worker misery during the holidays

You know
tales of ser­vice in­dus­try and re­tail work­er hell is one of the rea­sons I ab­solute­ly de­spise this time of year.

Not just the way peo­ple think they’re en­ti­tled to be huge pieces of shit to any min­i­mum wage em­ploy­ee wait­ing on their stu­pid ass­es, but also the gross ex­cess and greedy over­con­sump­tion that goes a long way in cre­at­ing a tox­ic work environment. 

I placed a sim­ple gro­cery or­der the oth­er day. Noth­ing fan­cy or elab­o­rate. No “Christ­mas din­ner shop­ping.” Just the nor­mal stuff for a nor­mal week. Some fruit, veg­gies, sta­ples, in­gre­di­ents for dinners. 

I had more sub­sti­tu­tions and re­funds than I’ve ever had in the en­tire time I’ve been plac­ing on­line or­ders, in­clud­ing dur­ing the height of COVID. 

The poor In­stacart shop­per kept apol­o­giz­ing in the chat de­spite me telling her it was okay and not her fault. “Lots of things are com­plete­ly out and so are all the substitutions.”

I’ve al­ready made it a point to go out in pub­lic as lit­tle as pos­si­ble and to try to only go out for leisure when I do. 

So, I’m ad­mit­ted­ly re­moved from the ab­solute worst of so­ci­ety in stores, malls, and chain cof­fee shops this time of year and that is ab­solute­ly by design. 

It’s cold and snowy so that means we’ve en­tered the time of year where, no mat­ter what I do, my skin goes to shit and I be­come a gnarly lit­tle ice grem­lin hiding. 

But I know how peo­ple get. Just imag­ine how much eas­i­er and more re­laxed every­thing would be if all these Christ­mas ob­sessed ass­holes who think they “just got­ta” have all this stuff and “it’s just not Christ­mas!” if they don’t quit al­l­l­l­l­ll their shit and got over this ridicu­lous nonsense. 

And they re­placed their crap­py fuckin’ at­ti­tudes and sub lev­el treat­ment of oth­er hu­man be­ings with pa­tience, kind­ness, grat­i­tude, and hu­mil­i­ty. There’d be more to go around for every­one and re­tail work­ers wouldn’t have to go through this nightmare. 

It’s dis­gust­ing and so gross. 

Es­pe­cial­ly know­ing a not-in­signif­i­cant per­cent­age of all these gifts AND food are go­ing to ei­ther go straight into the trash or to Goodwill.

Also
some­one re­cent­ly told me they thought The Shin­ing was a Christ­mas movie and the more I think about it the more bril­liant I think it is:

·  Stuck with your family
·  Snowy environment
·  Ghosts of the past
·  Sell­ing your soul for alcohol
·  Need­ing to be drunk to get through it
·  Go­ing crazy
·  Lots of red
·  Want­i­ng to 🔪 your family

 

—emi­ly duchaine

Flom­mist Emi­ly Duchaine lives in the Pa­cif­ic North­west. She likes to drink mead, learn about sharks, and lis­ten to the Talk­ing Heads. She pre­tends to be a pro­fes­sion­al busi­ness­woman most days. Copy­right © 2022 Emi­ly Duchaine.

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