A Moment in Time: Retail

It's 7 AM. You hear the screech of your alarm clock. Its piercing screams reminding you of the worst kind of horror... Monday. Some people don't mind the idea of a week of hard labor. Hell, neither do you from time to time. But you had this really good dream where you were bathing in a bath of chocolate. Now you fantasize bathing in the blood of your enemies as you get yourself prepared for a week of obsessive clock-watching; ready to scream with excitement the minute it runs into 4 PM on Friday. You're actually excited about it being Friday already!

You finally get to work. you clock in at 8:03 AM. You try to feel guilty and quietly vow you'll be more punctual. Then you try to recall the last time you didn't work overtime. This compels you to forgive yourself and pretend that you cared. Ignorance is bliss. And so it begins...

You start the day by checking your workload. Already the theme tune from Jaws makes a steady approach as you step closer and closer to your impending doom. Perhaps it won't be as bad as you think it will be. Maybe, just maybe, someone smart decided to be clever and check the dates of the items on the shelf and made sure they got taken care of. NOT TODAY. Lo and behold, there are items dated for yesterday buried deep at the back of the shelf, right next to your hopes and dreams. Now is the time to stealthily make your way to the back of the warehouse, where the waste goes, as you desperately try to hide the offending goods from the well-dressed sharks of your management team. They can smell discord whilst standing outside through the thick air of their cigarettes. It doesn't matter who did what, that you haven't been in for the last two days. It will be your problem, and you should have known better. Be realistic! Why weren't you at your post, ready to aim and shoot anyone who would dare insult your good name? SHAME!

As you go about your day, you hear all the drama of what you missed over the weekend. She did this. He didn't do that. Patient and amused, you listen to perhaps four colleagues start their well-prepared speeches with "Not being funny yeah..." If you got £1 every time you heard that, you could buy a mansion. Or splash out on a nice car. Screw it; McDonald's is closer. That'd be worth a few Big Macs. You snap out of your dreamland of food when they let slip some useful information. Thanks, guys, why couldn't you have started with that instead of giving three-day-old gossip which we pretend to have not heard five times already?! How is it the useful stuff always gets held hostage by pirates but senseless stale gossip can be thrown about like a hot potato?

Exhausted. Tired. Dying for a cup of tea. You congratulate yourself for making it this far. It was a vile, perilous journey. You've run around like Sonic the Hedgehog on crack and stop for a moment to reflect on your productivity. That is until you check your phone and almost collapse on the floor crying.

9:52 AM