This story takes place at the end of my eighth and final year at a home improvement store with an affinity for the color orange. I am about to leave not only my job, but the state for greener pastures (and a better paycheck), and I’m on my last few weeks.
During the last few years, the quality of life at my store was going downhill past the rate of terminal velocity, with bad management, zero advancement opportunities, insane demands, half-skeleton crews, and horrible self-checkout lanes that make literally every aspect of the job worse. I resolved to spend my final days doing everything in my power to drive my superiors to either alcoholism or mental breakdowns, including but not limited to:
- Randomly changing accents during transactions.
- Forgetting how to speak any known language.
- Very liberal interpretations of the dress code.
- Using a mobility cart to go through the local drive-through fast food.
- Suggesting DIY flamethrowers and military ordinance as pest control.
One day, I am relegated to the checkout near the lumber section in the hopes of minimizing my capacity for shenanigans. While looking up the prices to hire a Mariachi Band to follow around my supervisors and play whenever they try to talk, I notice two young boys who have acquired dowel rods and are engaged in swordplay while their parents are otherwise occupied. This being decidedly unsafe, I decide to intervene in my own special way.
Me: *Heading over to the boys, waving my arms.* “WHOA, WHOA, WHOA! STOP! STOP!”
The boys look at me, a bit miffed, and I call over several of the lumber workers, all of whom have long since lost the ability to give a metric tenth of a f***.
Me: “We got a duel in aisle thirty-four. You want in on this?”
Worker #1: “Five on [kid in black shirt].”
Worker #2: “Ten on [kid in red shirt].”
Worker #3: “I’ll sit this one out.”
I queued up the Star Wars “Duel of the Fates” theme on my phone, put it to max volume, and nodded to the two kids.
Me: “Proceed.”
They obligingly resume their sword fight, not maliciously, mind- until a supervisor comes and breaks it up. Regrettably, there was no clear victory and thus no payout, but it made for a nice diversion.
I’m now in a much better position job-wise, which is good, because I don’t think I’m going to have much luck returning to that company.
