I hate retail.  

I hate the pay, I hate the overzealous managers, I hate the customers and I especially hate it's exploitation of holiday idiots.

I worked retail from the time I was sixteen years old all they way up till I graduated from college and sold out to become a corporate whore to a company that I loved.

For two glorious years I was liberated from the complete and utter abuse that is working in todays form of U.S. slavery.  The holidays were actually filled with parties, cheer and time with family.  Work included friends and family who didn't require a doctor's note if you called in sick.   I was given tasks that needed to be done and trusted to complete them without micromanagement.  But most of all, every single day I went to work I felt like a human being worthy of a symbiotic respect that was always given and received by those who surrounded me.

When the economy crashed into the abysmal pit that it still cannot climb out of, I was laid off and left to face the world without all the comforts that I'd grown accustomed to.  But it's not the physical things that I miss most.  One can live without their own work area filled with coffee mugs and trinkets.  One can still be at peace without a two thousand dollar a year raise.  

What my heart truly yearns for (and I am not being my usual smart ass here, guys) is the mutual respect that every person on this Earth deserves just for being human.  

In the retail and service industry a person no longer holds the title of 'person'.  'Person' is exchanged for the word 'servant'.  

The world has always worked around this template: It's not what you know, it's who you know.

That is why, no matter how much we try, sometimes we cannot break out of the lot we've been cast in life because those dice were thrown the moment we were conceived.  And retail is one of the bottom rungs of the American caste system.   

Overcompensating brown-nosers are promoted to positions where they find personal value through holding power over their subordinates.  Hard workers, instead of being rewarded for their efforts, get the short end of the stick because 'the powers that be' know they'll do whatever it takes to get the job done.  

But the worst part of working retail is having to bow down to a complete stranger as they berate your very existence and then call the next person in line up, all the while asking 'Please sir, may I have another.'

Customers ignore, demean, berate, and crush a workers very soul with nearly every transaction.  

Because it's my fault the prices went up.  It's my fault the price on the floor was incorrect.  It's my fault we don't carry your favorite product anymore.  It's my fault someone took a huge, smelly, dump in the bathroom and didn't flush.  It's my fault the fifty dollar bill I gave you wasn't crisp enough for your nephew's birthday card.  It's my fault I'm not a fucking bank.  It's my fault the lines are backed up because it's the holidays and my manager wants to save a buck.  It's my fault the system rang up one of your purchases twice.  It's my fault that I'm not answering your stupid fucking kid's questions when I'm trying to make sure I get your God damn discount right.  It's my fault the lines are backed up again. It's my fault that you think you're special and don't have to show your ID.  It's my fault that it's raining outside and we have no more boxes for the 48 bottles of booze you just purchased.  It's my fault the manager on duty isn't getting his overpaid ass over here to do your return.  It's my fault the lines are backed up... again.

Well let me tell you what's not my fault.

It's not my fault that I did everything I was ever told to do if I wanted to make it out of this cyclical distopia of existence.  It's not my fault that working full time through college and earning a degree got me nowhere because greedy fucks decided they needed even more than they already had.  It's not my fault that my pipes blew last night for the third time and I now have to have a plumber redo my entire house, causing me to have to continue to suck it up and work through this shit ass job.  And it's also not my fucking fault that you people waited till the last minute to buy your fucking booze!  

Every single day I have to walk into work and hang my dignity right next to my jacket just so I don't punch these assholes in the fucking face.  It is horrible that someone asking me 'how my holidays were going' nearly brought me to tears because nobody gives a shit about the lowly cashier.  It amazes me how my day brightens just to see a friendly face coming through my line and not another customer with another reason my existence just took a shit on their day.

So for those of you out there that have some kind of love for your fellow man, let me just say that one of the easiest things you can do to make this god forsaken world a little brighter is this:  Smile at them, and in your own way recognize that they are an actual human being and not a servant made to grovel at your feet.  If you have to complain, complain to the manager.  That's what they're paid more for.

Remember that you're talking to someone with a life and all the shit that living that life entails.  Remember that we have families we want to see too.  Remember that we have problems that have to be dealt with too. And definitely remember that we have to endure all of this shit for way less pay than most people.  Yesterday's 'forty acres and a mule' is today's 800 square feet and a Ford Focus.

Most of all, remember that we're fucking human.  And that no one deserves to be demeaned for a fucking fifty cent price discrepancy.