Boxed Out By The Big Box!
Mood:  don't ask
Topic: Hell Depot!
I should have busted out of the Home Depot lockdown a long time ago. 13 years of bad luck, you might say, with an unholy mix of Asshole Hall Of Fame customers, clueless management, and work schedules designed to break your spirit and suck your soul dry. Of course, you're reading this as a customer, and thinking to yourself, it can't be that bad--I love that store! Well, ace, just put on that puke-ass orange apron and pretty soon you'll be singing The Lowdown, Brokedown HD Blues. Yeah, I should have made my exit before the axe came down. Terminated with extreme prejudice. . .poor customer service issues. . .too many complaints about the Big Guy With The Beard who refused to kiss their whining ass. . .the one who looked at customers who asked stupid questions like they were the lowest form of pond scum. Yes, you are fired, here's your last pay envelope, see ya, wouldn't want to be ya. Well, I felt depressed for about 30 seconds or so. But when I got home, I started channeling Martin Luther King: "Free at last, great God almighty, free at last!" The 20-ton gorilla on my shoulders had evaporated. My stress level immediately dropped to point nothing! I felt like thanking the greedy bloodsuckers and customer butt-lickers. Sure, I was out of a job, but the job was killing me, like a slow poison. Before I started working at Home Depot I was in perfect health. Now I have a chronically bad back, 24/7 seasonal allergies, asthma, high blood pressure, and a chemical imbalance that forces me to take mood elevator pills to keep me from riding shotgun with half-lizard half-man demons on the Highway to Nowhere. Of course, now I don't have a job, and those bills are staring at me like hungry lions ready to pounce on the latest food item, brought to you in blood red color on the Discovery Channel. But even though it looks grim, I won't die. I always survive. 13 years of my first marriage, and 13 years at the Depot. The body may be beat up and dysfunctional, but the mind keeps on spinning, twisting, and whirling even as the dark days are waiting in the wings to devour me before the next curtain call. Hell, I've survived all the assorted bullshit and firestorms from the sixties to the present day "end of the world as we know it." I never served in Vietnam. . .I counseled draft dodgers, including myself. . .I consumed enough drugs and alcohol to kill twenty people. . .had two divorces that forced me to throw in the towel--but I wiped off the psychic blood and moved on. . .somehow I even survived the Bush victory--four more years of rightwing necon thugs and religious jackbooters--with hardly a blip on the political radar. When you work in retail slavery, i.e. Home Depot, you learn to expect the worst. You'll never be paid enough, never have decent hours, never be happy, and never get away from the endless onslaught of crazed customers who are like Cossacks on a pogrom mission--all PMS'ed and ready to snivel at the drop of a hat. . .whoa! you say--it can't be that bad! Isn't Bob Nardelli one of the greatest CEO's in American business? Well, all I can say, is tune in for the next episode of: "As The Home Depot Turns." You'll need to wash your mind afterwards!