Work

No work tomorrow.

This is good. I have come to hate work. Each day is an eight hour battle to reach the ultimate goal: going home. I don't even understand why I do it any more. I don't use the money. I don't need the experience. All I know is that quitting now would infuriate my mother and possibly leave me with less ability to buy things in the future.

Mom would prefer I continue to work there. She hears me come home beaten and abused by angry people all day long. She sees how much I hate it. She knows it's ruining me and making me an angrier, more hateful person and she won't stop insisting I continue onward. She rides me like a foundering horse. I don't even know why. She isn't going to pay for anything for me again. She stopped doing that last year. It's not like me working keeps her from paying. I just take out loans. She's so obsessed with me not being in debt, with me working, she doesn't care that I daily fantasize about cutting loose and screaming at the children who cry about not getting candy from the shelf next to the register. One woman in particular has made me want to slap her on several occasions. Nothing would please me more than to tell my boss that his teenage daughter is a pot head and a whore. I hate everything about my job.

I am unappreciated, mistreated, undervalued and condescended to. When one of my coworkers speaks to me, she speaks slowly because she thinks I am stupid. I can never understand her. She moves along a completely illogical path of thought that I can never follow. This leads her to believe I am slow and, therefore, she discounts every idea I present and insists on telling me how to do my job. I have been reduced to a drone. Creativity is discouraged. Free thought is looked down on. Sweep the floor, take out the trash, ring up the customers. Do it right and we won't punish you. Do it wrong and we'll passive-aggressively attack you. We'll leave notes. We'll drop hints. We'll whisper and conspire and titter while you shuffle by, carrying on about your mindless work. Stupid. Useless. Boy.

Today I was scheduled to come in at 10:00 am and leave at 5:00 pm. The only other cashier working was scheduled to come in at 11:00 and leave at 5:30. She came in early, at 9:50, because she didn't read the schedule and as a result the manager announced that she had the right to leave at 5:00 and I must stay an extra half hour because I was the second person to come to work. "First in, first out." he said. I was punished because I came when I was asked to come. She was rewarded for not reading the schedule.

You know why people shoot up office buildings? Because fear is a kind of respect. And when you are mistreated for long enough, it becomes the only kind of respect you feel like you can get.

I'm being trained. God wants me patient. If I can't be patient with these people, the how can I be patient with Jordan? With our children, someday? This is a painful boot camp. I don't like it at all.