Limping.

I work in a shopping mall these days, in retail. I punch a time clock and report to an assistant manager. I remember a certain dignity to retail employees in Manhattan that doesn't seem to exist here. I remember feeling that, in general, people working retail jobs probably led interesting other-lives and, if nothing else, were noteworthy and dignified by virtue of being New Yorkers.

Here, people are nice enough. They have friends and family and hobbies. For me, there's just no sense of being involved in something bigger. Local politics bore me to tears and I couldn't care less about daily news items. I don't think I've ever bothered to pick up a local paper in the year and a half that I've lived here; didn't even consider voting.

Anyway, back to the shopping mall. It's located near the hotel i worked at last year, out in South Portland. It's a one-story affair, trapped in the 80's, with the usual mall suspects: Sears, JC Penny, Macy's, Best Buy. Four or five giant jewelry stores (why?), a food court, a smattering of shitty wagons that sell iPod cases and sunglasses and stuff. Crazily bad piped-in soft-rock (think Lionel Ritchie, Elton John, Michael McDonald).

Oh, and if showing up and pulling open the doors to the shopping mall every morning wasn't bad enough, I'm greeted not only by the likes of Air Supply but to a creepy hodge-podge of elderly exercise enthusiasts: the mall welcomes senior citizens to walk laps around the mall from the early morning before the stores open to the late night.

So as I weave around the geriatrics, through the teal-bathed corridors, forced to listen to god-knows-what, the sickly smell of Cinnabon and BenGay in the air, I ask myself: What the Fuck? What the Fuck am I doing here? Before I got this job I think I went to the mall maybe once during the course of a year. I am 100% alienated.

On my lunch break, I'm forced out into the wilds of the mall to fend for myself for an hour. For the first few weeks, I ate at the food court. McDonalds, Panda Express, Taco Bell, whatever. I can think of few things more depressing than eating shitty fast food in a sea of wiggaz and mall rats, forced to contemplate the lyrics to "Solid as a Rock" or "On the Wings of Love."

If I'm feeling more anxious or have less money, I would go to the TCBY/Pretzel Time at the other end of the mall and just get a frozen yogurt or pretzel dog and sit in a public seating area, often next to mouth-breathing seniors taking a break from their workouts, completing WordFind puzzles and hacking phlegm.

Yesterday, by accident, I was two hours late to work. I forgot that a week ago I'd agreed to come in early to cover my team-leader's dentist appointment. He makes the schedule and he hadn't adjusted it so i forgot. I've been "written up" once already for being late and since then I'd been making a real effort to get to work on time. So yesterday I thought I was 10 minutes early but when I got in I found that I was in danger of receiving a "no-call" infraction which would put me on final notice for termination. It's so humiliating to be treated like a teenager. I mean, I think my boss at Little Cesar's Pizza was more lenient and I was 15 then.

So when lunchtime came around yesterday, I was so depressed that I had to leave the mall during my lunch break. I thought some fresh air would do me good, so I decided to traverse the mall parking lot and cross the main drag to buy some dog food at Petco. All the walkways were blocked by snow piles from the parking lot plows and I had to snake through in a funny way that led me by the Wendy's. I felt depressed and people were looking at me like a homeless person because nobody walks out by the mall.

I decided to drown my sorrows in a Number 2, large, with Dr. Pepper. I saw a manager interviewing a prospective employee and felt so sorry for the kid, before I realized that my job is about the same. By the time I finished the giant box of french fries I was full. I forced myself to eat the hamburger anyway and then, feeling bloated and disgusted with myself, finished the walk to Petco.

I walked back to the dog food section and then realized that I had spent the dog food money at Wendy's. I was $2 short. So I trudged back to the mall, through the teal corridors, past the limping seniors, the chair massage place, past the baby portrait studio and back to my store where I punched back in from lunch. It's a good thing my dog likes cat food.