on freedom

My prison sentence at Borders is OVER!


Sometimes I feel ungrateful in that excitement, because I was really lucky to have a job when many people don't.  However, working a liquidation sale is like being Prometheus, chained up and having your liver eaten out every day.  You would assume that customers at a bookstore would be cultured, intelligent, civilized people, and you would be wrong.  In fact, from the way they blatantly ignored all posted signage, I'm not quite sure if many of them could even read.

After two 60-hour work weeks (between the publishing company and Borders), I was woefully behind on my schoolwork and struggling in my sleep-lacking grumpiness to not hate every driver on the road that wasn't me (with no success).  Wednesday, after dealing with one too many customers who didn't know how to calculate 40% of $10.00, I finally snapped.  I left a note for my boss, gone for the night, that I would no longer be available to work after this week.  She called me yesterday to let me know she had found people to work my shifts tonight and Saturday so that I wouldn't have to come in at all. Ever.  I think this was a ploy to make me feel guilty, but I surely do not.  I did stop by tonight to pick up my pay stub and a few books, but I'm not planning on dropping in again anytime soon--the welcome from my coworkers was a bit frosty.  Go figure.  (For those of you who are firm on the "two-weeks notice" curtesy, I did inform my boss weeks ago that I had another job and that I would continue to work at Borders unless it affected my schoolwork.  In that case, I would be gone with very little notice.)

Would you like to know how I spent my day, free from my cage behind the retail register?

I woke up, and--free from the "you have to look presentable for customers" retail dress code--threw on an old tee, workout pants, and flip-flops, and drove to my publishing house in 10 minutes.  When I arrived, I toasted a bagel, chatted with my coworker about how cranberries are harvested, popped in my earbuds and loaded my favorite Pandora station before tweaking some graphics in a client's newsletter.  After I proofread a newsletter for another client, I invoiced a few orders, boxed up a few more for shipment, grabbed some salad and read a chapter of my latest children's book selection.  Lather, rinse, and repeat all through the afternoon, and finish with a lively office discussion about "Hoarders" and how gross it would be to find a dead cat buried under all your garbage.  When I got home, Ricky and I drove to Borders, bought a bag full of books, and I spent the evening looking at guitars on craigslist and doing the housework I haven't had time to do since before spring break.

My new job is very independent.  After rules and regiments at VMI, and micro-management through the corporate chain of Borders, being able to answer my own questions and design my own layouts and prioritize my own to-do list is still a novel idea for me.  I don't even have to answer the phone!  (I have never had a job where I was not the first in line to answer the phone when it rang.  Sad--and annoying--but true.) 

In other news, my Facebook sacrifice for Lent is peachy.  I got a free copy of "Finding Neverland," one of my favorite movies, through redeeming my Disney Movie Rewards points.  I re-discovered my love of folk music and Simon & Garfunkel.  I now own the graphic novel of Sense and Sensibility.  I watched the BYU/Florida game and felt like BYU deserved to lose because they refused to use the brains in their heads.  (Poor freshman missing that penalty shot, though!  He's never going to forgive himself for that one.)  My professor talked about a great Mormon friend she had in graduate school and how she couldn't stand the "small, mean, prejudiced people" that belittled her friend for practicing a faith they didn't understand...and for being a liberal, feminist, rational, religious woman.  My professor doesn't know I'm Mormon, but at the end of the semester I'll have to remember to thank her for teaching tolerance to a class full of professor-hopefuls.