Lebensmitteleinzelhandel

Gute Abend, 

Here I thought I'd share a post about what it's been like working the retail grocery store, this far in the game, two years into covid, after working there for nine years. Buckle up, here we go. 

Okay, so let's start with the good. After busting my ass working hard for nine years, on the ninth year I finally got promoted to full-time status as a full-time cashier. I no longer have to push carts, take out trash, do carryouts, or open the gate for the truck driver. My pay went up slightly but it's really not all that and a bag of chips by any means. 

Now for the bad, get ready for chapter and verse. 

For starters, my management has become more aggressive and intense towards me. One of my managers has formed an active dislike for me and yells at me across the front end to shut up, and threatens me that she will talk to my store director unless I actually do shut up. So that's a new one. The other managers let me do my thing most of the time, one of them actually puts me in charge and he goes on about doing his own thing the entire night. 

Second, my overall eight hour work days have become much more intense. We lost a lot of employees. The ones that get hired quit once they see how hard the work is. Not many of the young bagger kids want to be promoted to cashier because they know dealing with the customers is tricky and difficult especially in combination with dealing with the sales managers, front end manager, co-director, and store director. Consequently, I end up doing a lot more work. 

Most of my shift now includes running seven self-checkout machines by myself for eight hours, usually from three-thirty pm to twelve am, five to six days per week. I get two ten minute breaks and one thirty minute break. The machines are glitchy but I've already figured out some ways to speed up the machines manually if things get too busy. When you're helping one person, another person needs help on another machine, then another, ad infinitum, per eight hours. 

So there's the machine I have to deal with, as well as the customers themselves, as well as the money and cash handling. I've done the work piece meal here and there over the years but I was only part-time and wasn't working many hours. In comparison, I used to work about 28-35 hours per week for many years, and now I'm working 42-48 hours a week, sometimes six days a week. I never thought I would become a shopkeeper. The joke is that I've become petite bourgeois. 

Third, more good. I get to meet many new and different people each day. My money addition and subtraction skills are instant. I can read people now. My customer service skills and dealing with the public has improved. My paychecks are larger. My job has stayed the same but the same old has surprisingly become better. I got a snare drum, cymbal, and two guitars from customers. And not only that, but the other day, a neighbor, who's a customer gave me a ride to guitar center.

There's always two sides to the coin. Retail is very intense and unforgiving, but me, being the person I am, surprisingly I've made it work all these years and I've been at the company since 2013. In 2023 it will be ten years and I'll get a small pension out of it. 

Lastly, there's one critical element that we're missing. Can you be happy doing something like this for employment? 

For me, yes you can. Because, using the free time I have between shifts, I've been able to become a better musician [I now can sing, play bass, piano, and drums], and I've even become an intellectual [I've read the western canon, philosophy, history, and learned languages]. 

But it's still a tough job. In fact, the first five years were brutal and I had to do a lot of life learning to get past those first five years. But now, I'm older, tougher, but yet fundamentally still the nice guy with the gift of gab. 

In terms of covid the stores are doing much better but I'm still wearing a mask for personal safety.

Happy holidays!

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Zen and the Art of Positive Thinking

What's up my fellow late-night readers? Today was my first day back to work after two months off. Here are some takeaways about what it was like being back in a blog titled Zen and the Art of Positive Thinking. 

First, I went to work with a strong, positive attitude. I already knew that everything had changed; the store was remodeled, everything items' placements were switched around, most of the young people were replaced by other young people, there's not really any younger women or girls my age that work in my department anymore, hours have been cut severely, and on top of that, the windows and doors are shuttered with plywood for fear of rioters and looters. Whew!

Even knowing all that, I went in thinking this will be fine, this will even be good. And it was. For the most part. I only had a few moments of weakness at the end of the night, where business was so slow that for the last three hours there were hardly any customers at all. I was so bored that I mentioned it to the security guard and the manager. "It was the most boring night of work ever."

I've never seen that happen in any place of business that I've worked at before, and I've been in the retail business for 15 years. Where most of all the customers stop coming in at a certain time. Astounding. In fact, business is so slow that the company is losing so much money that they're going to have to cut hours even more. You put that with possible rioters and looters and the COVID-19 pandemic and you have a recipe for disaster. 

So, yeah, there's all that. But where do I come in? Well, I went into work today and did the usual thing. An older coworker who knows me really well said, "You're different." I said jokingly, "Oh yeah, a lot of soul searching, good time." I played it off as a joke but the fact that she recognized that was an important moment of the day. For it was at that moment that I realized I had become more relaxed. I'm not talking as much because I don't feel I have to fill in space as much. And when I speak I only say what is needed, only going into more details if time and interest are there. Girls are more responsive. Women too surprisingly.

Second, it's not all about being a hippy and having good vibes. That's one aspect of this. It's also about the body. At my job, the work is very strenuous and if you strain yourself just a little too much doing one little thing then you're body's equilibrium gets off balance. 

I was jokingly thinking about this today at work as if I were thinking about 'nen'. Nen is an idea I got from a Japanese anime called Hunter x Hunter. Yes, this is a little silly but hear me out. 

Nen is the body's physical energy and capabilities. Differing from the mind's energy, nen is what's used to focus the body, keep it in shape, and allows you to do strenuous activities for long periods of time without using too much energy. This saves you time by allowing you to work hard in a reasonable time period, getting your tasks done more easily, while at the same time, conserving your body's energies so that not only will you not be tired at the end of the night when you go home, but you might actually be re-energized. 

Yeah, that sounds pretty wacky, doesn't it? What if I told you that nen, or something like it, is actually a real thing? Of course, you won't always feel renewed after a hard day of work. On the contrary, some nights you'll be exhausted, but the point is that you work in such a way that you're hardly ever straining your body, and your muscles are so lucid, that there's hardly anything you can't do, and it won't make you too tired when you go home at night.    

You don't have to be super athletic or strong. Simply standing up straight with no tension is nen. Breathing slow, small, shallow breaths is nen. Even breathing takes up energy. If you breathe too much too fast your body will respond in a certain type of way that is stressful and energy-consuming. Breathing is an essential and important element. "Breathe, breathe in the air," as the Pink Floyd song goes. 

Obviously, these things aren't going to save the world. But they will make your workdays a lot more manageable. Some days will be like today; essentially perfect for all practical purposes. The point is to put this to practice all the other days and not weaken. 

Back to work. The grind continues.

And Your Bird Can Sing

Hello, the world of the interwebz. I thought I'd jot down some notes after what I considered a great day. 

First of all, let me explain a bit about what I've been going through before this said great day. I almost lost my job, due to my own stupidity, initiating bad karma, and then I was really down on my luck for a couple of days. That's pretty much it. Losing a retail job might not be the worst thing in the world but technically I can't afford to go without working. Who can, given this economy? 

I came out of all those bad vibes after a few days. Today, I'm back to being on top of the world. It's like that Cream blues cover. "I'm sittin' on top of the world." I came to such good vibes on my own initiative, as I usually do. With a little help from my friends of course [The Beatles].   

First of all, it hit me that it isn't necessarily the job that I do or the money that I get from the said job that is important. My job has never defined who I am or my personality. Rather, it's the fact that I'm working hard, improving my character, and generating goodwill and reciprocity with coworkers, managers, customers, and friends that I've made through the community. I've created a vast network of people who know me through my job. Intellectuals, musicians, readers, writers, movie biz people, friends, so much out of this little job. This is a hard concept for some people to grasp considering it's just a retail gig. 

Second, all the negativity that I feel, see, hear, will always be negated by own positive energy, IF I can sustain positivity every day all the time. The naysayers will always doubt you. They are losers and they want you to become like them. Misery loves company. The only way to get through them is to practice positivity right in front of their faces. When they see that whatever they say to you will leave you unscathed, they will see you in a different light. Wau, dude! Yer a total hippie. I told you about the walrus and mean man, now here's another place you can go, man.

Third, the only person who can save you from the world is yourself. It's up to you. Everything in the universe is possible through your own sheer will. Instant karma is gonna save you or the reverse. Because of my own goodwill, I get good vibes from the universe. The reverse is true if I bring negativity in the world. It's not like my religion or anything but it's definitely true of being. 

I guess what I'm trying to say is that even if your life isn't great the only way for it to become great is to take it all in stride with a positive attitude. Be the man with the golden smile. It takes a lot of practice but with the power of soul, anything is possible. Meditation helps. And the Beatles. And singing and playing the guitar. Who knows, maybe after a lifetime of zen practice, at the end of your life you will have attained full Zen Buddhahood. 

Tell me that you got everything you want
And your bird can sing
But you don't get me
You don't get me

Thankgiving Turkey Pardoning

The holidays are here! Which means hard work for us in retail. I looking forward to some holiday cheer and fun, both at work and at my leisure. I was thinking about possibly buying a Nintendo Switch for when Smash Ultimate comes out. Or perhaps a shiny new classical guitar? Or some crazy electric guitar pedals? I've been playing a lot of classical guitar lately, trying to learn Sequenza for Guitar by Berio. Its a super difficult piece but its doable. I'm hoping to be able to play it fluently in a couple months, maybe master it in 6 months to a year, in time to perform it in Chicago next year. 

This Christmas I feel like gifts should be nominal. I have a small family, in fact my list of friends is bigger. All I really want is maybe some interesting books and possibly some holiday days off from work. But even if all I can get is some books that's cool too. 

I've been using a lot of my blogging time writing about staying positive in tough times. Well these are tough times for Californians. Many people lost their homes to fires, they're living in air bnb's, hotels, their cars, and some in makeshift tents I presume. Its a really tough time. And to throw salt in the wound our President can't even get the name of a burned down city right ("I visited Pleasure, he sounded like a dirty old man), it was actually called Paradise. If you follow the news then you already know that our democracy is in shambles. But politics isn't what the holidays are about. 

Its about peace and love, and all that good stuff. A lot of customers at my retail job have been a lot nicer this holiday week because they realize that this is the hardest time to work for retail workers. Once you see and acknowledge that, it makes it a lot easier to focus on your job, work hard, be tired, but not be stressed out about it. Its like all these daily feel good blog posts I've been writing. In a way it makes you more zen-like. In the end the holidays can be about things and gifts. The Marxist in me sees those things as consumerist waste. But perhaps its actually more about the way you treat others, treating them the way you would like to be treated. I learned that in Catholic grammar school and its one of the best lessons I've ever learned. 

Good and Evil

 
Lately I've been inspired to write about living in a more positive mindset. How do you stay in that mode, that form of thinking? Here I'll explain. 

There's no point in positive thinking and having good 'energy' (I'm a hippy psychologist now) unless you can stick to it. I understand that sometimes people get tilted (even me), bad things happen, they get fired from work, their girl friend leaves them, they have illnesses, they're tired all the time from lack of sleep or partying, or possibly they just get in a funk randomly for no reason? No matter what happens its always difficult to stay positive. I didn't say it was going to be easy. If it was easy everybody in the world would be nice and there wouldn't be any mass shootings. But we don't live in an easy world. Nothing is free, not even your own positive thinking in your mind, it comes at a cost (time, willpower, energy), and you must work at it.

Moving forward, you could say that being a nice person is work. Being a positive person is work. And sometimes you'll stray off track, for whatever reason. The important thing is to be so self-aware that you're conscious of yourself when you stray from the path, a path I'll call the path of good and evil for the general day laborer. There are many decisions in life. Well, think of it this way. Every thought, action, and word you say can lead you in whatever ways you want, or none. Choosing to stay positive is a choice many people don't think about, or underestimate.

Why not make lemonades out of lemons? If you're in hell why not flaunt your angelic halo to the demons? If you're unhappy why don't you do something about it? Everything comes at a price, and money isn't even the most important part. People can be quite primitive and detached from a good reality, and miss the great things in life, from the smallest minuscule level to the biggest and most important things. I see this everyday in retail work in the customers as well as my co-workers. Sometimes they try to relay their primitive tendencies unto me, a sort of projection of bad content. To this I can refute them easily with simple statements. But to be a contrarian to anti-intellectuals or low educated persons isn't fun, even if its very easy to troll them. Instead its best to let these people believe what they want, even to their own detriment. Only you can save yourself from yourself and from others, people bent on their own whims and desires. Staying positive will deflect these bad actors out of your way, even if you have to work with them everyday.

Stay on the hidden path, the path that leads to thinking in a better framework, to see with lens unclouded by evil and hate. The world needs more people like this, to bring light to the darkness.