Work & Ideas

I feel the tinge of embarrassment when people ask me what I do for work. I work as a cashier at a large chain pharmacy. The first thing people say is “so you’re a pharmacy tech?”. No, no I’m not. I sell candy, laundry detergent, and toilet paper. I get yelled at on a regular basis for things that are out of my control. Often people think my job is nothing more than pressing buttons and handing out money. I like to view it as much more: a way to affect people in a small manner. I make the work that I do enjoyable.

My parents taught me that work was work. Never to shy away or be embarrassed at what you do. My mother has proudly cleaned toilets for the majority of her life. She still does that from time to time, but mainly she manages the household of an older gentleman whom she has lovingly watched over for twenty years. My father was an office manager and is now an IT supervisor. Nothing was out of reach for them, but they knew that the job doesn’t make the person. So when I was little they had me do jobs. Mostly at my mother’s cleaning jobs. Emptying the little trash buckets at about twenty desks. I think I made like five or ten dollars a week doing that.

It taught me the value of work. That when you did a job and did it well you were rewarded. I remember going to the gas station and buying my first Red Bull. It was something that my mother would never have bought for me and still won’t. I was able to feel the excitement of buying it without asking anyone if I could or should. I just acted. The can was cold in my hands, the subtle pop of cracking the top. The odd and bitter taste is still vivid in my mind. It was the first thing I remember buying on my own.

At around fifteen I got a job at our local grocery store. I worked four days a week from eight to one, twenty hours a week. I was doing full time ministry work at the time and had just started homeschooling. It was there I met and learned from people like Ann and Gary. Both in their fifties but still working every day. Longer and harder than I could have. I was soft. The first day home I laid in bed and tried to calm my spasming muscles. They had never been exerted so much. It took time of me feeling incompetent and lost. Soon I got into the rhythm and learned that my job was less important than how I could affect people. Make people feel more or less comfortable. Implant small thoughts and ideas in their minds that would blossom in time.

For example, Neil deGrasse Tyson once tweeted about what the color of stop lights would be if our blood wasn’t red. I found amusement in thinking about this idea. So the next day at work I would pose the question to customers to see what they thought. A month had gone by and a woman comes in and said that she had been thinking about it ever since that day and that it affected how she viewed everything. It was an idea spreading from Neil to me to her. Rather than just taking her money and whisking her away, I was able to change the way she thought in a small manner. Or the older people that I take time to dote on. We don’t normally take things out to people’s cars, but with my older returning customers I take time for them. I like to show them that not all of my generation is cold and in a rush. That we can slowly walk with them and talk about the past that they lived.

So over the years and different jobs I’ve had, the goal has been the same. See how you can affect people, change and shape their views. Do it in a quick and subtle manner. Asking odd or abrasive questions, not following the unspoken social rules we have. Do unexpected loving things for people. When I go in to a store I feel so sad for the person checking me out. They just look despondent and uncaring of me and what my life is. They don’t seem to notice my narrative because they are so stuck in their own. So when people come to my line I want to be different. I want to be a brother or a son, I want to be a friend. I don’t want anyone to ever look at me and feel bad for me. I don’t feel bad for what I do.