Oblig. Title

At the start of my employment, my boss showed me videos of people stealing, and we both had a chuckle about it. How silly they were! There was a camera overhead, and it’s not to watch the shoppers. See, we can’t actually stop shoplifters. They get away with it maybe nine out of ten times. But we, who are watched and tallied and witnessed? We are always caught.

At first it was hard to hold one hundred dollars bills. An amount I had never seen before. An amount that didn’t exist in my household. It’s normal now. Here is something that is not for me.

“What the hell, I’ll take another,” says the man, pondering our 200 dollar watches. What the hell. Total comes to 580 and not even a flinch in his face. I have been working for 11 hours today and made only 110 dollars. It will go to my rent. Today I work for free, it feels. When I get my check, I will have 35 dollars left for food and saving.

The six hundreds he hands me go into the cash register. For a moment, I imagine having money. Then I put it away, counting out his change.

I know for a fact we sell our products for double what they are worth. That I could be making commission. That they could hand me those 580 dollars and change my life and not even mark the difference in their checkbooks. He’s not the only sale they make today, but I am the reason they made it. He’s not the only one spending 600 dollars, but if I hadn’t spent two hours with him telling me about his life, he wouldn’t have spent any. I go home. I don’t own a watch.

I have watched and rewatched a video on how to make salmon four ways. My shopping list is always the same. Pasta. Rice. Tuna. If I can afford butter it was a good week. I dream of the world I will never walk in, where I can throw the best fish fillet in the cart with a shrug. I hold hundreds in my hand and look up at the camera. I put them under the cash drawer.

I go to work. I scrap together my savings. I eat my bowl of rice slowly. My manager takes a paid week off from work just for his birthday. He owns a yacht. 

i was part of their college program. i moved to the state for it. they legally owned the building i was living in and still charged me rent. i ostensibly was being charged to work for them. it was a 2 bedroom apartment and they placed 6 adult women in it in forced triples.

as many as one in ten disney employees have experienced homelessness while working for the company. despite huge efforts to unionize, strike, or otherwise demand fair treatment; disney has refused to increase employee quality of life.

disney admits publicly that a good portion of their success is because the employees (“cast members”) are dedicated, passionate, and selfless. this is never reflected in pay. even “face” characters (ie those that are princesses etc) make barely above a minimum wage.

at the time that i worked there, i made $8.50 an hour. at one point i was asked to create a human shield around a bag because a bomb dog had alerted to it. for eight fucking dollars an hour.

i now work a very cushy office job. i have bought the salmon and cooked it all four ways.

i go to the store. i am nice to the person behind the counter. she looks up at the camera while she counts out my change. there is nothing fundamentally different about her and i.

Enter Donald, a gay Puerto Rican man who rolls up in an electric Kia with a rainbow Zelda shirt. I know he is Puerto Rican because that is the theme of his car's decor. He's probably in his late forties. He's gushing over the cat but his demeanor changes when I tell him how sick she is and how I need to get her to the ER. He solemnly informs me, "I'll take care of it," and RIPS out of the parking lot of my building.

Dude is flooring it. The entire time he is sending his husband text-to-speech messages about, "Going to the vet, do you want me to go in and talk to them?" He informs me that he actually needed to go speak to the vet at this clinic anyway--his dog who he just had to put down yesterday went there for renal failure treatments--and that "fate brought us together." He tells the cat to hang in there, that, "Girl, I will take care of you."

He turns on his emergency blinkers. He's weaving through traffic like he used to professionally race. Any gap he sees, he takes it. It is terrifying but I am in awe.

We get to blocked traffic because it is rush hour. He asks me if I trust him. I tell him, "I guess I have to in this situation," and he nods and swings into the shoulder, guns it, whips around the traffic, and takes off on a side road. The GPS means nothing to him. He knows exactly where he's going and he is beating the traffic jams for the sake of the cat. She can't wait.

When we pull into the vet clinic, he goes in with me. As my cat is taken in, he asks me if I want to see pictures of his late dog. He shows me a picture of a chihuahua in a bow tie and it is the cutest fucking dog I've ever seen. He tells me how his husband is a dog trainer and the dog had been around the world, and that this vet is a good one and my cat will be fine.

I compliment his shirt and he nods like Arnold at the end of Terminator 2. Then he just marches out the door.

Anyway. The cat is staying overnight at the emergency vet but seems to be doing fine aside from not wanting to eat. Apparently, this is a $2.5k case of "your cat has a cold and is constipated, and what you thought was respiratory distress was her gagging on snot while nauseous." We pick her up sometime today.

Enter Donald, a gay Puerto Rican man who rolls up in an electric Kia with a rainbow Zelda shirt. I know he is Puerto Rican because that is the theme of his car's decor. He's probably in his late forties. He's gushing over the cat but his demeanor changes when I tell him how sick she is and how I need to get her to the ER. He solemnly informs me, "I'll take care of it," and RIPS out of the parking lot of my building.

Dude is flooring it. The entire time he is sending his husband text-to-speech messages about, "Going to the vet, do you want me to go in and talk to them?" He informs me that he actually needed to go speak to the vet at this clinic anyway--his dog who he just had to put down yesterday went there for renal failure treatments--and that "fate brought us together." He tells the cat to hang in there, that, "Girl, I will take care of you."

He turns on his emergency blinkers. He's weaving through traffic like he used to professionally race. Any gap he sees, he takes it. It is terrifying but I am in awe.

We get to blocked traffic because it is rush hour. He asks me if I trust him. I tell him, "I guess I have to in this situation," and he nods and swings into the shoulder, guns it, whips around the traffic, and takes off on a side road. The GPS means nothing to him. He knows exactly where he's going and he is beating the traffic jams for the sake of the cat. She can't wait.

When we pull into the vet clinic, he goes in with me. As my cat is taken in, he asks me if I want to see pictures of his late dog. He shows me a picture of a chihuahua in a bow tie and it is the cutest fucking dog I've ever seen. He tells me how his husband is a dog trainer and the dog had been around the world, and that this vet is a good one and my cat will be fine.

I compliment his shirt and he nods like Arnold at the end of Terminator 2. Then he just marches out the door.

Anyway. The cat is staying overnight at the emergency vet but seems to be doing fine aside from not wanting to eat. Apparently, this is a $2.5k case of "your cat has a cold and is constipated, and what you thought was respiratory distress was her gagging on snot while nauseous." We pick her up sometime today.