Work- Part 2

If the Seller is my least favorite type of customer, the children are number two on my list of least favorite customers. Let me preface this by saying I love babies but hate children when they hit age five and up. They’re no longer chubby and cute, they’re little assholes. They are the sole reason as to why the children’s section looks like a tornado blew through it, and even if we fix it back up, it turns back to a disaster the next day. I feel like a Mom cleaning up after them. They yell and scream, and throw books on the ground, while their exhausted parents just softly say, “Stop that.” They don’t. I hate kids.

I love my Regulars though. There’s this one guy, a little chubby, who comes almost every Sunday around five o‘clock. He picks up a sci-fi books and reads on the couch, never buys a book, just reads. I pretty sure he’s a little off in the head considering he doesn’t drive, and the fact that before he leaves he goes to the bathroom and screams. He yells, as if maybe he’s singing, or having a conversation with some non-existent person. You might think he’s dangerous, but I don’t. He seems harmless for the most part. There’s another women, old, black, and soulful, a grandma-looking type. She’s so sweet, she knows me by name, and asks for these obscure books we rarely ever have. And there’s this little boy who comes in maybe twice a month, for the past maybe four months, asking for The Invention of Hugo Cabret. We never had it before, but now it just came in. I can’t wait to see him again and tell him that we finally have it.

The day goes by and I’ve listened to Don’t Stop Believing and some Blondie song maybe three times each. I know them by heart. I answer phones automatically with the same greeting, and they ask me the same questions on the other end of the line- a book, directions, how selling books to us work. I answer with fake enthusiasm and with the same script I have created for each question they could ask me. Callers are all the same. The day’s almost ending, I count the drawers, take out a deposit, write my hours down. Turn off the lights, the open sign, and the radio. I lock the door, and check it once, twice. I go home not remembering anything about my monotonous, repetitive day at work. Except I remember my Regulars. My Regulars offset the Sellers and the kids and make the drear of my job worth it.

Work- Part 1

It is precisely 3:36 PM and I’m working at the bookstore. On a Saturday. I usually don’t work on Saturday, but I decided to switch with my coworker, a young, college-aged aspiring writer, who decided to go to some Steampunk nerd-fest in Roswell today. I love my job, I really do, but I hate the customers. On Sunday, when I usually work, it’s so slow, so when a customer comes in I freak. How dare they disturb my peace? So working on Saturday is a pain, when it’s busier and I have no free time. I’m typing this behind my computer. It looks like I’m doing something bookstore related, but no, I’m complaining about my job. Well I’m not really complaining, I’m just commenting. I have the easiest job in the world, sit for eight hours in quiet, and do nothing most of the time. All for eight dollars an hour. Yet I love to complain.

After about a year and a half of working here, my job has become robotic. Automatic. I walk into the store, lock the door behind me. Open up the bookstore program on the computers. Check email. Print out internet orders. Make coffee and hot water. Play around on my phone until it’s opening time. Turn lights on, unlock door, put open sign on, turn on classic rock/ oldies radio station. No one really comes in for the first thirty minutes, so I’m on my phone again. First customer of the day. I grit my teeth. A kind “hello” is my standard greeting. If they have a nice face I add in a “How are you?”. For people from school who I sort-of know, the standard greeting is “hey”. If they linger near the counter, I add in a “Can I help you find anything?”

Typical browsers and buyers are my favorite. The sellers, not so much. I see them waddle in with their Publix tote bags, oversized Whole Foods paper bags and boxes and I curse them out under my breath. “Got some books to sell?” I say with a smile when they come in. I’m so good at fake smiling and laughing at customers' bad jokes I sometimes scare myself. Mostly yellowing, creased, and ripped I go through their books one by one if they're close by. If not, I toss them back into their box. Sometimes I get a rare find, a textbook or something worth buying. Most of the time they hand me a box of dusty books with the occasional dead shriveled spider mixed in. I give them their total. Most of the time they’re content with my offer, sometimes they’re not. “That’s it?” some of them say in disgust. They walk up with me to the front counter and demand for me to tell them why their books are shit. I say this with a smile of course. I’m not fazed in the slightest. Come at me, bro.

That Kid.

I have no idea what I’m going to do with my life. Though while someone older will exclaim, “You’re still just a baby!” I beg to differ. In a year’s time I’ll be lost in the crowd of thousands of college freshman on a campus, and to be honest, that scares the hell out of me. Why do I do it? Clubs, APs, community service?  So I get into that same foreign college, alone and terrified. It astounds me how hard I try. Yet I have yet to make some sort of decision to what I want to do with my life quite soon. Psychology, dentistry, dermatology? UGA? UNC  Chapel Hill? Vanderbilt?

For some reason I think high school is the big finish. Take AP classes, do well, and you have succeeded in life.  But this is not true. Graduation is only the beginning, and if college is more rigor than a few AP classes I’m screwed.  I’m so burnt out; I don’t even want to think about graduate school, let alone medical school. I’m tired of school, of trying to be the best, and ever so slightly failing, because there will always be that one kid who’s better than you. Who tops your 4 with a 5. I never win, and I’m getting sick and tired of trying. That kid needs to just leave, graduate early, go to college with people who are actually academically on par with themselves, and just once fail. Just flat-out fail. And you know what? I’ll smile.

I’m jealous, of course, who wouldn’t be? I’m jealous that I have to bust ass for my grades, my SAT scores, my AP essays, while they just breeze on through.   It’s a challenge to compete with them (and with myself just as equally) to be on top. I’ve exhausted all my efforts into being the best in high school that I don’t even know want to think about college. I have no idea what I want to do with my life, I’m so used to just being the best in high school.  

I’m tired of competing, but it’s a game, and I love it. When I study my ass off and I get a 97, and that kid gets a 95- victory. Sweet victory.

I figured I should get started on this as each blog post is time-stamped and whatnot.

I guess I’ll give my thoughts on my education. Since elementary school I’ve been ingrained with this simple chain of events:

1. Do well in school.

2. Go to college.

3. Get a degree.

4. ?????

5. Profit.

Can someone please tell me what happens in step four? That period when you live on your own and have to pay taxes, pay bills, buy a house, get a job, get an entry level job and work your way up? Yeah students may be educated in the precious art of Human Geography, Music Theory or some other B.S AP class, but we need some experience in the real world. This is my greatest gripe with our education system. I have no idea how to manage money, and live on my own, or what a 401k are- things that actually matter when you get out into the “real world”. And somehow, magically, I suppose, I will walk into the real world with my college degree and a house, a job, a car, and my tax returns will fall onto my lap.

The U.S. education system is based on academia, not functionality. Trade schools and community colleges are looked down upon.  Students are grouped by age and not academic achievement. Higher achieving students slowed down by the lower achieving ones. The lower achieving students are rushed and forced to meet standards.  Students are trained for standardized test from the beginning of their education. Going on Home Access I can view my ITBS and CRCT scores from as long ago as the first grade.  From remedial to AP classes students are taught not for enlightenment and growth, but for a test. (But don’t take this the wrong way Mrs. Smith, I still want a 5 on the AP exam, and my writing has gotten pretty awesome.) Yet I take these classes in order to get into a good college (step 2), not caring about the class, i.e. Human Geography, but for the title- Advanced Placement.

While I’m not exactly a fan of mandatory classes, I think all schools should provide some sort of Personal Finance Class. All students from future doctors to future fast-food workers should learn how to live in the “real world”, the elusive, fictional society students seem to think is so far away until they are thrust into it.  And as a student I will now put off worrying about the real world to study for my AP exams.