This Big Box I Live In

Work is never quite as entertaining as I would like. In the varied roles I have played in the effort to acquire the goods of life, I have seldom been quite entertained. Nevertheless it isn’t boring either.

My workplace is a big box with polished concrete floors. It is a home improvement store. It appeals to the human nesting instinct, and so it is not surprising then that so many humans seem to have their kids with them, either in shopping carts done up like toy NASCAR racers or riding around like human merchandise in ordinary carts. Others have future kids riding around, no more than than an abdomenal bulge among the young married women. Our customers are oft in the flower and fruiting stage and talking to them is not a bad way to spend your time.

We provide for the homeowner, who in conjunction with hired men (or occasionally women) decorate, modify, expand, demolish, and equip their homes. We appeal to the DIY instinct in us all. DIY meaning in my personal experience "Destroy it Yourself", since it seems you can get yourself into lots of trouble doing it yourself. I still have a garage door that I did myself and I wish to God I had hired someone to do it for me. Others more talented or brave than me may have better luck. My home seems to be going the way of the universe, which is running down. The gutters fall off and the eaves rot, the paint flakes and weeds and errant wildlife threatens to invade my inner sanctum through cracks in pavement. Wasps build their annoying nests all over the place and I skirmish with them hitting them with blasts of chemicals, but they always seem to return. Two of my three neighbors I am sure despise me for being such a slob of a homeowner, but fortunately here in unincorporated suburbia you can do what you damn please.

Procrastination seems to be what I do for a living. Time passes, you eat, you sleep, you talk on the phone, you mow the lawn, and you pay your bills to keep the world at bay. Nitrogen, solid waste, and excess fluid flow through the body. Stuff goes in one opening and out others, then you have to go to the store to buy more of it.

I keep myself entertained at night playing video games and fielding silly questions on the internet. I think of politics, God, and etiquette. At a safe distance, humans are fascinating animals, but frustrating. Many of them can’t spell to save their lives. Somehow I can. I am blessed amongst humans in my ability to spell. My fifteen minutes of fame came early when I went to the state contest spelling bee, only to be felled by the then unfamiliar word "equivocal". Since then I have found obscurity preferable and easier on the nerves.
In my work I wear a red and blue Jacket with my name tag on the left and a big blue "Ask Me" button on my right. the Velcro pockets at the bottom of it bulge with pens, scraps of paper, a mobile phone, a box knife, and box tape. These are the indispensable tools of my trade as I wander the store from the garden store to the lumber and shingle department, from doors to carpets, to blinds, wallpaper, to "fashion lighting" (where I work) to "rough electrical" (where I work), home appliances, "fashion bath" (with toilets mounted above and bathtubs and whirlpools in the aisle) and "rough plumbing" (which includes furnace filters and ductwork, although the duct tape is with the glues and paints).
Above me is a sky that is always bright with fluorescent lighting. There may be rumors of a universe beyond and sometimes we get clues to its existence as rain clatters on the metal roof of our building but in here the sun always shines, and the air is always full of music: music that mostly I can’t stand. No, it isn’t Shostakovitch or Khatchaturian’s saber dance. Sometimes I wish it were. Instead it seems that our corporate fathers have bought the entire pop songbook of Carly Simon and James Taylor. Either that or Stevie Wonder doing "Isn’t She Lovely" or latter day Paul McCartney doing "Maybe I’m Amazed" or a woman singing "There She Goes" (which I first thought was a song about lesbian love, but is actually about the wonderful feeling the woman singing gets when shooting heroin).
Other music is even worse. Years ago I actually paid money for the album on which Paul McCartney recorded with "Maybe I’m Amazed" and "Silly Love Songs." Other stuff is stuff I would never own, like the song that goes "I don’ wanna wait for my Liiiife to be Ova..." etc, by Paula Cole. Much of it defies description.
There are lots of things you can do with the human voice, most of them ugly and boring. You can whine about love in a tuneless and desolate way, you can sing indistinctly, you can modify the sound of your voice to make it sound weird, or you can holler like you are being murdered. All happen at various times during the workday at my store. If I listened to it much I would lose my mind. Maybe I already have. On the other hand if it weren’t there I would miss it. I wish the music program was more melodic and edgier. They need some Led Zeppelin playing "Stairway to Heaven" or the Rolling Stones singing "Sympathy for the Devil", but that will never happen.
But I must listen. It is part of my job. Not necessarily for this kind of stuff, but for messages. There are these customer call boxes all over the store and an uber mommy advises us that "BING BING BONG! Customer Service is needed in the wire cutting area" and if nobody responds and shuts if off it repeats "WIRE CUTTING AREA" etc. An invisible microprocessor keeps a careful record of the response times in various departments. We are expected to respond in under 60 seconds and are graded on them, as is our management. At other times, when these aren’t used, people turn to the often clueless cashiers and salespeople from other departments page for help. It is even worse when they forget to specify where. Someone pages me to come back to my department (usually when I am on the crapper) somehow forgetting that my department has about 7 aisles. I curse to no one in particular as I hurry to respond, saying "Where dammit?" God might as well page me to "COME TO EARTH, COME TO EARTH!! YOUR ASSISTANCE IS NEEDED!!!"
The Stepford women that inhabit the machinery and the public address systems, also ask you for your money in the self-service checkout, thank you for shopping, and remind you not to forget to take your merchandise. Nevertheless a human cashier has to stand there to make sure that customers don’t screw up the machines or just walk through without paying. These are the unhappiest cashiers you can imagine. Like all cashiers they are more or less rooted to a spot and must stay there. I walk past them on the way to the rest room. They look bored out of their minds. At least I can walk around.
The Stepford women of my store also break in at inopportune times (usually in the middle of the occasional song I actually like) to announce in an incredibly luscious and cheery voice something about the wonderful selection the store has in one or more departments. These women also answer the phone, first thanking you for calling the store and then asking you to punch one, two, or three, depending on what you want. I generally know what I want already and punch "O" for operator so I can speak to a real human being.