I’m a “retail associate” which is a slightly more stomachable name than “clothing rack monkey.” Most of the job is folding, organizing, running the register or trying to set the store on fire with my mind. Customers are awful to me and everybody else in the store, management fluctuates between letting me breathe and threatening my life for a disorganized table of Rick and Morty tshirts. Like most Americans, I hate my job and can’t wait for the dock shelving to collapse on me. But unlike most Americans, I have the capacity to enjoy life, and make do under shitty circumstances. I have my fun. In any work environment, your crutch will be the coworkers you can put up with. At my store there are about forty middle-aged women running the show, and ten of us teenagers keeping it lively. Of us 10, I’ve grown to like 4. At the very back of the store, in a lil hidden corner, is our Amazon return desk. Unlike every other part of the store, someone is required to man this desk at all times, which translates to plenty of boredom. Our Amazon packing slips get printed on adhesive paper, and the printer expels a lot of extra paper for no decent reason. These empty extra slips were meant to throw away, but I’ve found a new use for them. Over the last 3 months I’ve been building a gallery of my artwork underneath the desk. I’m currently getting ready to apply for art scholarships, so any bit of practice helps. Every time I’m at this desk I create a new drawing to add. Before too long, I noticed other drawings pop up. Several Garfields, a single eyeball, mandalas, flowers doodles, a shark with a mustache, a crackpipe crab, etc. My coworkers now contribute their doodles, or leave kind reviews for the posted artwork. Once or twice I’ve gotten snobby critic reviews from someone under the alias “Mr Saint Claude Pierre Hon Hon Baguette.” They leave criticisms of my sketches, condemning my “lack of fluidity” and “unharnessed prowess” but praise the ever growing collection of Garfield drawings. The desk was becoming a shared creative outlet, until Barry ruined everything. Barry is a buzzkill. He’s worked at this store for around 10 years. He’s stubborn, condescending, and has no capacity for fun. He works the desk once a month. Last month after his shift, all of our drawings were gone. 15-20 packing slips and sticky notes, all vanished. Barry is trying to kill creativity. We are resisting. Each new drawing stuck to the desk features a passive aggressive note at the bottom. “Art makes boring things better!” “Don’t be a fart, embrace our art!” “Let me live. I don’t want to die.” Since the purge, Barry hasn’t worked the desk again. Waiting for him to go berserk when he does. Aside from spicing up an unbearably boring part of the job, my drawings have earned me a little workplace fame. Yesterday a new hire asked me if I was “The Amazon Artist” because “they” told her some tall girl makes the drawings. I’ve gotten the question a lot. Although not everybody has had the pleasure of meeting me, they know me by my trademark traits of being tall and making art. This is a wonderful ice breaker for meeting the newer hires, especially because I’ve been told several times that I appear angry and unapproachable while working. Cool. Like most retail stores, the walk from the back room to the front of the store is a ridiculously long and wide tiled walkway. Every Tuesday night, coworkers Zack and Jack race each other to the exit. One girl will stand at the starting points to count them down, and one will walk ahead to clock who passes the finish line first. Management does not like this because running is a “safety hazard” and because we’re not “clocked in”, the “company” could be held “liable” for “injury.” We’re keeping the race records in our coworker gc. Zack is winning 11-4. Jack is not taking this well, and has recently been challenging the 7 feet tall ocko stork to races instead. Ocko stork moves so slowly and quietly that beating him would be butter. Jack is about 5’6, and it’s a spectacle to appreciate watching him bounce around the stork’s ankles, begging for a foot race from the kid who would rather separate his atoms to melt into a wall than draw any more attention to his gangly sore-thumb self. Work sux but homies help. Can’t tell you how many times we’ve saved each other from hellraiser scarf-moms, or stuck up for each other to our demanding bosses. True team-building happens in spite of management, not under it. It pays to get along with people.