stagnant

Every once and a while my boss asks me to come in at five in the morning for what ever reason. Tomorrow is one of those days, and I must say I am not looking forward to it. The twenty seven hours I've already put in this weekend has left me burnt out and exhausted and waking up at 4:30 in the morning to perform the same repetitive, and laborious tasks is not how I want to start off my week. But I got to do it.

I’m a produce clerk at a grocery store. Overall I enjoy my job, I like the guys I work with, the managers tend to leave us alone, and customers rarely bother me. However, the job itself can at times be hard work. The tasks include downstacking pallets, organizing the freezer, lifting up to eighty-pound crates/sacks, placing food on the floor, pricing, cleaning and a myriad of other miscellaneous responsibilities. From reading that your probably thinking “what’s the big deal” or “that sounds pretty easy” and you’re right it is simple. But after a year and a half of an unchangeable routine, my job has gotten to be excruciatingly repetitive and boring to the point where my motivation and effort have become stagnant. So that’s where I am right now; dreading to go to a job where forcing myself into a half-conscious auto pilot like state is the only option I have to prevent myself from snapping and doing something irrational. Coping through means of a self-induced dumbing. Its mind numbing.

But enough rants. “At least I have a job”. At least I can drag myself into bed every night knowing that I earned that $8.25 and hour. “But I’m just glad I have something. $800 bucks a month is better than nothing”, says them. The gullible co-workers I work with (not the produce guys, they all have other jobs or are going to school.) The hourly workers who will work harder and faster just because their manager told them they could go home an hour early when they finish. The same guys who slug across the parking lot to their bond-o Buick or sun-faded green Pontiacs to putt home and turn on the TV. But at least they have a job. At least they have a ticker that’s still ticking and lungs that can still bellow sighs. And like me, they have accepted stagnancy and have accepted to desperately count down from thirteen to that golden Thursday that happens twice a month.

Tomorrow I will go into work at five in the morning to make produce look “flawless.” “We need it looking awesome for Antwone. He’s coming in tomorrow.” So I will work harder to impress some fat guy who doesn’t care to learn my name or shake my hand and look me in the eyes and say “good job”. He will just walk by, piously, and being trailed by a flock of sycophant managers, anxiously scribbling on their clipboards what he says sucks.