I don't usually write daylogs. I really need to vent though, so please excuse me if this write-up isn't "for the ages."
I work at Target, in the electronics department, where everything that's valuable is locked up. It's the last few days of the pre-Christmas shopping madness, and I'm really beginning to lose my sanity. Nothing has made me lose more esteem for my fellow man than these past few days. People have absolutely no respect for anyone, they scream at me, order me around, and make me do backflips because they are too lazy to spend four seconds of time actually looking for something before they stop me (whilst I'm helping 3 other customers) to ask where it is. People pull up to my electronics counter with carts full of merchandise and ask me if I can ring them up because they don't want to wait in the lines at the front of the store, regardless of the fact that there are 20 angry people standing around all waiting for me to help them, all thinking that they're next. People berate me for not having some camera that is on an exceptionally good sale this week even though it's only four days before Christmas. Then there comes a man who wants to see every camera in my display case and wants detailed explanations of every minor feature on each, despite the fact that angry uneducated brutes are yelling profanities at me for wasting five precious minutes of their lives. I have no time to think, I'm constantly on edge, stressed, and ready to burst. No one realizes that the four minutes of time they save by rushing me costs me so much more. It sounds melodramatic, but I come home on the verge of tears, knowing that I have to go back to that hell again tomorrow. I come home to my empty room, needing to be told that I'm a human, to be hugged, to be consoled, and all I have is my computer. The one I need is across the ocean, fast asleep. I mourn the loss of my love for people. I don't like the fact that I now see people as potential obstacles, problems, insults. I am beginning to become rude, losing my cool with people. A woman interrupts me while I'm telling my co-worker what he is expected to do this evening so I can leave. She asks me if she can pay for her cart full of clothes and all-things-non-electronic at my counter. I say no, because I really don't have the time, my bus is going to leave in ten minutes. I try to finish telling my coworker what he needs to know, and she starts to loudly call me lazy, says that I have to help her, and that I need to shut my mouth and get started. The lava that I've managed to keep banished to the corners of my soul begins to rise, and I feel my face turn red, and I know I'm going to say something I shouldn't, but I can't help it. It's either let it out or lose my mind. I tell her that I don't need to do anything. She asks me if I think it's appropriate to talk to a customer in that tone of voice. I ask her if she thinks it's appropriate to interrupt someone while they are speaking to someone else and to talk to them as if they aren't a person. I manage to keep from swearing. I know that if I don't leave right now, I'm going to lose it and do or say something I regret. It's the same icy cold nausea I felt when I was 18 and went into a blind rage and proceeded to beat the crap out of a guy who'd tortured me for years about being gay, making me hate myself.
I left, got on my bus, and began to cry. As I waited for my next bus in the pouring rain, I began to laugh at the absurdity of it all, and I couldn't stop, even as my bus pulled up, which made me draw fearful looks from the people on the bus. The cure for what ails me is the one thing I don't have right now: time.