Your Cashier
The store is chilly, without even having to turn down the heat from the night before. I’ve got post-punk loud and echoing from the speakers on either side of my head. Today started as something of a nightmare, but it’s been slow so far, which makes things just a little bit easier. I’m not used to writing in first person, it’s been far too long since I’ve done it on such a regular basis aside from my actual journaling. I’ve been hard at work trying to keep up with homework, though my attempts seem to be in vain as I feel like I’ve barely made a dent. Perhaps my efficiency has been rolling downhill in my burnout. Whatever the case, I’m attempting to work on it now, whilst at my actual job. The one I’m paid for. Not especially well, still only in my second year here so I’m paid just minimum wage, and I’ve only got 16 hours a week. Not that it makes things any easier, given I’m taking 20 credits of classes. Working at the college market is strange. I like it when I have things to do. I like the lack of uniform and the privilege of playing my own music, but even with so many customers, it gets lonely fast. I’m permitted 3 or 4 dialogue options. This is not a rule set by any of my bosses, advisors, or anything, but sort of just the way of the world.
> “Hello, welcome in!”
> “Will this be all for you today?”
> “Would you like a bag?”
> “Would you like your receipt?”
> “Have a nice day!”
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Occasionally, if the bagging process takes a while, I’ll ask someone about their day, though it’s rarely fruitful and they merely reply with a “Good, how about you?” to which I will almost always say Good in reply, not that it’s typically true, but because I know they do not actually care to hear about my annoyances with customers or my struggle to get out of bed or the warzone in my bedroom or the 19 hours worth of homework I have to complete alongside 16 hours of workwork or the fact that the coffee I brewed was full of grounds and therefore kind of shit and set a real mood for the next hour.
I usually try to dress up nice, it gets me good attention and people are nicer to me if they think I’m a cute girl (because of course I could never discuss my gender issues with my customers). They don’t come to the store to hear about me or my identity or my problems. I didn’t dress up today. Instead, I’ve worn a pair of pinstripe pants with a Hawaiian button up and my stone wash denim jacket. My hair is sticking up every which way and is absolutely too short to be kept in the tiny pony-tail I’ve attempted to trap it in, a little chunk of hair in the back maybe an inch and a half long sticking straight out. When I work, I use a different voice. I’ve been told I do it in class too. Or any time I’m around someone I don’t know well. My friends call it my “customer service” voice. My voice gets high and so docile and nice and I don’t think I’m evil but I do often worry I’m not as nice as I should be. My friends reassure me I’m very polite and very nice and that really if anything sometimes I should be meaner, but I think that my thoughts can be so mean and harsh and judgmental that I really ought to be nice out loud to atone. I’ve been thinking about my voice a lot lately, which is silly and is something that shouldn’t matter, but I’ve been thinking about it nonetheless. It betrays any ‘cool’ or ‘mysterious’ aura I supposedly radiate. I’ve been told my voice is unique which seems to be specifically a result from the cadence of which I speak, in which I’ve been told I have “British vocal mannerisms”. I do not know what that means. I have never left America. I have never been to the UK. I did try to get there earlier in the winter, but my delusions fell through and I failed to get a passport in time for my plan to have had any success. I had won a contest for one of the world’s most watched shows this last decade and had two tickets to a very secret event that frankly seemed so incredibly cool and I still mourn the fact I was unsuccessful in my attempts. As it turns out, applying for a last minute passport is very difficult and very stressful. I’m not sure I deserved the good fortune anyways. I hope this assignment isn’t one I need to turn in for class. I’m working on a 3x3x3 assignment. Three hours of writing at three different locations at three different places. Right now, I am writing at my job. It’s majorly a creative writing class so writing something autobiographical as I am right now likely is not the goal, and should probably be kept to my diary anyhow. But the only other thing I’d like to write about right now is fanfiction of a videogame I quite like right now, and I don’t think the cashier counter is a good place to work on that.
My hair tie is really ripping the baby hairs from my scalp in an awful, most heinous way but I don’t think I want to let it down. I could cut my hair and I’ve been thinking about it the last week or two but I know it’s probably just a result of my mental state at the moment, as I always seem to cope with big feelings by making drastic changes to my hair, whether it’s through cutting it or dying it or something else. My dad hates it and would complain about it when I was in highschool. He said it would make me fickle. I think I’ve tried nearly every hair color. I usually keep it blonde, though. But that’s neither here nor there. I’m still at work, and there are so many people here and I wish they weren’t and I don’t like having their eyes on me and I have to get up and I have to bag their items and I hate bagging though the scanning aspect is actually quite fun. I like being fast. Bagging is not fast. I’ve seen many of my classmates today as customers and I’ve found they majorly share my sentiment of frustration with the massive workload given to us in our shared class for the very first week. 15+ hours of homework having just begun.
The lovely voice of David Vanian sings in my ear and I find an odd resonance with the lyric of a “lonely hell” though my loneliness is not for lack of people, but lack of any meaningful relationship whilst working. They are my customers and they do not care about me. I do not expect them to, nor do I particularly want it, but repeating the same few lines of dialogue over and over is redundant and exhausting and feels not dissimilar from an NPC in one of my games. I am just something to be used to get further in their story, give them what they need to continue and so forth. It’s not that I mind so much as I hate the way it makes me feel. Evidently, as revealed to me by a shitty customer this morning, many of my customers view me the same way. I open at 11:00 am. A full hour earlier than the schedule dictates because they have me come in at 10:45 am and it makes little sense to sit and do nothing for an hour and 15 minutes before opening. Opening the store takes 10 minutes at best. This particular customer sat at the door a few minutes before I could unlock the door and glared at me. Then, exactly at 11, she started rattling the handle over and over as aggressively as she could whilst glaring at me. I had to put up a hand and ask her to stop while I found my keys. When I finally found them and unlocked the door, still at 11:00, mind you, she pushed past me with a muttered “Damn.”
To be entirely honest I’ve had issues with this customer in the past, so I was already aware she has no respect for me as a human and I am nothing but a service that lives to please. I can understand her mindset in theory, but it’s baffling to me nonetheless. That experience earlier nearly had me in hot, angry tears, given I’d already been late to work & my bike lock was broken & my keys were missing & I had to walk to work ruining my time further and the hook holding my bag gave out and dropped my unprotected laptop onto the hardwood floors, and so forth. I’m nearly finished with my second hour out of the required three for this assignment, though admittedly I’ve been interrupted so many times during the writing process I’d be surprised if I’ve actually had a full hour of proper writing. I do feel like I’ve been fairly productive in doing this, though whether that’s because of the time range of 12:00–3:00pm or the fact I’m trapped behind the counter of an eight hour long shift is unclear. Maybe I just really like talking about myself. I’d opt for that one if not for the fact I’ve been informed by many of my closest friends that I do not open up to them and they feel like even after years of being so close there’s so much they don’t know about me. But I’ve been with myself for almost 21 years now, and I hardly know anything about myself either.
Perhaps being an NPC is not inaccurate for me.
My friends tell me I come off as confident and that I command the attention of the room but I do not know if I believe it. It is certainly not like that from my perspective, which only makes things all the more confusing. Some of my customers are the prettiest people I think I have ever seen, and so it becomes difficult to imagine the cashier in what may as well be a shitty Weird Al cosplay (though I mean no disrespect on his Good Name) is some sort of fabled star of the show, if you will. I was up far too late again, trapped between homework and a good time, out on the town to watch the local bands play in support of a friend’s friend. I woke up late and my outfit is a result. Or rather, I woke up on time, but failed to get out of bed until I was rushing out the door. I wonder if in another world, a fantastical one more interesting than what I’ve got here, if I’d be a trader of some kind (though my roommates insist I’d be an elven rogue,) with wares to offer stocked away in satchel and pockets. 3 dialogue options and maybe a side-quest or two to offer if I’m lucky. Something about working customer service is inherently dehumanizing and although there are certainly kind souls out there who make conversation and whatnot, I will still be a service, I will still have to fill a fragile paper bag with all of these things they do not need, to scan all fifty items as they try to abuse the college meal plan, coming in every couple hours of my shift to do it all over again and I will fix the problems they offer me and I work alone and I will do it all and I will do it all again. I do not mind it, I will be the one to be yelled at for not selling tupperware, berated for pricing, glared and sneered at from behind the glass door when we’re closed, angry gestures in hopes I’ll make an exception and re-open the store after hours just for them. I do not exist as a full person in their minds, though perhaps they do not fully exist in mine too. I only know what they tell me as their cashier, off handed things about a new game they’re excited to see, or a cousin in town. A new cat in the apartment. Perhaps, when I leave this job too, I’ll be in the customer’s shoes again. Back to expecting things of a stranger simply because they’re paid to be there, regardless of whether I’m a burden or a pain or keeping them two dimensional in my mind as a final offense. I hope not, but I am no better than anyone else. It’s wholly plausible. And with this, I’ve met my three hours of writing, and will “enjoy” the remaining five hours of my shift with my full attention shifted to serving the public again.
1/10/26
