Retail Hell
About halfway through my first semester of college at Occidental, I got a job as an “Associate” at the Glendale Galleria’s 3-story JC Penney. I still appreciate the honesty of the man who hired me. He was the lone black manager in the store, and he had a very serious work ethic (the woman who trained me said he often worked 16 hour days). He made it very clear to me that there would be no correlation between the amount of work I did and the amount of money I received. That didn’t bother me. I was happy to have gotten the position in the first place.
I soon felt that I had made a huge mistake. For 25-30 hours a week, I was confined to the fluorescent nook of the Young Men’s department, spending most of my time trying to appear busy. I also realized that trying to appear busy was much more tiresome than actually being busy.
I was, along with my co-workers, my boss, and even my boss’s boss, becoming more miserable as the days went on. The most direct signs of this could be found in my lack of intellectual engagement with my work, not through any fault of my own, but because obedience, for an employee, was a higher virtue than ingenuity. To my exasperation, as I sorted, folded, counted money, and punched my time clock I did not feel that my creative faculties were being employed in any way. I didn’t mind the physical exhaustion at the end of the day nearly as much as the feeling of mental restlessness that accompanied it. In my years of high school weight training and basketball, I had grown used to this feeling of physical fatigue, but it had always gone with a mental excitement, often stimulated by the new ways of understanding the world that I had learned in school. Now, however, when I lay in bed and reflected after my shifts in Glendale, I felt drained of my creative potential. It was difficult, suddenly, to inject my writing for my classes with any personal touches, and I felt no inspiration to draw while I worked at JC Penney. What would I draw? Cash registers?
I had been to the DMV several times, and had been adopted at the age of 7 at our local courthouse, but I had never confronted a bureaucracy as enormous as JC Penney. Its corporate structure is hierarchical, with rivalries between each level of the hierarchy. Not only are the employees alienated from their labor, they are constantly fighting battles with their bosses to prevent being further alienated. And their bosses are fighting battles with their bosses, and so on up the ladder. What this creates is an unpleasant, hostile workplace, where the employees are likely to lose their tempers and the customers, stressed and overwhelmed by the bright lights and the glut of advertising, are twice as likely to do so.
It would be an understatement to say that the feeling of writing a paper or producing art was different from producing revenue for JC Penney Company, Inc. The two feelings were diametrically opposed. When producing for myself, I felt in control. I felt challenged, but not usually frustrated. After finishing my work, I felt enriched and content. When I left my shift at JC Penney I felt angry - at my boss, at the more inconsiderate customers, at the entire JC Penney Company, at the economic motives which validated their actions.
But I was one of the lucky ones. I had the luxury of not needing my worthless job. But I left in my wake a workplace filled with people who spend their days hating their jobs, with no real alternative. Thoreau observed over a century ago that most people lead lives of “quiet desperation,” and his words are especially prescient in relation to our work experiences.
I soon felt that I had made a huge mistake. For 25-30 hours a week, I was confined to the fluorescent nook of the Young Men’s department, spending most of my time trying to appear busy. I also realized that trying to appear busy was much more tiresome than actually being busy.
I was, along with my co-workers, my boss, and even my boss’s boss, becoming more miserable as the days went on. The most direct signs of this could be found in my lack of intellectual engagement with my work, not through any fault of my own, but because obedience, for an employee, was a higher virtue than ingenuity. To my exasperation, as I sorted, folded, counted money, and punched my time clock I did not feel that my creative faculties were being employed in any way. I didn’t mind the physical exhaustion at the end of the day nearly as much as the feeling of mental restlessness that accompanied it. In my years of high school weight training and basketball, I had grown used to this feeling of physical fatigue, but it had always gone with a mental excitement, often stimulated by the new ways of understanding the world that I had learned in school. Now, however, when I lay in bed and reflected after my shifts in Glendale, I felt drained of my creative potential. It was difficult, suddenly, to inject my writing for my classes with any personal touches, and I felt no inspiration to draw while I worked at JC Penney. What would I draw? Cash registers?
I had been to the DMV several times, and had been adopted at the age of 7 at our local courthouse, but I had never confronted a bureaucracy as enormous as JC Penney. Its corporate structure is hierarchical, with rivalries between each level of the hierarchy. Not only are the employees alienated from their labor, they are constantly fighting battles with their bosses to prevent being further alienated. And their bosses are fighting battles with their bosses, and so on up the ladder. What this creates is an unpleasant, hostile workplace, where the employees are likely to lose their tempers and the customers, stressed and overwhelmed by the bright lights and the glut of advertising, are twice as likely to do so.
It would be an understatement to say that the feeling of writing a paper or producing art was different from producing revenue for JC Penney Company, Inc. The two feelings were diametrically opposed. When producing for myself, I felt in control. I felt challenged, but not usually frustrated. After finishing my work, I felt enriched and content. When I left my shift at JC Penney I felt angry - at my boss, at the more inconsiderate customers, at the entire JC Penney Company, at the economic motives which validated their actions.
But I was one of the lucky ones. I had the luxury of not needing my worthless job. But I left in my wake a workplace filled with people who spend their days hating their jobs, with no real alternative. Thoreau observed over a century ago that most people lead lives of “quiet desperation,” and his words are especially prescient in relation to our work experiences.