Please sir, I'd like another.

This blog may come down to being little more than an excuse to complain, but I really dislike my job. Actually, let me rephrase that; I really dislike aspects of my job. I work in retail and a particularly odd kind of retail. On any given day I will find myself selling cigars, brewing coffee, making lattes, baking bread, stocking books/magazines, making sandwiches... you get the point. It's not any of the specific work that gets me down. All lines of work have the tedious aspect that is required to keep said business/employer/whatever going. It's also (most of the time) not the customers that bother me. Rather, it's the realization (or continuous realization) that retail doesn't care about you. As an employee, you are easily replaceable. This element of capitalism is necessary to it's survival; money has no feelings and values so should we expect those invested in the pursuit of such to have any? This is not a diatribe against gaining comfortable living means or buying fun stuff, it is simply a reality of the situation.

I was looking at some customers in line while I was working on something the other day and this thought came into my head; I grew up hearing that everyone was special and, especially coming from a Christian upbringing, that there was something significant and special I can and am meant to do. God had a plan for me, and my gifts and talents could allow me to become anything I wanted. Looking at the people standing in line, I realized how fleeting that sort of thinking is. I imagined all the customers waiting for me working jobs fairly similar to mine. Low pay, long hours, lots of physically demanding work (in one capacity or another) and I imagined them hearing the same things I heard growing up. Then I imagined them feeling beaten down in some fashion because they realized that only 1 out of a couple million ever get a book published. Only a select few see the art, music, karate, whatever classes they take as children turn into something when they get older. We all have to "settle" at some point. This is what I imagined the people in line feeling, because this is what I feel.

With all this said, I don't want to leave on a hopeless note. While the reality of our society and economic model encourages complacency and settling, there is one thing that we have not had taken from us yet. I may make coffee for a living instead of being a famous writer or missionary or something to look up to, but I do have my thoughts. I have my freedom to express my views and this is not limited to a constitutional model. It is inherit in my being as a reasoning human. I can look at a line of people who only want me to make a sandwich for them so they can get back to their lame, shitty job in half an hour and realize how much it says about society. How much it says about myself. Realize that I can express those thoughts via blog on the internet and if that right were taken from me I can still express it on paper, to a loved one, to any one who will listen. So, as I stare another day in face, another day filled with sandwiches, espresso, books and impatient employers and customers, I know that I'm not defeated if I have "settled" for a pedestrian job, because I can think and speak freely and am actively aware of that. It might make all the difference.