Split Fretting Fingers

Every day I get up. I go to work. I sell people things. There are fewer people coming through and they’re buying more because they’re stocking up or they haven’t been shopping in a month, but there are still lines, like always. There’s plexiglass between the cashiers and the customers, and no dividers, and we have to continually yell at people not to put their items on the belt until we’ve finished the previous transaction, and they ignore us or argue with us, same as always. The more rules we have, the more rules there are for people to ignore. And the longer it goes on, the more normal it gets. Pretty much no one thanks us for coming in to work anymore. People are starting to act like we should never, ever run out of an item. It’s just blanket assumed that we will have hand sanitizer and soap and toilet paper and people are shocked when we say we’re out.  But there are still ads on the TV in the break room telling us all to stay home and the more the customers ignore social distancing, the more management puts pressure on us to set a good example, until we’re expected to follow standards that are physically impossible.

The longer this goes on, the less ‘essential’ I feel.

And then I come home and get online as always and there are all of these people asking what you’re doing while you’re stuck in quarantine and coming up with fun things to do when you’re in quarantine and talking about what you’re going to do when this whole thing is over and you can finally, finally leave your house. Everyone just seems to assume that you, the person reading their words, are in quarantine, because everyone’s in quarantine. It’s like this big, international, universal experience that you’re not a part of.

So I found this CD on the street today on my way to work, right? So I decided I’d bring it home and listen to it.

In this world of electricity and gas, great winged metal tubes fly higher than blimps. Gears have been replaced in computers with mysterious green boards covered in weird shapes of metal, and telephones can fit in people’s pockets.

It’s a world of simple clothing and complicated machines. A world where the average man can drive an automobile powered by explosions rather than steam and take it hundreds of miles away in a matter of hours. No tracks required.

It’s a vision of the future that has been cold for a hundred years. The type of fiction that would’ve been written by those who believed in the fallacy of gasoline over a hundred years ago. Though people keep writing about this world. Why? Could it have something to do with the colorful clothing? The aesthetic of mechanics getting grease on their faces? The desire for movement and freedom?

Or maybe it has to do with all that soot in the sky. The pea soup fogs and dust masks. The coal burning in homes and unbearably hot summers. Maybe people want to believe that there’s a universe out there that’s not so completely beyond repair. That maybe if they wish hard enough all the steam will clear away and the storms will leave.

It’s almost 2AM so I’m just gonna drop this Gravity falls reference…..

Service industry workers who know labor day weekend is one of the busiest 3 days of the year which means double or triple shifts and not seeing family all while being forced to be not only polite but cheerful:

It’s your wedding, the only people who should be there are ones who make you happy.

On the one hand absolutely

On the other hand I can’t afford to invite everyone who makes me happy

Runs through a red forest of trees

Such a vision of maple

Is a boon if you’re able