Retail Anthropology

If nothing else, working retail gives me plenty of time to observe people. But that observation is not just limited to the customers. Sure, you get to know the different types of customer: which ones need a bit more help, which ones will talk your ear off, and which ones to avoid like the plague. And yeah, you get to observe your coworkers: the energetic one, the cynical one, the petty one, the one who’s just there to do their job adequately and move on. But for me, the real interest is in watching the managers.

Managers are in a different class than the rest of us working peons, as they have the capability to make decisions that actually have an effect on things in the store. At my job, I regularly encounter a few layers of management: department, senior, and store. Department managers are responsible for a certain section of the store. Senior managers oversee several department managers in a task group. Store managers, obviously, are in charge of the store (I’m including assistant store managers in this group).

I get on well enough with my department manager. I appreciate that they’re on the ground working with me most mornings, and that they value my feedback to a certain extent. For instance, I’ll be asked for advice on where to put things, as well as asked to help with some short-range planning tasks. There is a power differential, true, but I still feel respected. Plus, even if I advise them, the final decision (and responsibility is theirs.

Senior managers are a slightly different story. Because they have to oversee multiple departments, they are by necessity a little more detached from the day-to-day workings of the department. You’re more likely to hear something to the effect of “Do this, this, and that” from these managers, without them taking into account (in my opinion) the necessities of what those changes would entail. They swoop in, shake things up, and then move on, leaving other people to “work out the details” (read: clean up their mess).

I don’t interact much with the store managers, but they seem like nice enough people. They are, again by necessity, a bit more removed from the day-to-day workings, but the ones at my job seem fairly in tune with what needs to be done to meet their requests. I admire their ability to keep so many details of the business in their head at a time.

But for me, what’s really interesting is seeing managers interact with other managers that outrank them. A department manager, while nearly master of their domain, is still subjected to veto from a senior manager. As such, care must often be taken when presenting an idea to a senior manager lest they decide to change things to feel useful.

That may have been a bit uncharitable. But if you’ve dealt with middle management, you know how pointy their hair can get.

The real entertainment comes when senior managers interact with the store managers. For some reason, I can’t help but picture a dog rolling up on its belly before the pack alpha. Their whole demeanor changes: rather than making decisions from on high, they become much more appeasing and willing to please. They become subordinates, which is not a position grunts like me normally see them in.

I’m sure my girlfriend, with her background in anthropology, would have a field day with this sort of thing. But even I have enough insight to see things that amuse me. Has anyone else noticed anything similar? I can see it happening in any work environment that has multiple levels of authority.

Success!

Remember how I said yesterday that I intended to be productive today, in return for doing “nothing” yesterday? Well, it worked. I actually managed to get stuff done! In fact, I did most of what I set out to do!

Now, some of you may think I seem overly excited by this rather inconsequential development. But this really is a big deal for me. Too often, I get caught in a spiral of procrastination and guilt, which starts by me not holding up both ends of the bargain I’ve made with myself. Whether it’s because I slept in too much, or puttered around too long, I often find myself at the end of the day (or at least in the mid-afternoon) not having accomplished what I meant to do during the day.

Then, my perfectionism/procrastination takes over. It says: “Hey, it’s only a few hours before dinnertime. You and I both know you can’t do a good job with the time that’s left, so why even bother?” Not to be outdone, guilt raises its ugly head to chip in: “Oh great, another day wasted. Just like yesterday.” This often pulls me into a Funk, which completely annihilates any scrap of drive and productivity I have left.

But today was thankfully an exception. I had kept my expectations low: I wanted to repair some of my heavy fighting sticks, re-taping them and changing out the thrusting tips. I had a bit of an issue last week at practice, where my primary sword had lost enough tape that I didn’t feel comfortable thrusting with it. Then, my backup sword’s finger trigger broke. On top of that, my glaive’s thrusting tip had been looking a little deflated for quite a while; people were still taking shots from it, but I was starting to get nervous.

So I brought my gear inside to thaw (I think it got above 0 today) and ran some errands. Thoroughly stocked and warmed, I sat myself downstairs, pulled up something on Netflix, and got to work.

I was largely successful. Swords got re-taped, dead foam got excised and replaced, and I even managed to (finally) build my lighter-weight 9-foot fiberglass spear.

Needless to say, I’m in a slightly self-congratulatory mood. And no doubt the fact that I needed something to use at practice tonight served as a motivator. But I think it’s important to take time to acknowledge one’s accomplishments, no matter how banal they may seem. After all, if we only focus on the big, “legitimate” things, it can be hard to stay motivated. Take your victories where you can get them, I say. It makes it easier to pretend to be an adult.

I Did Absolutely Nothing Today…

…and it felt awesome.

After what seemed to be a particularly draining few days over the weekend, I finally had a day off today. Now normally when I have a day off, I generally try to be productive and do some of the things I don’t have the time or the energy to do after work. That’s not to say that any of that stuff actually happens, just that I mean to do it. What usually ends up happening is I “waste” the day playing video games and surfing the Web, and then feel guilty about all the stuff I yet again didn’t get around to doing.

Today, I tried something different. I deliberately set out to do “nothing;” I also have tomorrow off, so I gave myself today to sleep in, read, game, and surf with the expectation that I would be “productive” tomorrow. So far, it seems to be working. I’ve had a nice relaxing day; I even got to watch a movie! I’ve been procrastinating, true, but by “allowing” myself to do so, I short-circuited the guilt cycle I usually end up in. I found I was more carefree, and generally in a better mood. Than my usual days off.

That’s not to say this method is without its risks. For instance, if I do the same tomorrow, I will definitely feel guilty about it, since I was “supposed” to accomplish something. Likewise, I find that too many days in a row of “nothing” have an undesirable numbing effect on my mind, catalyzing a kind of Funk of boredom rather than depression (although the two may not be so dissimilar).

But I consider today to largely be a success in lowering my expectations of myself and my productivity to healthier levels. For so many years of my life, I’ve had to be very careful with how I parcel out my time, mostly due to school commitments. “Free time” was not really free; it was subtracted from the amount of time I had to do homework and move my education forward. But now that I’m out of school, that motivating framework is gone. I’m not sure if I’m completely comfortable with its absence yet (guilt is a hard beast to slay), but I’m getting there.

And in retrospect, I didn’t accomplish “nothing” today. That all depends on how you define “nothing.” After all, I watched a movie I’ve been meaning to see. I read some interesting articles online. I continued playing a nostalgic video game. Did I build anything or write the Next Great American Novel? Of course not. But to call what I did do today “nothing” strikes me as somewhat judgmental. And I’m trying to recalibrate my scale in that respect. After all, if I’m happier at the end of the day than I was the day before, shouldn’t that be worth something? The benefit doesn’t always need to be tangible. And while I don’t always grok that, I’m trying to get better about doing so. I think it’ll be better for my mental health in the long run.

The Past Few Days

Not much to say today. I’m more tired than usual, and am not feeling that eloquent. But I at least had fun getting tired, so that’s something.

Friday I went over to a friend’s house to play Artemis, a multiplayer game that lets you crew a starship in the vein of Star Trek (or more likely Galaxy Quest, if you have friends like mine). There’s multiple positions, like Helm, Engineering, Science, Communications, Weapons, and of course, Captain. My first game I eased into it by playing Comms, which tasks you with communicating with other ships, both friendly and hostile. The second game, this time with a different group, I got to try Science, which is in charge of scanning objects and ships, reporting weaknesses to the captain and Weapons.

Gameplay mostly consisted of flying around a randomly-generated quadrant and battling with NPC ships, as well as the occasional mission for space stations and friendly freighters. The real fun began when the two player ships interacted. An errant beam weapon, a mis-targeted missile, made for some… interesting conversations. And by conversations, I mean weapon exchanges. It was also interesting seeing how the personalities of the two crews differed. One was definitely more Kirk (brash, boisterous) while the other one seemed more Picard (professional, disciplined).

Disclaimer: I have watched very little Star Trek. I was a Star Wars kid.

Saturday, I got together with my family an early celebration of my dad’s birthday. It was nice to hang out with them, and I got to try out my newest unholy creation in the war against the Dreaded Pancreas: double-layer Rice Krispie Treats with (wait for it) frosting both on top, and in the middle. They were a success; next time, I might put all the frosting in the center. Or maybe two different types of frosting: one on top, one in the middle.

Sunday was more defined by what I didn’t do: for the first time in a while, I had absolutely nothing to do with the Big Sports-Ball Series Magnificent Dish (or something). In years past, I’ve gotten together with my family, since the game often falls on or near my dad’s birthday, and both he and my brother are big (American) football fans. In fact, sometimes I worry my brother is going to pop a blood vessel or something while watching an important game. But this year, my dad gave me an out: he told me my girlfriend and I didn’t have to come watch the game; we could get together some other time. I of course jumped on the opportunity, but I was impressed with how subtly my dad had managed to keep his Super Bowl experience free of Debbie Downers. Well, played, good sir.

So I’ve had a busy few days. And of course, I stayed up much later than I should have most of these nights. In addition to having to work early. So I’m tired. Luckily I have the next couple days off. I hope to recuperate, and maybe even get some work done on some projects I’ve been putting off.

*falls asleep*

Nostalgia Ho!

I was doing some maintenance on my laptop today when I decided I needed something to fill the time. But what to do? I could read, but I had been doing that all morning. I could play a video game, but the one I’m playing right now is on my laptop, and I didn’t really feel like starting a new one. I could put something on Netflix, but I didn’t want to get too engrossed into anything. So I sat there for a few minutes, on the floor in the basement (that’s where the easiest network cable was), waiting for my computer to finish adjusting partitions and installing Linux Mint. Then it hit me.

For some random reason, I had been thinking about Super Mario 64 earlier this week. As I sat in front of my computer, my eyes traveled over my game collection. “Hey,” I thought, “I still have my Nintendo 64. I could totally play something on there while I wait! I’ve already played the game, so it’s not like I’m going to get too attached or engrossed.”

So I reached over, pulled out the requisite cables, and inserted the Super Mario 64 cartridge (no blowing required!). Nostalgia ho!

The first thing that struck me was how odd using a wired controller felt. Most of my console gaming recently has been done on my Xbox 360, for which I have wireless controllers. But with the N64, I had to pay attention to whether or not things would reach to the chair. Plus, the cable exerts an ever-so-slight pull to the back of the controller. The funny thing is, I remember missing that tug of the cable when I first switched to wireless controllers, but now going back seems weird.

And that wasn’t the only thing that felt odd. Super Mario 64, while still a 3D game, is a very early 3D platformer. A lot of the things are the same, but much like the differences between Shakespearean English and modern English, some things are just off. And no, I don’t think that’s solely because of the weird three-lobed N64 controller.

I found myself missing the second analog stick that has become so standard on modern games. It felt almost like my right thumb had nothing to do. Sure, it had to operate the face buttons, but when it came time to change the camera angle it got confused. The relatively low usage of the shoulder buttons was also a little odd, but since I don’t play many shooters on consoles, it’s not as bad as it could have been.

But it wasn’t all weirdness and differences. I was quite surprised how much I remembered of the game, and it’s one I never even really played that much! Ocarina of Time, for instance, is a game I’ve basically memorized. But I found myself slipping just as easily into old, comfortable habits with Super Mario 64. I knew exactly where to go in the first level. I even found myself trying to get to hidden places that I hadn’t unlocked yet. It was definitely fun.

In the end, I didn’t play for very long. My computer finished doing its thing, and I moved back upstairs to surf the Internet and play some System Shock 2. But the N64 is still hooked up downstairs, and I imagine I will be returning to it soon.

Even if my nice HTDV isn’t kind to the poor thing.

Speling Errurz Anoi Mee

As you may be able to divine from the title of my post, spelling errors are one of my pet peeves. In fact, it was almost physically painful for me to write that headline. *shudders*

In a way, the written word is less forgiving than spoken interaction. The presence of homophones (words that sound the same but are completely different) allows for a certain level of imprecision. After all, the “three 2’s” (two, too, to) all sound exactly alike. But writing is less ambiguous, almost by necessity. When speaking face-to-face with someone, we can pick up subtle cues from body language and intonation in addition to phrasing. But when writing, all those cues get lost. We are left with a threadbare facsimile of the finely detailed tapestry that is human communication.

So accuracy and precision become more important with the written word almost immediately. In fact, written language is itself structured to follow certain rules of grammar and spelling. Writing things down also gives them more permanence, as a written record has the potential to outlast any individual involved in its creation.

Maybe that’s why I despise spelling errors so much: I strive to be able to communicate in a succinct and accurate manner. It’s probably the scientist in me that dislikes this sort of ambiguity so much. I just wish other people would take the time (or do the research) to keep their communications as clear as I try to. That’s not to say that I don’t make mistakes; I’m not perfect. But I do take a certain pride in being able to communicate effectively that seems rarer than I’d like these days.

Now get your lolcats off my lawn you kids! Don’t make me sic McKean’s Law on you! *shakes dictionary*

Dealing With Interviews

Job interviews are funny things. I haven’t had many of them, and fewer still have panned out. But I did have one recently, and it got me thinking about the recurring patterns I go through each time the opportunity comes up. It’s no surprise that I get stressed. In fact, if I didn’t stress out at least a little bit, I’d probably be worried. But what’s interesting is what I stress out about.

The first big thing I stress out about is “being prepared.” This generally takes the form of a last-minute cramming session, where I try to learn as much about the company and the job as possible, desperately looking up buzzwords in an attempt to brush up on my relevant skills. But mostly this boils down to me trying to guess at things I have no realistic chance of finding out. Are they going to ask me about X? Or will they want to know about Y? The possibility exists that they could ask me to demonstrate Z, but will it be z, Z, or even zed? This tends to edge me into a downward spiral of neurosis and speculation.

Another big issue I stress about is myself. Or, at least how I present myself. Of all the silly things to worry about, this is probably one of the biggest. After all, I can’t exactly just change who I am to fit some arbitrary presentation that I think would be appreciated by a recruiter. But being who I am, I can’t help but worry. Will I appear confident enough? Will I come across as too apologetic? Will my desire to be precise and truthful with my statements be construed as vagueness and incompetence?

I make no claims at any rationality regarding either of these worries. That being said, I have figured out some ways to deal with them, or at least mitigate the loss of sanity.

For the first set of worries, I generally handle getting prepared like I do for any big presentation: I don’t prepare! Okay, that’s not 100% true. My preparations tend to be fairly vague, maybe a series of bullet points I’d like to talk about or questions I’d like to ask. Once the big day comes, I am generally banking on the fact that the amount of brainpower it will take to say on top of things will keep me busy enough that I won’t be able to panic. Like my writing habits, I tend to work best on the fly. Or at least, I think I do.

The second issue is a bit thornier, and I haven’t really sure how to deal with it. But I did have something of an epiphany around the time of my most recent interview. I realized that, in all honesty, I would likely be better served by just being myself, as any artificial masks I attempted to wear would most likely come back to haunt me later. After all, I am myself, and that’s not likely to change any time soon. So why worry about constants? That’s like refusing to leave your house because you’re worried gravity will pull you down and you’ll fall and hurt yourself. Or something.

I guess you could make the argument that I’m fixing these problems by ignoring them, but I don’t think about it like that. To me, I’ve found the most efficient way to deal with the issues at hand, given my finite resources of time and energy.

We’ll see how that works out for me.

Hope

I’ll be honest: I feel a tiny bit better after writing that last post. I’ve probably gotten overly concerned on what Other People Think™. Looking at site stats is only going to end in heartache. I should probably deactivate the plugin, but it does occasionally provide me with interesting info. And after all, if this blog helps me even if no one reads it, then isn’t that still a net win?

Anyway, that’s not quite what I wanted to talk about today. I’d instead like to talk about what I think one of my triggers for this current Funk may have been. No, not lack of sleep. Not even growing discontent with my retail grunt employment. Both of those may be contributing factors, but I feel the big one is, paradoxically, hope.

“But isn’t hope a good thing?” I hear the imagined voice of Constant Reader ask in my head. “Doesn’t it drive you to great things? Doesn’t it get you through hard times?” Yes and yes, it can do both. But one must not forget that hope is a feeling, and if one is having issues with those (like say, hypothetically, depression has left you feeling nothing at all like some sort of superpower), it can be quite a shock to your system.

You know how when you sit in one position for too long you get all sore when you stand up? Well, the same thing seems to happen to my mind with emotions. I’ve gotten used to just “getting by,” keeping my head down and trudging through my job as a retail grunt. It may not be getting me anywhere, but at least I’m paying the bills. Hope is like when Doc Brown shows up with his flying DeLorean at the end of Back to the Future and whisks Marty McFly away into a future that, while amazing, is also more than a little overwhelming.

You have seen Back to the Future, right? Otherwise that analogy won’t make much sense. Anyway, I’m just going to assume you have so we can move on.

Where was I? Ah yes, hope. Lately, I’ve been given more cause to hope than usual. I’ve had a few friends approach me about job opportunities, and it’s reminded me that my time in retail hell doesn’t need to be endless. But I’d kinda gotten used to the drudgery, and the aforementioned reminder has been a little shocking to my system. It’s also thrown into sharp relief how unfulfilling my job is at the moment.

And I’m not sure what to do with that.

As unintuitive as it sounds, hope and other strong emotions can be a curse. True, they can drive you forward, striving for change and accomplishment, but not without growing pains. And while it sounds really bad, I feel like I don’t have much experience dealing with things like hope. When I’m in the dark clutches of a Funk, it seems like there are far too many big decisions (grad school, dual majors in college, working retail, etc.) that haven’t panned out. This is definitely not the life I expected for myself as a 17-year-old high school graduate and overachiever. The real world has not been kind to my dreams.

That’s not to say my life completely sucks, of course. I’m lucky enough to have a loving girlfriend, time to indulge my hobbies and passions, an awesome circle of friends and family, and a job that pays most of the bills. But it’s been hard to hold on to hope against the crushing weight of reality.

I’m over-qualifying my arguments. That’s probably a sign it’s time to stop.

Morose Navel-gazing

I’ll be honest with you: I haven’t been very motivated to write lately. Since the new year, mostly. And I’m not sure why. Have I ran out of things to say? Am I in a Funk and just not realizing it? Is anyone even reading these words? If not, is it even worth it to continue?

These are some of the questions that have been drifting through my mind.

I’m starting to wonder if I might be in a sort of Funk. If that’s the case, though, it’s different and more insidious than some of my others. I’m not feeling depressed, although that may be part of the problem. For you see, I’m not feeling much of anything at all.

My outlook right now could be described as “neutral;” not bad, but not especially good, either. Things are just kind of going along, without much effect one way or another. This state of mind can seem good, since you don’t have the black core of despair dragging you into oblivion. But at the same time, there’s nothing to replace that, either. You approach things with a resounding “meh.”

While it is remarkably easy to maintain the status quo in this state, it’s really hard to get ahead or accomplish anything. When I get home from work (having been up since before the sun), I don’t want to do anything except crash in front of my computer or curl up with my book. When I finally get around to writing, it’s generally while my girlfriend is on her way home from her job, as that provides me a regular reminder that “hey, there’s going to be another person around here in a bit. If you have something to do on your own, you should probably do it.”

I’ve thought about putting this blog on hiatus, but I don’t think that’s the right answer. Mostly, I’m afraid that if I stop writing, even if it’s mindless drivel, I’ll never get started again. Then this blog would be just one more skeletal reminder of failed ambition.

And the writing I do here, even if few people read it, isn’t completely useless. It helps me put my thoughts in order, in a way that I too often forget between sessions. Case in point: I didn’t realize I might be in a Funk until I started organizing my thoughts for this entry.

But at the same time, I worry. Couldn’t the same results be achieved by keeping a private journal? By putting my stuff out there, I make it available for other people to read. And because of that, I feel some pressure (likely internalized) to keep my writing “interesting” or “relevant” or “productive.” After all, there are so many ways to spend one’s time on the Internet; if someone is going to spend time reading my writing, I might as well make it interesting.

It doesn’t help that I have a plugin for my blog that tells me how many visitors I get. And for better or worse, those readership numbers have been going down. Because there’s no other context, it’s hard to keep my brain from fabricating worst-case scenarios where I’m screaming in the darkness because anyone who knows about this blog as written me off as some boring, emo whiner.

I’ve drifted wildly off-course from where I started with this entry: I started out wanting to investigate my emotional (or lack thereof) state, and ended up who knows where. But the more I think about it, the more I feel like my hunch about being in a Funk was right.

I think I’ll end this post before I wander even further into morose navel-gazing. Thanks for listening.

Gaming Night

For the past few years, my friends and I have been getting together on Friday nights to hang out. What we’ve done those nights has changed over time, but it seems to always be referred to as “gaming.”

When I started hanging out on Fridays, it actually was a gaming group. We played a variety of tabletop RPGs, like Dungeons & Dragons, Rifts, and Deadlands. I even ran a game or two myself (I wasn’t great at it). We usually had two games running at a time, on alternate weeks, so that everyone could play at least a little bit (and no one got stuck running things all the time).

But over time, things inevitably changed. I started grad school, so ended the game I was running due to time concerns. Other games ended, but we continued hanging out. Eventually, there wasn’t any gaming going on at “gaming nights” at all. Funny YouTube videos, in what had started out as a way to pass the time until everyone showed up and/or dinner was ready, eventually took over the entire evening. This was occasionally punctuated with “bad movies from Netflix,” which were suitably mocked.

The end result of this, however, was less group cohesion: it wasn’t uncommon for some members to bury their nose in a book or laptop, and while a lot of the things we watched were amusing, nights tended to drag.

But lately, we’ve actually started gaming at “gaming night” again! While a part of me still misses the RPG days of old, our group (with ever-shifting membership, of course) has re-discovered the joys of board and card games. Cards Against Humanity has made an appearance to remind us just how horrible and diseased in the head we all are. Games like Munchkin scratch some of the fantasy RPG itch, while Fluxx always provides a unique experience. We’ve even started getting into some of the complicated, “roleplaying-lite” board games like Eldritch Horror. These games do a good job of feeling long and involved, but are still relatively self-contained.

So while “gaming” has changed over time, it’s always been a fun way to pass the time with friends. I am glad that we’ve started actually gaming again, though. It was getting a bit awkward calling “strange YouTube and bad Netflix night” “gaming,” but it did roll off the tongue better.

P.S.: You should totally check out Tabletop.