Exploring the world of retirement and retail at the same time has been an adventure. I worked at one job for twenty-five years. At 65 years that doesn’t seem like much of an accomplishment, but in my youth, I was a drifter, without any attachment to geography or reality. I always believed, no matter how often I found evidence to the contrary, I was hungry for responsibility and a little power, until I got it, then I couldn’t escape fast enough, and was off to find a new job, and start the whole process over again.
Since I had worked so hard and so often to get a little authority I managed to land an assistant manager position at a small warehouse. The company operating the distribution center was small and privately owned. What it lacked in benefits it made up for in a relaxed attitude toward rules. It paid well, and though, due entirely to my inability to adapt, I never quite fit in, I was comfortable enough to make it my last stop. It went against everything in my history, roots were anathema, tying a soul to the ground, making it impossible to float freely. Being tethered to responsibility was an albatross around my neck, dragging me down to the creaking prison of adulthood. But I stayed, until the end, at least the end of the first act.
It wasn’t, probably, genetics causing the restlessness. Evidence suggests it was environmental.
When I was younger, my parents moved often. America was awash in the nexus of revolution and change seemed inevitable[1]. We lived in Idaho, New Mexico and western Nebraska during the days of Cesar Chavez and the agricultural strikes. Tension was thick in local cafes and grocery stores. Immigrants, following the harvests were the focus of bitterness and animosity, as if trying to earn a living wage was somehow unfair, and radical. Since we were poor, catholic, and almost always new to town, many of my closest friend’s parents were from another country.
Across the nation, students were marshaling their resources and beginning the nascent peace movement, and the subsequent demonstrations against the war in Vietnam. In 1968 the Democratic National Convention in Chicago ended in guerilla war against an entrenched, authoritarian government. The government won. In 1972 National Guardsman shot and killed four college students on the campus of Kent State in Northeastern Ohio. It shocked the nation in a way that none of the previous strife and senseless bloodshed had managed. People stopped and took a deep breath, and decided that things might have gone too far.
Coincidentally, if there is such a thing as coincidence, it was about the same time my family stopped moving.
But I never lost the need for transience, I never learned the art of adapting to a culture, assuming an identity, putting down roots. In time things seem to just naturally take hold.
When we retired it was a weight lifted from my tired, aging soul. I threw myself into being retired. I loved it, I just wasn’t any good at it. I worried constantly about my health, my weight, my blood pressure, my sanity. When my wife would go downstairs to attend to the laundry, I would have a snack. When the cats away, yes? I had planned on getting a job, anyway, it would make sense to find one while I was still among the sane and the living.
It had to be within walking distance. It had to be different than previous jobs, and I wanted to talk to people, not necessarily customer service, but I wanted to be around people. My last job was in an isolated building, and after the pandemic there were only four of us who worked at work, and not from home. It started wearing on me, I learned I was a closet extrovert, I needed people.
A retail store in the neighborhood had an opening, so I applied, and a few days later they hired me. It is part of a small, widely dispersed chain, specializing in closeouts, and overstocks. It has a rhythm, a vibration running under the bright orange signs and along the narrow, crowded aisles. There is a pride in their assumed sense of oddness. It had an inclusiveness that accepted everybody, even me.
I started at a busy time, right around Black Friday, and the terrible Christmas retail struggles. So, my training has been in the heat of battle. Lines of customers ready to pay and go home, form around the shelves built to act as a guide and a barrier. After a time, tensions percolate, and form into hardened knots of rage. There is no place to hide behind a cash register.
It falls upon the person, sometimes me, to try to assuage the bitterness of waiting, and occasionally the disappointment of not finding the exact right thing. I have a few seconds to send them on their way, happy, or at least less angry. A few words of sympathy, or a small joke and a smile. I practice a few lines in the mirror, before work. But it’s mostly just a small smile that makes things better, maybe not good, but better. This time of year, every shopper, in every store has been through a lot. Everyone has a story to tell, and most times it’s something along the lines of “put yourself in my shoes.” I try to feel their exhaustion and sorrow, and the pressure of life during “the most wonderful time of the year.” Who can live up to that?
In many ways, my youth as a gypsy, and my later years as a drifter, and transient has made me more empathetic to people who face the struggle of shopping in a crowded store filled with strangers. Everywhere they look is somebody they don’t know, looking for the same thing they’re looking for, but nobody knows what that is. And in the words of Jack Kerouac, “I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion.” And in the right place, at the right time, that can be enough.
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[1] Though, as I look around the country today, the revolution died, and left no survivors.
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This Post is republished on Medium.
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Photo credit: iStock
Great writing. Thanks for sharing your perspective on retirement!
Thanks for writing this. I enjoyed it.