are you feeling badly disturbed?

[Guest happycase]

All the people working at the grocery store were sad today. No sunshine burning through their hearts. Everyone was panicking but not particularly getting anything done quickly. The world is full of badly frightened children dressed in the images of adulthood and its burdens. I teared up talking to these people. Their sweetness has been driven off by separation anxieties, survival issues, agendas, thinking they exist somewhere behind the skin and that their many ideas and actions reflect back on this thing. Social systems are agenda-driven. We don't trust our inherent curiosity, love, openness and innocence to take care of us - to take care of the whole thing. So much energy goes into keeping the shell from cracking, but that cathartic energetic pained and magnificent life force behind the shell is almost always palpable. We need therapy. We need spirituality. Can you be content saying goodbye to the entire world? Was it ever there to begin with? Is this happening? Consciousness proliferates and misses its own tranquility. Is there anything in your line of sight that you can forgive and release back to itself? I forgive you sweet body, for deceiving me into thinking you contained me. You magnificent intelligence, I'll leave you alone from now on. You simply are, simultaneously with your mirror image and your shadow, but nothing can be said of your beingness. I will let you be this inherent stillness forevermore. Goodbye, television, I'm sorry for using you to numb myself to the tenderness of being. I'm sorry books, for accumulating you, thinking you might perfect me or sweeten my heart. Two of them looked me in the eye and I saw love half-awake behind the dark clouds of greed and fear. This forum, I'm sorry for using you to reflect back my insanity, confusion, lovability. It isn't your function to do anything but be, simultaneously, with me as this play-doh of life and death. I'm sorry clothing, I've used you to hide from myself. You do keep me warm, but this isn't your main function. You are just meant to be clothing. I'm sorry for using you Pita Chips, to feed myself. You are meant to taste, to smell, to crunch, to be, as are my hunger pains. I'm sorry hunger pains for running from you, never paying you enough attention to love you, to see your transience, and love you for it. I love you, transient world, precisely because you can't last, my heart is moved by you.

[Guest ruiagnelo]

posts like these are real gems amongst all the webshit.

 

happycase, keep sharing with us.

 

[baph]

[Salvatorin]

ᴚᴫᵑᵙ

[SCONES TO DIE FOR]

Pita chips be like fuck all y'all.

[Guest boo]

the coldness of the grocery store staff in this town gets me down. i cant expect people to be friendly when im not though. but i noticed that when something different happens, like me walking off without my change or my debit card not working, they become friendly, happy, normal people. i probably do too though,

[marf]

im always crushing on a girl at a supermarket. I like listening to music and walking around supermarkets. I like supermarkets

[chassis]

Insanity: Yes

Lovability: No

 

You managed to write a whole wall of text without saying anything.

 

You perceive the supermarket as depressing because you're depressed (and mental).

[Guest Billov]

[Guest fiznuthian]

supermarkets always have high school girls working the registers..

usually their first job.

 

it's like a rite of passage for some of them,

fighting through the legions of awkward desperate men and obese women who clog the "20 items or less" isle with a cart full of little debbie.

 

 

and then there's the young high school boys who end up bagging for the girls,

who feel inferior because they're stuck putting an endless supply of groceries into bags while the girls handle all the cash and numbers.

 

a select few surpass their peers, and elevate above the ranks.

they're the register pimps, and charm both customer and registrette.

[vertsk8er419]

[autopilot]

I'm a clerk at a liquor store.

 

You haven't seen sorrow till you've made eye contact with the clientelle and staff at a place who's primary source of profit is selling box wine & cheap vodka to alcoholics.

[chassis]

I'm a clerk at a liquor store.

 

You haven't seen sorrow till you've made eye contact with the clientelle and staff at a place who's primary source of profit is selling box wine & cheap vodka to alcoholics.

 

I find that offensive

[Guest fiznuthian]

I'm a clerk at a liquor store.

 

You haven't seen sorrow till you've made eye contact with the clientelle and staff at a place who's primary source of profit is selling box wine & cheap vodka to alcoholics.

 

can you tell us more? any stories to tell?

 

i've been insanely curious about this. i haven't been to the local ABC store much, usually to buy someone else liquor.

but everytime i go i see a handful of very ragged, obviously poor people buying large handles of anything cheap,

most of them without cars. they'll leave the shop and walk off into the distance.

every time, i can't help but wonder what their stories are..

 

is this why they automatically bag your liquor without asking?

i'm not even sure if its against the law to carry a handle around unopened in public..

[autopilot]

In this state it's illegal to have any open alcohol container in public that's not in a bar or your residence.

 

Stories are mostly stuff like, people coming in to buy a pint of vodka paying entirely in change (not quarters though, nickels and pennis mostly), shaking so much they can barely hand it to you. Then practically sprinting out the door without taking their receipt or anything. Then you find them passed out in their uninsured, rusty parked cars on the other side of the parking lot.

 

We had one guy that would come in once a week and buy this stuff:

 

That's 5 liters of sugary sweet, artifically sweetened & flavored wine product, undoubtedly made from the refuse of more reputable wineries. This guy would come in and buy one of those, then once he paid for it, tear open the box (literally), take the plastic sack of wine out, and leave the actual cardboard part of the box on the counter. Haven't seen him in a few months.

 

We watch people deteriorate. One lady, a nice pretty blonde late-30's, early 40's, would come in in scrubs (obviously on her break from some sort of medical job) and buy a bottle of Moet Chandon champagne out of the refrigerator (we have some chilled stuff for people that need cold white wine or Jager immediately). She would do this 3 times a day. Each of those bottles costs $60. That's a $180 a day champagne habit. Then we didn't see her for 2 or 3 weeks. Then she started coming in in sweatpants and a t-shirt and buying 3 liters of sauvignon blanc a day, paying cash. She probably maxed out her credit cards and got fired from her job for always drinking champagne on the job. Now she buys pints of vodka, and looks 10 years older than she did 9 months ago.

 

Some old people come in for the $8 1.75-liter bottles of vodka, and $10 5-liter jugs of wine. The cheapest, nastiest, lowest quality rotgut known to man. These people can't walk without a cane or walker. You have to take their jugs of wine out to their cars for them and put them in the backseat/trunk because they can't carry them out of the store. We always wonder how they get it into their house. Do they call their children? Do they drink half of it in the car so it weighs half as much?

 

One dude came in and was so drunk he pissed his grey sweatshorts in the tequila section. We kicked him out.

 

We have cruel nicknames for a lot of the customers. Crying Smirnoff, Tanorexic, The Happy Stork, Wiggles.

 

Making prolonged eye contact with these people hurts your soul. Most of them won't even look up, they've managed to perfect the money & alcohol changing hands without a word spoken or any form of human contact made. Eyes down, exact change on the counter, grab the bottle & leave.

 

The employees aren't much better. I work for the state of Pennsylvania (government employee woo!). All the liquor & wine here is state controlled, so anywhere in PA you have to get it from one of our stores. State employees get awesome pensions, so everyone's in it for the promise of a big juicy carrot on the end of a stick in 50 years. Until then, everyone is trying to bury the painful thoughts in their gut that they have to spend 43 more years at a job they absolutely hate, assisting the aforementioned types of people destroy their lives, watching them deteriorate year after year, until one day they just stop coming in and we all wonder what happened to them.

 

This voluntary extinguishing of basic human compassion and care for the well-being of your fellow man has caused anyone who's spent more than a few years in the system to become the most jaded, cynical, unloving motherfuckers you've ever met. The ones that drink are just as bad as some of the customers, the ones that don't are just as bad off due to their lack of love, compassion, and going 8 hours a day without even seeing a smile. Add in the management-mandated radio stations into the mix that play the same 5 Elton John, Journey, Katy Perry, and Taylor Swift songs over & over, and you've got a big conglomerate of near-suicidal folk all shovelling coal into each other's sorrow-furnaces.

 

Retail is basically the only avenue of employment left for those of us that didn't go to college. I chose the retail venue that payed the most out of all the available options. $12 an hour starting wages + great benefits makes me slog through this horseshit. I've got bills to pay...I've got to maintain a car & buy gas...I've got to eat. I'm pretty sure the guy in "Thank You For Smoking" referred to this type of rationalization as "The Yuppie Nuremberg Defense".

 

Buy my music & go to my shows.

[Eggs]

I teared up talking to these people.

 

fag