safe person to share with, my regulars treated me as a therapist who couldn't offer a reality check. People were unwilling or unable to hide their hatred so they talked to me about it. I'm white, so despite being very obviously queer sometimes people felt safe saying horrible things to me because I was "one of them" and not able to fight back in a way that intimidated them

I was not allowed to reject art based on politics or it being offensive, I was allowed to reject art for inappropriate pictures of children (thank god I never came across that) and once I rejected art that had hate symbols on it. I still saw some very questionable things.

As the years went on we were desensitized to chaos, things that happened in the last seven years pop to the top of my mind some times and I am amazed they didn't take society down. Single events that would have dominated the conversation for months were happening daily, sometimes twice daily. It hasn't slowed down and the divide amongst the people I see every day is getting cemented deeper and deeper.

I could talk theory with you, I'm actually quite versed, but instead I want to talk community.

I have a lot of anger and resentment built up towards both the right and liberals, but I don't want to make this about that. I don't want to further the divide. Yes, I have very very strong opinions and there are things that I think people believe that are not only morally wrong but downright evil. I also have experienced some incredibly traumatizing things that I tie directly to political views held by customers and employers. Maybe someday I'll be willing to talk about it more. I think that you can get my beliefs even the controversial ones from my writing.

However I think what we need now is healing, and education. We also need to avoid putting the onus of that on already marginalized people, it's not a marginalized community's responsibility to get your education right.

I think that's where liberals get it wrong, yes there are unreachable people, but there are also people who have been undereducated or unexposed to differences. That is what I saw in retail, undereducated people or people who were afraid of change and directed that fear into hate.

There's a great book by Dar Williams called What I Found in a Thousand Towns, where she talks about community from an art standpoint. One notable town she talks about is Moab Utah where the divide is obvious but the common love is the beautiful scenery and national parks that are universally loved. That community learned how to deal with each other because the crunchy hippies and the NRA gun nuts both love the land so much that they are able to get along enough.

After listening to that book (I recommend the audio book she reads it and sings a bit) I started approaching people a little differently. I tried to get to know the person behind the art that they were giving me or the red hat that they were wearing. It didn't always work. Sometimes I walked away from those conversations with my opinions and vitriol towards the other side cemented. Sometimes I saw a broken person who thought a changing demographic meant they were going to be forgotten. Often I saw signs of brain washing because if I didn't use buzz words that Fox or MSNBC or CNN used people typically agreed with each other.

If you phrase what would be a highly charged political statement with neutral words such as "there's enough housing for everyone in the United States, wouldn't it be great if everyone had a home? Yes you too, homes are very expensive right now, we have an abundance shouldn't we share?" Most people would have a hard time disagreeing with that statement. Or "Kids should have access to food at school no matter what" any reasonable person should look at that statement and say "yes, that is objectively good".

The other statement that seemed to be safe was about how divided we are. People want to feel connected to each other and the slow realization that we're being played against each other is easier to swallow than "I got tricked". Community is so important, it is so important that we find a way to common ground, because at this point we are not standing on the same continent humanity wise. Most people in the United States do not have friends with different political beliefs (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace). I'll admit it I don't really have friends that are on the right, I have liberal friends who have very different beliefs from me, but that's because liberals are centrists.

My last job I worked with people who were more on the fascist side than the conservative side of the Republican Party. Even them, I could discuss things that should not be political but are without buzzwords and they tended to agree with me. There was no changing them, they weren't going to all of a sudden start loving trans people and accepting people of color and stop using the "R" word to describe bad things. However when it came down to I could get them to agree to human rights as long as I didn't use any words that Fox News said were bad.

What I'm trying to say, is that we agree on more than we disagree on, and that reprehensible beliefs come from broken people who are willing to follow mob and cult mentality to feel like they aren't being erased. You're not being erased, and in my world there are some terrible beliefs you can come back from, there is empathy that can be gained by meeting thousands of people a week.

That's what I gained politically from working retail, empathy for the other side, I learned from the people who were willing to hear me out. I learned to be willing to hear some things out, I drew a stark line at hate speech, and my bar for hate speech is pretty low, but I did and still do listen to folks on the other side of the counter and learn from them.

I want to make it really clear that I'm not calling for rainbows and free love, people who have supported things like closing our southern border, abortion bans, trans bills that hurt queer kids, and racist voting laws have some shit to answer for. I also think most people have the ability to change when educated properly. That starts with those of us on the left not spending our time talking down to people, we have to answer for that, for our purity checks when it comes to political beliefs, for our cancellation of people without looking at the nuances of things. There are a lot of things that "my side" has to answer for.

Maybe we should stop thinking about it as sides though, because we're all humans who are complicated and have lived hard lives. Taking some collective responsibility for the state that our country is in right now would be a good start.

I always say people who work retail get a clue about six to eight months before something comes to a head because of how many people we see per day. I'm going to ring the alarm once again, shit is messy right now and we're about to move into another election season. It's time to really get talking about how to heal the divide because our world is on fire and people are dying for being themselves.

My point, as usual, is things are so much more complicated than we want them to be. The person who holds what I feel are reprehensible beliefs, is afraid of me because they don't understand me or my queer relationship or my trans sister.

When you meet as many people as I do, you start to realize that you can't really change anyone unless they want to change, and that people can make incredible change happen by learning