I was in his office, having crossed the breach that distinguished employment from being thrown out of my parents' house. My "nest" was in jeopardy, my benefactors raising a wing to illustrate the wide, waiting world outside for idle young men who pissed on such notions as "acting their age".

Cal walked me to the back of the sales-floor, pushed open the flimsy brown doors with clear plastic "port-holes" (== "Ahoy!"), and traversed a dingy stockroom, our shoes echoing on smooth gray concrete with a light scrape of poured masonry. The plaster walls in his ratty little office were threadbare except for official-looking documents tacked up at which to squint across and ponder one's place in the cogs of "The Death Star". After I signed a waiver for a drug test, the good 'ole "whiz quiz", Cal let me peruse the employee's handbook as he sternly filled out more papers with the sound of a scratching pen, scowling down like a shoe-maker in one of Grimm's Fairy Tales.

As I flipped through the pages, my gaze fell on a page that read "We at Big Lots work as a team where all the employees have the right to talk directly with their manager about any concerns they may have. Therefore, we work in a union-free environment. . . . .".  But I remembered from my sheltered liberal academic upbringing that unions were a good thing. Around Cal, however, this effervescent progressive notion would not be given voice. That was playing employee politic.  Well, at least Big Lots employees had access to a credit union (-- a petty thing, like a huffing fat man in a red apron bringing in his piggy bank to put down a "down payment" on a tar-paper shack).

And I read about other wondrous benefits that awaited faithful employees at Big Lots as they waved outside the building in a group picture on a dented, rabbit-eared television from the perspective of we naive, low-down living wastrels. Discounts on merchandise nobody wanted, weeping funeral leave for the bereaved as a casket was lowered in the ground for the "gorping" worms, and a 25¢ raise every six months (-- notwithstanding a wage cap of $7/hour).

(-- I had a vision of that huffing fat man in a red apron pulling a wagonload of firewood up to his tar-paper shack through the bleak winter, throwing the logs in the stove one after another and rubbing his hands together to ward off frost-bite) 

Cal led me out of his office and showed me the punch clock hanging right outside like a paper towel dispenser. (-- "Never forget to punch out", he said without explanation. Playing "employee politic" again, I didn't connect the dots out loud like Beavis & Butthead standing around and snickering).

Then he taught me the intricacies of "product recovery"-- an official-sounding euphemism for "neatening shelves". Reaching your paw out, and bringing items to the fore for the sake of shopping aesthetics. To demonstrate, he went whizzing back and forth aisle 1 (-- perhaps to inspire speediness within the raw employee) and then was gone with the padding of sneakers like a roadie. I was left alone with my echoing thoughts and 16,000 square feet of existential sales-floor.

I caught occasional views of my fellow wage-slaves, wearing red aprons, glimpsed like mythical satyrs in a great wood who identified me by my own red apron with a weary recognition, and turned back to work utterly without interest.

So much for the red brigades of socialistic camraderie. . . . .

Three-and-a-half hours later, feeling justified, I took my single 15 minute break (-- mandated by law) in the employee break room (-- also mandated by law). It was the height of prime-time television, folks nuzzled in their easy-chairs watching the newsmagazines wind out a satisfying tale by the lamplight of nightfall-- chaos and woe and murder befalling the average dumb, befuddled, shit-headed American losing everything in the snap of a finger as we stared on with fascination like a herd of "mooing" voyeurs trampling "the less fortunate" underfoot-- and I felt a tinge of regret for the home fires, the vale of middle-class living built on the pyramid of wage-slaves such as us.

 And a pang of hunger too, having not packed a lunch in advance!

Big Lots sold food, didn't it? I recalled holding a summer sausage in my paw. And a box of crackers. Food fit for a king, I figured. Or good enough for my humble belly, which was growling like a caged beast.

The all-mighty punch clock sat serenely like a dozing Buddha in meditation, indifferently ticking away the hours until such time we would receive our paychecks to do with as we pleased, or as much of a choice we could muster with such low pay, bared teeth, and the nagging cost of necessities that pulled us down into the burbling, fetid tar pit of marginality.

Sorry, son.

I punched in at 4:00 PM, happy to have a source of extra income if not a comfortable roof over my head instead of a tar-paper shack and a starved dog on the floor, flies swarming out of its mouth like a rictus of existence's insult. I greeted my fellow drudges with lightsome vigor, and the middle-aged woman with the big rump and cynical expression rolled her eyes, having seen it all before with a curt laugh like custard. Such flippancy and charm would burn out "sooner or later" she figured, as she waddled off with aching shins with a stuck-out, head-bowed expression of endurance that could go for some ice water, but people don't get that in hell neither.

Without managerial direction, I went back to aisle 1 and neatened the shelves like an art student. Strange thing was that they were just as strewn and disorderly as I found them the day before, like so much aimless drift wood strewn around by the tides.

Cal soon found me at my post and led me to the stockroom.

"What are we doing today, sir?" I asked with a chipper attitude.

"YOU'RE going to price-label merchandise", he gruffly called behind his shoulder like a tech-man of close-out goodies.

"A-O-K, sir!".

In the depths of the stockroom, fluorescently-lit, sat piles upon piles of unopened boxes, resting on grungy wooden slats like the goods in a warehouse. Cal stood where there was room, tore open a box, and demonstrated how to unpeel and apply bar code stickers on a unit of close-out cereal. He warned me away from the box crusher, a hulking machine in the dingy corner, because I was under 18.

To err, and pull the chain that activated the machine, was punishable by instant termination. Big Lots would not accept the insurance liability of a capricious minor, as if in my infantile, clowning judgment I would jump up and down in that glue-stinking pit and, with a concurent line of thinking, someone would pull the chain and turn me into toothy red mush in a mash-up of torn clothing. And if I crossed that yellow line painted on the floor. . . . . symbolic death. Purged forever, the ultimate banishment, out the door and gone like the trailing tendrils of avoided liability. Yet the laws found me fit enough to scurry in front of this imperious manager, old enough to be subjected to the soul-killing transaction of all of this like I had a choice in the matter. Then Cal was gone, leaving me alone with my existential thoughts and boxes-- a row twenty feet long, five feet high, and seven feet thick.

My legs began to burn after a spell, standing there in one place like a rusted hulk. Oh. they had burned the day before when I was on "shelf patrol" but at least I got to move around some. That way, I got to get some oxygen working through my cramping limbs.

After forty minutes of shifting uncomfortably from foot to foot, Cal brought back someone to help me-- introducing Devron, a black kid around twenty years old. This was his first day and his dim eyes circled around the stock room bemusedly.

"Sheeeet-- dis all we got ta do? Sheeeeet. . . . .".

At least he was someone to talk to. Through the next hour I had the opportunity to learn more about my tribal friend.

"You going to college?".

"Sheeeet, naw". I reached for something else to say.

"Hey, what'd you think of that whole Clinton-impeachment business?"

"I don' give a sheeeet."

"Oh. Where do you live?"

"I live in Hanley Hills. Ya know where dat is?"

"Vaguely".

"Wha' yoo say?"

"VAGUELY."

"Speak English, man. SHEEEEET. . . . .".

Before long we were joined by another black kid, also in his early '20s. I guessed he could relate to Devron's scene better, because in minutes they were whoopin' and jivin' with braying laughter like crows. I felt a little out of place as a semi-educated white boy living on the edge, degraded, like Wavy-Gravy in a clown-suit, and quietly placed stickers on 200 tiny bags of honey-roasted peanuts like a man carving letters on aspirin with a chisel & hammer.

Suddenly the boss's door was flung open and Cal walked out. (-- The two went back to work soundlessly). Before passing, our foul-tempered "cereal-tech" stared us each in the eye, one at a time, glaring as if we had spent these moments urinating on his flowers like "Beavis & Butthead" (-- and "Jambo").

He left.

We waited to hear his falling foot steps fade on the smooth whisk of concrete, and after we heard the "whooosh" of the closing door, Devron & associate began hooting anew like bums on the corner passing around a bottle of "Night Train". Soon, even their words went dry. . . . . these loafers couldn't even keep themselves entertained. 

"7¢ a minute", I gasped with cramping fingers, opening up another case of peanuts and bugging out my eyes like Ralph Kramden.

I began the shift "recovering" stock, starting in aisle 1 once more (-- the little nook that I considered "mine"). As I moved forward, I straightened up cleaning fluids and toilet brushes like a very humble servant.

When I reached the aisle display, wrapping around the other end, I "recovered" boxes of low-sodium "Trisquit" crackers. The next aisle over contained jumbled varieties of spices that needed to be grouped and organized (-- a lengthy project!). Not forgetting the sticky broken jam jars, and "dented-beyond-belief" canned vegetables that I wouldn't feed to starving hobos, even if they were drinking "Night Train" and hooting in a puddle of their own jizz.

The next aisle was full of cereal boxes, a regiment of yellow packaging facing forward reverently like a row of monoliths, like the heads on Easter Island addressing the sea. In the aisle display were those cursed peanuts from the day before. . . . . The aisle following that was inundated with additional varieties of mothy snack crackers, bags of hard noodles, and sacks of old Halloween candy (-- it was April). Many were torn open, and probably the thing that not even Devron & associate would eat if you threw it to 'em with mushed mouths and skirts of rotten, yellowed teeth like African cannibals beating on skulls.

By the decree of Cal, I had been pushing a shopping cart looking for "write-off's". . . . . the shredded packages and damaged, unsalable goods that were covered by insurance "on the ledger". The plum treat of the day was sitting on the cool tile floor and putting the marbles in a discarded box like some kind of fat-assed panda. No one could accuse me of slacking off on the job!

On impulse, I asked a scruffy little girl with pig-tails and her dad if they could make use of eight hundred odd-something marbles. He was a big man in overalls, a truck driver perhaps, with brown sideburns and a toothpick sticking out of his mouth.

"Really?"

"You betcha".

"Sure, we'll use 'em to fill m' fish tank". He was grinning like this was the greatest gift anyone had ever gave him, holding the box before him squarely like a stolen television in the loot of semi-questionable insurance-thinking.

"Hope you like them". I practically brushed my knuckle across the little girl's cheek in affection.

The shopping cart brimming with "the damned", I pushed it through the stock room. Cal asked me where I put the marbles.

"They couldn't be sold so I gave them away".

"They were supposed to be THROWN OUT. EVERYTHING is supposed to be thrown out. That's what the rules say!" he blustered. (There would be no raised finger of pompous interjection on my behalf on the virtues of recycling and what our consumerist society was turning into). "Don't do it again!".

"So I can't even keep this 99¢ yo-yo?", I asked, holding it up by the string, swinging it slightly to-and-fro in front of Cal's nose like a hypnotist's charm. His eyes centered on the yo-yo, glared, then he grabbed it and threw it in the cart.

"No exceptions, EVER". 

He had other matters to attend to. 

After Cal stalked off, I shoved the yo-yo down my pants leg. At least I wouldn't be fired if asked to empty my pockets like a scurvy, shrugging shoplifter!

Later that night I was resting in the break room. . . . . among an odd jumble of glassy-eyed teenagers, scruffy middle-aged women, and a single corpse-like old lady that looked like a rag doll gnawed on by a rarin' pit-bull, shaking it its slobbery jaws. It was mostly silent, lit by a single lamp that was placed on top of the forlorn, crusted-over microwave that weakly popped cheap, greasy popcorn like rotten-mouth goodies.

They were taking long, weary drags on their cigarettes, staring straight ahead with glazed eyes, elbows resting on the faux-wood folding table. What little conversation there was dealt with daytime t.v or how REMCO Rent-A-Center (-- the goaheadandgetit store) was going to repossess their couch (-- oh lordy).

Finally, a jowl-faced woman (-- the most singularly plain-faced PROTESTANT Anglo-Saxon I had ever seen) asked me how long I had been working there with a mean, flat expression that bespoke of the sallow prairie, and gray ditch water.

"I've been here for two-and-a-half years".

"I've been here for three years", the corpse spoke up.

Come 9 'o clock and Big Lots is all but closed. It's our job to guide a push-broom around the filthy sales floor, perhaps a bit of spot-mopping for clods of dirt that are particularly resistant to our prodding, poking efforts like location janitors. It's a great way to idle away the last thirty minutes into nothingness. "Slacking" on your end, and counting that yes, somehow someone else would cover it.

You can always take sanctity in the fact that Cal can't single you out in the collective, sagging rate of productivity like a circus tent collapsing at the end of the run. Just find an empty, wayward corner of the store and lean back against the shelf for five minutes-- I did.

At 9:30 all of us were punched out and standing by the wide windows in front-- in silence-- waiting for Cal and his almighty keys. What a team. . . . . what shiftless enthusiasm. We had no more unity then atomized bits of busted wood, our horizons so narrow and our hopes so small like minnows swimming sluggishly in a shallow pool of shit water by the banks of the brown, polluted Mississippi after a flood, the storm dissipated with the sag of humidity and smell of rain.

Here's what mattered: six hours of work, another $24 dollars. Actually, more like five-and-a-half hours. Surely the good corporate officers of Big Lots would round up the hour, or at least compensate us for the extra thirty minutes!

"No, the clock rounds down. Even if you work for five hours and fifty-nine minutes they pay you for five", a prisoner huffed.

The next day I punched in half-an-hour early to earn my full six hours of pay, anxious to whether or not I'd cross the "fifty-nine minute divide". Foolishly, I had done leg weights earlier that day, seeing that one's legs were the very struts of endurance. . . . . like a mechanoid on a red, neglected planet-scape leaning into the fog. My muscles were jittery, my legs feeling like a construction of paper-clips and rubber bands as I staggered away from the punch clock like a clattering automatron.

Jolting my sense of routine, Cal wasn't here. Off to other pursuits that I could scarcely imagine. A can of beer in hand as he sat in front of the television on a ratty, flower-print couch, watching the game shows. That, or jerking off to some crude, early '80s Penthouse magazine he had stashed around the house for twenty years, admiring "beaver shots" as he scowled in ecstasy with his eyes closed like a "Hamburg wharf rat".

Steve held the reins. Twenty-four years old, lanky, a blond crew-cut, a mustache like a steer, a dumbass cowboy in a blue manager's shirt that sent me off to the stock room with a shrug like football and stock-car races.

The work was tolerable at first, a residue of momentum from the last three days propelling me along like a gentle gust of wind across this filmy ocean. How to "pace" yourself, never moving any faster than your fellow employees, reaching for your fifteen minute break like a piece of fruit hanging from a tree. . . . . ready to be plucked at will. Then my legs and lower back began to burn with muscle fatigue.

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