Recycling Jobs

Beep, beep, beep that incessantly chipper robot sound reminds me I'm still here. “Hello, how are you doing today, sir?” As though anyone gives two shits about anyone else these days. That reminds me: “Would you like paper or plastic?” I mean, I once had a goal or a dream or some reasonable facsimile thereof. I once had credibility in the career world and now look at me. I'm starting from the bottom again. It's not that I'm better than anyone else, but for fuck's sake, I've done this before – a very long time ago. Back when I was a shy teenager, a mild twenty year old. But now I'm salty; salty and comparatively wizened as well. I've done things – seen things – that some of these people can't possibly even conceive of, but I'm the one who's stuck here, wrapping up their meat; placing it far away from their potatoes. Perhaps some of these people, this constant line of people, have accomplished things I can't fathom. Its possible I'm bagging a Vice Lord's chicken pot pie or placing a container of Juicy Juice into the bag of a Tech CEO whose code powers my cell phone. But that's not the point.

What is it that makes this American dream tick? Were some in righter places than others at the appropriate time? Did they have the requisite degree program or drive or ambition that I supposedly don't? Did they have better opportunities than I do? Because here I am, doing things I long ago thought I'd never have to do again. It has to be the economic downturn, right? It must be my lack of skilled labor. I mean I'm not alone here: Pete over there is pushing fifty, still popping buttons on a keypad, shoving produce past an infrared scanner. Carmella has to have a stranglehold on her mid-forties, yet she's running around the store like a speed-freak chinchilla, gathering discarded items and voiding purchases. How could this “land of opportunity” go so far south?

Did we fly to close to the sun on those fabled wings of wax – our egos spoon-fed by chain restaurants and the rusted laurels beneath our own asses? Empires always seem to falter when they find themselves too stuffed on their own entrails to watch the chair sliding out from under them – a sort of colossi sight-gag. It's no different with our own flaccid dynasty than it was with the Greeks cum Romans, or the Mongols cum China, or the Zulus cum the English cum themselves. The serpent eats its own tail, a fact littered like confetti throughout history, yet ignored to this day by those who write history in their own gilded images. A fact perhaps ignored by myself amongst others who thought that their might and understanding and abilities would preclude them from the same fate befallen those who came before them; those who dared think such ideas themselves.

And here I stand, “Thank you for shopping with us, sir,” among those who chewed the fat until fat became bone and the marrow was all but sipped away. Its far from the end of the world, but with continual ignorance it easily could be the end of our shallow dominion. “Have a great evening.” Am I thankful to be working? Yes. Am I pleased to be on a recidivist career path? Hell no. But until I have nothing more than the shirt on my back and the empty shell of a house for shelter, it still keeps food in my refrigerator and the lights on. “Hi there. Did you find everything alright today, ma'am?”

Beep. Beep. Beep...