High: You know which aisle each item is located in when you go shopping.
Low: Going shopping reminds you of work.
High: You provide a much-needed service for modern living.
Low: Your appreciation for humanity dwindles into a dark chasm.
High: You brighten people’s day with a nice smile.
Low: Pretending to be fucking happy for eight hours straight.
High: If you’re a cashier, you get to stay in one place.
Low: If you’re a cashier, you have to stay in one place all freaking day.
High: You get mandatory breaks.
Low: Your breaks are 14 minutes and 59 seconds, not including peeing, pooping, smoking cigarettes, waiting in line to pay for the 12 Pizza Rolls that take 2 minutes to cook and 1 minute to eat.
High: You don’t have to show up early.
Low: You can’t punch in early and you can’t punch in late, so if you are a punctual person you get to sit in your car for ten to fifteen minutes before work, smoking that last cigarette and contemplating your poor life choices, including the hangover that is pounding in your head.
High: If you are on the floor you get great exercise.
Low: You have to push a row of twenty carts through that sloppy foot of snow mid-March.
High: It is easy to get a job in retail.
Low: You are expendable.
High: You get discounts.
Low: You give your paycheck back to the people that gave you the money.
High: You have the opportunity to work up the corporate ladder.
Low: You have the opportunity to lose all of your dignity and become the very thing you used to hate.
High: You are welcomed with the holiday spirit as soon as you walk through the door.
Low: Listening to the same twenty songs for two straight months; Black Friday; all of December; December 23rd; December 24th; December 26th; and any other holiday.
High: Pricing and stocking shelves can be a zen-like experience.
Low: Facing the shelves can feel like a fine line between Purgatory and Hell.
High: Free old donuts.
Low: Becoming so depressed that you don’t care that you are eating stale food.
High: Working a forklift.
Low: Dropping a big screen TV from fifty feet in the air and having to take a piss test after you’ve been smoking weed for the past five years straight.
High: Making fun of the customers.
Low: Knowing the customers are secretly judging you too.
High: Making close friends.
Low: Personal drama mixing with work drama, and work drama mixing with personal drama.
High: Learning how to properly fold clothes
Low: Folding a million fucking pairs of t-shirts, jeans, and sweaters every day, all day.
Author's Note #1: I have worked at Sam's Club, Best Buy, and Meijers. None of them compare to the great times I had working at Frank's Supermarket. Represent that green vest.
Author's Note #2: If you are moving and need boxes, go to your local grocery store and get egg boxes. They. Are. The. Best.