A tale of two jobs

I have two jobs. I have my day job and I have my side job. I love them both and I help people in both.

My day job is that I am a manager of a grocery store gas station. I have been with the same company for 20 years. This is the only job I have every had. I started as a service clerk. That did not last long. I got promoted to cashier quickly. I stayed a cashier for a long time while I was going to school. I have also been a scanning coordinator. I became the lead scan coordinator. Then I went away to college. I came back during the summers to work. When I was done with school, I was a cashier for a while. I also tried bookkeeping for a while. It was not for me. It was too repetitive. Then they opened the gas station, and I worked my way up to manager.

I love my job because it is freeing. I can basically do my job, and no one bothers me. I am in a box by myself. I can do anything I want as long I do my job and take care of the customers. I can read a book, write, or even watch my tablet.

I love this job because they have been good to me. Like I previously said they let me come back during the summers I was in school. They have also worked around my injuries. They have given me time off when I needed it. They have also let me get over 40 hours this past year and a half. The one thing that could be better is the pay.

I think I help people by being nice and friendly when they come see me. They could be having a bad day and I could make them feel a little better.

Something else I love about my job is not technically part of my job, but it is something helpful to the customer. I help them pick out lottery scratch offs. I tell them if someone has just won off the ticket, they were thinking about buying. I can suggest which one to buy. I really enjoy doing that.

Another way I feel we help people especially over the past year and a half is that we stayed open. We never once closed. We were essential workers. We were helping people get the food and supplies they needed. We were providing gas for other essential workers.

I also like seeing the same people every day or week. We get to know each other.

The last reason I love my job is I get to use my degree in a way. I have a bachelor's degree in psychology. I can people watch and try and figure out what is wrong with some people. It also helps me understand people better, it helps me understand why they are doing certain things and to be more patient with them.

These are all the reasons I love my day job and the reasons I have been there 20 years and why it has been the only place I have ever worked.

My second job and maybe the more meaningful to me is that I am a writer. I have published one book and before that I had a few poems published on a few websites and one was in a book.

I have always written poems but now thanks to a website I found I am writing short stories and other articles like music reviews and LGBTQ+ material. I love that I can do that now because for the longest time I could not write short stories. I tried and nothing would work. It is funny how with the right website and the right prompts I was able to start writing them.

I love writing. It is freeing. With my poems I can get whatever I am feeling down on the page and can let it go.

I think my writing helps people. They can see that they are not alone, and that other people have been through the same thing.

I hope one day to make writing my full-time job. That would make me happy and hopefully make other people happy with my words.