"Do I have to be nice, or can you just pay me to smile a lot?"
My pulse sloshed around my head audibly. I started counting the seconds between waves of pressure. One, one thousand wooooosh Two, one thousand
wooooosh Three, one thousand wooooosh
The FNM hadn't taken a moment beyond a handshake to figure out who I am, or what I do, or why I do it. When wages were declared verboten for discussion on the floor, I started circulating the reason why this was a labor violation for us. When we didn't get a living wage raise, and all took a hefty kick in the dick with the meager raises (ESSENTIAL EMPLOYEES LMFAO), that less than 5.7% (inflation AT THAT TIME) raise was a pay CUT, my then-manager shook with rage on the sales floor. New hires weren't aware that no marital status, relationship status, brood of kids at home would deter the owner from trying to throw a fuck into them; I remedied that before any other of my coworkers got subjected to unintentional hippie bush. Lady Rona came home with me from work and I was never offered sick pay or compensation for getting ill on the job.
None of that mattered. I had a cash-out of PTO & sick leave in front of me. I had nothing to say to rebuff the decision. Rage built up my throat, thinking, "Not even a courtesy warning to bid my cancer patients farewell." Then:
Twenty-nine, one thousand wooooosh Thirty, one thousand
wooooosh Thirty-one, one thousand woooooooooooosh
Thirty-two, one thousand.
Thirty-three, one thousand.
My mind calmed. I flipped every document out of the "To be Shredded" cardboard box and started stuffing my locker contents in. Notes from Luci and her pictures were the major bulk of my decorating. "Luci's gonna get her Mom back, now," I gleefully thought to myself. I wouldn't be This Job anymore. It wouldn't follow me home this time like tin cans tied to a cat's tail. This Job isn't my job anymore. This Job isn't my problem anymore. The work of three people wasn't my job anymore. I'm Sara. I'm Sara again. Just super soft, super simple, super supple Sara. All it took was a few too many justified, "That fucking dirt-worshipping Burning Man patient zero only calls us a family because he has an incest kink." in a couple Zoom staff meetings to attain freedom.
I tossed my shoulders back, picked my head straight up and walked out the front silently with an arm full of my favorite candles, all of my notebooks with guidepoints on how to navigate my position and the store, beautiful drawings made by my soccer playing child, and no reason to keep lining the pockets of a local predator with a penchant for sticking his cock into places that could get an Allred-level payout if only we weren't all poor white women with no labor lawyers.
Not every fight gets a V. Integrity intact don't pay the bills. Class solidarity & defending those boundaries between kings/serfs is a REAL THING. But being an insubordinate motherfucker makes me feel far more like myself than keeping the sanctity of the world's laziest, lamest, cock-based conquistador's reputation.
These fucking assholes are everywhere; Affluenza-afflicted Fuck Faces who pay their way into a community's good graces with nonprofit donations (to forgive the philandering tendencies!) in the thousands, who are an ill, horrible-kept secret among service industry workers. Tropes of irretrievable brokenness abound. Real life consequences do not. My forever fatal mistake- railing for justice or equity or equality and expecting my demands WILL be met. The premise Fuck Face offered for his bullshit shop was SO GOOD (profit sharing! Access to therapies usually priced out for plebs like us! A place of ~healing~ and ~community~), but because it is guided by someone SO FUCKED no matter how much of yourself you throw into it, the reality of it being a circle jerk with petty little people barely lurching toward a common finish line snuffs out all good intentions, AND my internal light.
The defining experience of womanhood at that shop is to be subjected to the wanton cruelty of a male ego that no human consumable amount of ayahuasca is going to slay.
Luci was listening too intently one night as I emotion-purged my frustrations to Ken. She picked up a couple key phrases, and asked him about them later.
"Mom thinks her job is an orgy of stupid. Wait, what does "orgy" mean?", she asked.
"Time to get out of the way," Ken replied.
