I couldn't tell you why but I have had this odd prediliction since I was a child. A strange sensitivity almost or maybe I am just trying to dress up my affection for being maudlin or my fondness for being blue.
Shopping in Staples makes me sad.
Sometimes shopping in a Duane Reade brings on a similiar melancholy (I sound like the Edgar Allan Poe of Strip Malls) but for some reason not as bad...maybe the make-up section still makes it seem....fun.
Staples though brings home alienation to me and 21st century class structures and makes them manifest. I am almost always shopping there because I've been sent on a duck-duck-goose run for labels for some temp job I'm at. Everyone in there is usually some kind of business person or, rather, the underling of a business person looking mildly annoyed as they search for the "sign here" labels or "toner cartridges" while "Steely Dan" plays overhead. The workers are all in uniform and are usually very nice to whatever asshole they are dealing with. In those moments searching aisle five for "poster-board spray adhesive" all the Nietchszean-style nihilistic thoughts, all the suspicion of modernity comes flooding in and it's like "this, this is progress"? Maybe, I should move to Oregon, get a bow and arrow, and eat with my hands.
But, instead I pick up whatever I've been sent for, get in line, and fully wallow in the utter sadness that is part of the contract you sign when you are brought into this world.
Now that wasn't easy.
1 comment:
I work at Staples. It too makes me feel this way. And I've started being an arsehole to anyone who thinks they can talk down to me just because I'm working for minimum wage during the summer.
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