Notes From The Smoking Area

In the months since leaving my retail job, I have been trying to find something profound to say about it.

Make a commentary on society and how we treat each other.

What it is like to be a cog in the corporate machine.

How debilitating it can feel going into a job that you hate day in and day out.

But I have come to the conclusion that it was just a fucking job.

If someone had said this to me in the dead of winter, on hour 984947 as I gift wrapped their underwear- a service we did not offer just as an FYI- I probably would’ve set myself on fire.

I still keep in touch with all my work friends and when they complain about work, I have obviously got a unique understanding of what it is they are going through, but also now I can hear the absurdity of it all.

While all pain is relative, it is hard to deny that as a grown man I find it mind boggling that there was a time I used to argue with other adults about return policies or where a shoe should sit on a shelf-

As though any of it mattered.

I saw recently that a ‘woke 1’ type made a comment about work being meaningful and as a privileged white man I do understand what she meant.

It can be draining, depressing and somewhat dehumanising doing a job that you hate.

I complained and I complained.

I mean Jesus I don’t think I had a positive thing to say about my job. I would grow internally frustrated when I would hear friends who genuinely enjoyed their job.

However, because I had spent so much time at this job I had worked my way up the ranks and became a manager.

This allowed me to save up to leave that job and do something I am genuinely passionate about.

Although I struggled to find meaning in folding pants, I have found a new meaning in my life that has come as a result of those pants.

My mother has just recently retired, I am pretty sure she spent about 25 years not really enjoying her job.

As a single parent, her job was not just about meaning, it was about survival.

But now, she is retired and her life has taken on a brand new meaning.

Years of shite, but the rest of her life to enjoy in things that are genuinely meaningful to her.

I can’t pretend to have an answer to how to enjoy your shitty job.

Honestly the feeling of a shitty job can be paralysing.

You almost grow addicted to the humiliation.

Sometimes, you can’t leave because you have rent, you have bills, you have other people who are relying on you.

But in the same way that we can’t feel happiness without feeling sadness.

Maybe part of recognising what is meaningful is experiencing something that isn’t.

It doesn’t make it feel any better.

Sometimes it can make it feel worse.

But this too shall pass ya know.

Pain is not everlasting and neither is your next shift.

In a very woke 1 way though, I do wish we lived in a society where everyone can afford to have exclusively meaningful jobs, I think it is perverse that this is the best we could come up with.

But before someone comes up with a better way this is what we have got.

And what you may find meaningless, someone has to use for survival.

I spent years wondering what the point was in folding the same pair of pants that someone would unfold five minutes later.

Maybe there wasn’t one.

They paid my rent. They paid for nights out. They introduced me to people I love. Eventually, they paid for me to leave.

Sometimes pants are just pants.