Our First Paycheck

I. The Garden Blooms

Red Bear clutches my first paycheck >

She says she was worried that I wasn't earning any money, but THIS IS NOT TRUE:
the Little Animals have no concept of money. 

But they do sometimes  pick up things from you.

Turns out I was a little worried and am not only loving my job per se, but loving getting a paycheck--even for the princely sum of $172.81 for my first days.

I've signed up for automatic deposit now, but I might change it back because it's so nice, psychologically, to get a piece of paper money every two weeks. The publisher had paid me for the fandom ms. in 3 installments over 9 months, so I always felt I was writing for free yet under stricture---NOT a happy arrangement, and while I'm now glad I wrote it (something I was doubting, during the editing process), I am relieved I won't write for them, ever again. 

I'm feeling like writing for myself, for the first time in a long time.
The bit I wrote last week, Salvage, was interesting---words are such sensitive instruments, aren't they?---because several people who read it implied to me that the customers who'd turned the store over were bad, which I hadn't meant to imply; 
I was trying to get at the ecosystem of thrift, but--duh--I clearly had invited judgment:
I'd called them a "herd" who "trampled" through the store.

So I went back and changed it:
"[The shoppers] had turned the store over, like creatures who aerate garden soil, leaving in their wake inside-out jeans on top of racks…"

II. Resentment Management

You know I struggle with resentment, but not toward everyone, all the time--mostly toward people in power who use it unwisely (so, OK, that can be a lot of people, a lot of times, if I'm paying attention--to keep it down, I've stopped reading the NYT daily).

[Though I do want to point you to the excellent essay by wrestling fan Andrea G., "On the Folly of Trump's Wrestling GIF".]
 
The shoppers don't usually trigger resentment--I usually feel fellow feeling, they are like me.

I had gotten way out of whack with resentment at SP thrift store, so much so I'd flown out of there in a rage.
I look back and see the management & board were enragingly dysfunctional---the store closed one year later, partly due to that (they had to move but couldn't get it together to do so)--but I had also handled myself badly.
(Sometimes walking away is the best policy,  so I don't regret that, but I still regret the angry way I did it.)

Anyway, I have a policy for myself at the new thrift job:
For my first three months, just Watch and Observe.
And reserve my judgment.
I am going to practice being a neutral observer, like an embedded reporter. This store is run by an international corporation, and while it's a nonprofit with a benevolent mission, I can see already it runs like a for-profit store: workers are treated as cogs, for instance; the CEO, someone told me, makes a 7-figure salary. I'm not even looking this up at this point because I don't want to focus on that--and also, unlike with a local board whose members you know, there's nothing much I can do about it--this sense of "don't even bother" also helps keep resentment down.

I'm focusing on what I personally care about: 
the people in front of me, the stuff, and how the two connect––
for instance, two regular shoppers buy things to send back to their home countries---one buys shoes, specifically, to send to Cameroon; 
another buys all sorts of things to send to Liberia. 
They both save up stuff until they have enough to fill a shipping container---and then they pay $5-6,000 to ship it. 

There are lots of Liberians here in town--which is why I chose Liberia as the country I would visit (don't hold me to that though). 

"How's Liberia doing?" I asked this shopper, and she told me they're having presidential elections in November, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf having served her limit of twelve years.
"Are there any good candidates?" I asked.
"We'll have to see," she said, ". . . like here," and we laughed.

I wasn't going to write so much this morning--my hands are sore from carrying too much at once, stocking the shelves. It's like resentment: to some extent, you can limit it by controlling how much you take on.

Carrying ten heavy beer steins, one finger wrapped around each handle, is not good self-management. The little finger on my left hand feels sprained. 
Luckily I have two days off, to rest it.
So--off I go to cash my paycheck!