I think there's something in the air...

I work in an enormous entertainment superstore. My job isn't so bad; the work is fairly easy, the pay isn't zero dollars an hour, and I get a decent discount on DVDs and books. When I think about it, the only thing I dislike about my job is the customers. Yes, I realize what a conundrum this is: I hate the very thing that keeps me in a job. If it weren't for the customers, I'd be working somewhere else. I'm sure there's a downside to that somewhere...

Anyway, I've worked this kind of job before, and while I've dealt with many unreasonable, rude, infuriating, ridiculous people, I've never dealt with it as much, and to such dizzying degrees, as I currently do. I think there must be a reason for this. I think it's because my workplace, this giant entertainment superstore, is an unnatural environment. People are not meant to have places like this. It's not like Wal-Mart, which holds its own strange aura of bitchiness; Wal-Mart may be huge, but you can buy some semi-important things there. You can buy groceries there, and life-saving Bayer aspirin. You can go to Wal-Mart with a good reason. That's not how it is where I work. When you walk through the doors here, you are assaulted with billions upon billions of items you do not need, but that you want more than you will ever want life-saving aspirin or groceries. I think the combination of variety and uselessness of the things we sell causes a chemical reaction in the brain, making people feel disoriented and grumpy.

I know my theory may seem a bit extreme, but it's the only way I can explain what goes on in there. I had a woman get very upset with me because there were no signs declaring which DVDs were the new releases, and when I pointed to the Texas-sized signs posted every three feet with "New Releases" in huge block letters, she screamed that I should have shown her those before, when she was walking through the door. I'll admit that I got frustrated with her and wanted to smack her around a little, but I should have offered her some water, directed her to a bench where she could sit down and adjust to the atmosphere. Another time, a woman asked for help finding a book, but instead of letting me track down the book she wanted, she just stood there and gave me all the icky details of her last love affair. Turns out her boyfriend of the last nine months had another girlfriend, a "real" girlfriend who apparently keeps this guy's heart (She didn't say heart. Use your imagination.) in the bottom of a purse. That conversation ended with this woman opening her jacket like a New York City flasher and demanding to know if she looked like she needed to steal someone's man. I told her she looked like she had sufficient amounts of whatever it was she was trying to show me to find her own man, and after a good three minutes of awkward silence, I told her to have a good day and walked away. It may seem rude of me, but honestly, offering free therapy to strangers is not in my job description. If it were, I would have quit months ago.

I know I'm sounding like a complete downer, but hey, there are some good customers out there. I've dealt with people who say "please" and "thank you," who throw their garbage in the garbage cans, who don't stand in line just to ask where the bathroom is and then get mad that they stood in line. These kind of people are bright spots in my workday, and I'm grateful for them, I really am. Maybe I can find a way to get those people to stand in front of the other people, like some kind of a jerk-shield to protect me from the jerkiness of strangers... That would be as nice as it is improbable...