//|\\ mark marino \\|//

Kill the Consumer

Before I reached what I consider the age of reason, I had this awful job in the mall. Between the times of “This store sucks, I don’t want to work today” and “Good we’re closing ‘cus this store sucks,” I had many hours of what I call “Numb Brain Time.” During Numb Brain Time I’d be doing something fairly meaningless and unenthusiastically. Standing in a doorway forcefully asked to greet every entering customer and realizing no amount of money can account for the percentage of asshole strangers who don’t say anything back. During Numb Brain time you can’t really think about anything meaningful, because you have to stay half alert. You can’t really have fun because your freedom is gone, and even though you’re being paid to act like it you just don’t feel anything, numbness. To make this time pass, I’d often stare from my 2nd floor perch down into the walkway and watch as Mall goers came flocking below us. It was a great place to see people when you knew they weren’t looking back at you. Nobody looks up in a mall. There’s nothing for sale up there.

Of all the people in the mall at any given time I would rank myself dead last in importance, tied with everyone else in the Mall that day. The mall isn’t a loser place to be for traditional reasons. But I had worked there long enough to realize that the only reason people shop is put some shot gun holes in the blank wall they call a life. If I had to define the word shopping I would probably say something like this: Shopping- The pursuit of valuable physical items to substitute for the absence of critical Human emotions and love. I wrote that on my hand on the bus ride home one day because I didn’t want to forget it. An older lady next to me read it and started crying. I took me 15 minutes to scrub it off my arm when I got home.

After working there for a while, this feeling stayed with me for a long time. On my 15 minute lunch breaks at work I had decided to get the fastest and cheapest food I could as to maximize my break minutes to both eat and have 3 or 4 minutes for actual physical relaxation. There were so many faces at the mall that I knew so well. I would pass them everyday and think how much his job must really suck and “this guy’s a loser.” I laugh because I know he’s thinking the same thing about me. These faces I would see everyday but never say hello and mean it, whatever it is that hello is supposed to mean anyway.

While I was on line for my food, I looked behind the counter and far back into the kitchen. One of the workers was wearing all black underneath his tacky teal apron and had long slick black hair. A weak mustache had sprouted above his upper lip. Around his neck I noticed a shiny metal pentagram necklace decorated with 666 symbols and old English engraving. I presumed it had meant he was into some level of Satanism. I don’t mean fully into it, but enough to spend six of his hard earned dollars on the necklace that said he was into Satanism. Either way his overall appearance made me a skeptic of his loyalty to the Devil. If working the grill at Wendy’s until the end of time was the desire of his dark overlord, it would explain the look of regret on his face and why he kept it well hid under a shadow of black hair and a matching bright teal uniform visor. It was the look that said he packed a little bit of anger into every evil burger he made. It felt good to know I wasn’t the only pissed off about things.

I always sit near the window, it was far to the outside of the food court and I could oversee the parking lot where people were coming in. It was just around dawn and last perfect light of a day I didn’t see was fading brilliantly in deep orange over the horizon. Seagulls we’re pecking and honking at each other over a lost French fry. Humans were doing the same thing over parking spaces.

I remember wishing someone would put a warning label somewhere telling people that mall is a dangerously easy place to spend money impulsively. The entire environment is an advertisement for feeling alive. It’s a facility geared completely toward getting people to wish away their money down a bottomless well of corporate logos and low fat yogurt. It was a realization to me that there is a point where advertisement is no longer innocent but rather a fixture in the psyche of every person whether they pretend to like it there or not. The prospect of owning something becomes a subliminal background to people’s everyday lives. For anyone who’s spent the time I have just watching people they would know that the undead exist all around us. I thought there should be a warning somewhere that said how hypnotized people can become with the visual impulsive tease of material bliss. At least on the electric entrance doors it reads: ”Caution! Automatic!” It’s further proof that the warnings all around us, but the meaning can get lost in interpretation.

The sound of a soft tranquil chorus from an old pop song escorts people though their otherwise hectic days, or hectic daze. I watch as people walk by the stores, I could almost promise that I knew what they were thinking. Angry frustrated men waiting for their wives to make a decision. Crying children shrieking for toys and bored with the confinement of their strollers. Surely this doesn’t describe everyone, but it accounts for enough people I saw at my mall job to learn to hate the existence of malls.

That sickening feeling I had was only getting stronger with the regular periodic crash of our register draws. It started to take shape in the form of little white bubbles that were appearing over the people around me like in comic strips. Inside the bubbles were their thoughts and their intentions. I watched as girls would walk by the windows of stores with perfect plastic women dressed elegantly. Their eyes would lock on the thought of being just like the mannequins they admired through the glass. Women would gaze into the displays and sincerely imagine what it would feel like to be one of those sexy mannequins. I’ve seen a few men do the same thing and generally I find a fitting correlation. It seems like the people who spend the most time admiring a plastic person tend to appear the most carrying on equally plastic lives.

If I had to describe what hell would be like for a modern soul like mine, it wouldn’t come without great details. It would be a seven floor mall getting shallower and less discreet with the commercial descent down each level. Sale signs would pose what was really being sold as a slap in the face to those who spend their lives culturally bankrupt. “Salvation!! %50 OFF!!,” or “Sex Appeal!! Buy one sex and get the other Free!!” “This week only, Culture and Class, Both marked down!!”

There was this crush I had on the one of the pretzel girls on the first floor. In reality I had never said anything too meaningful to her other than “I’ll have the pretzel twist with cheese and a coke.” There was one time I overheard her talking about music, with a friend on the phone. She told them that she loved classical Italian as I took in a deep breath of appreciation. In my dreams, we already had plans of moving in together. I didn’t know her last name and the only reason I knew her first was because of the pretzel shaped name tag she had dangling on her shirt. Cecilia was soft and seemed easy to mold. I ordered food from her enough times to sample an addictive taste of her warm smile. I felt strange and nervous around her. I lacked an excuse to say anything worth hearing. I’d just take my pretzel and dream about the day I bite through her salty exterior and get a taste of her sweet doughy core. I know something is amiss in a world where you can see the same beautiful girl so many times and not feel comfortable enough around her to say anything not related to purchase of a pretzel. I’d buy one everyday if she wanted me to. If I thought it would make a difference.

After rushing back to my post one painfully ordinary afternoon at the job, I was greeted with a hello and a handshake from someone I had never seen before.

“Hi, my name is Corey Parker and I’m your district manager. I wanted to point out to you that I walked in the store the other day and saw you standing here very unalertly. You weren’t wearing your nametag and when I walked by you didn’t even greet me. I know this job isn’t very difficult so I think you should be able to handle saying hi to people.”

If I went to the candle store and asked for a candle that smelled like this man’s breath, they’d hand me one called “onion bagel havoc.”

He was a certifiable loser to me. He was someone who spent his hours getting paid to go to several malls and make sure each store was just as controlled and greedy as the others. He waited fatly, for my reply. So I replied heavily.

“Unalertly, isn’t a word Corey, if your so concerned about being professional you should suck the poppy seeds out of your teeth and go re-learn 3rd grade English. An idiot could do my job, an idiot with experience could do yours.

I could measure the tension in his heart by the new forming wrinkles I’d just caused on his large forehead. He felt stupid, and he looked even dumber because he wouldn’t refute me. He wanted to fire me, I could almost read it on his paper white lips as he stood their spot stained with a nervous sweat and gasping for a breath of air without insult. His lips quivered but they did not speak. I watched as he waddled away from me, his manager and he were in cahoots against me. I could feel myself being blacklisted with every echoing whisper that found me from where they gossiped.

I loosened my tie, and casually drifted away from the store. I knew lightheartedly that it would be the last time I was in that store as a paid employee.

“See ya later Corey.” I remarked with bright annoying smile and a fake tone. I hoped in my last existing image of him, I could help him see his own irritating reflection in the pupils of my eyes.

The next thing I remember, was staring at myself in the mirror. My hands were vice gripped to the sink knobs of the mall bathroom. It was the first time I did something I recommend everyone in the world to do, and that is to take a long uninterrupted look at oneself in the mirror. I used to think I was so important, but luckily that feeling went away after being in the mall for so long. I gaped in the mirror with curious eyes as a light sweat on my face glistened in the fading fluorescent gleam of the Men’s Restroom. In my reflection I could see the retreat of a once impressive hairline. It was the first sign that youth had faded from me just slightly, and to show for my 19 years alive on this planet, all I had were some light paycheck stubs, receipts for the amount of my soul spent convincing people on the importance of ownership. On my loosely knotted tie I noticed some dried toothpaste on the tip. My shirt was wrinkled and half-tucked. I was in bad need of a shave. My eyes looked glassy and exhausted. In a perfect world, no one should have to feel this way, but in the real world, I know that some people do almost everyday. I wondered if there was anything in the whole mall I could buy to make myself feel better. I thought about everything in every store and only came up with one idea.

As I stood there, unimpressed with the world before me I closed my eyes and envisioned what people were like before the advent of the American purchasing power. I craved to see and feel what it was like to live in the fields and forests that we have now turned into a parking lots and highways on route to the mall. I listened closely for advice from the voices of my ancestry, but the only sound I heard was the voice of reason telling me that I’m just an empty white boy and my ancestry had already been bought sold, returned, cashed in, marked down, and put in the clearance section a long time ago. .

Imagine someone like me having to explain that not only did I spend my last paycheck at the mall, but I blew it all on the one thing that could help me forget my mall days. I took what I had left and pretended if only for a stiff minute, that all this money didn’t matter to me, and I blew it all on the pretzel girl. The look of amazement, on her face made me realize I would have spent twice the money for the same effect. When a Italian duo of singer and violinist surprised her at her one day with roses and the song of old classical love serenades she nearly passed out with flattery. As the two musicians gained attention by the passers by, they broke into an amazing chorus and made the mall seem like a slightly different place. As I relaxed on the cold metal mall bench in awe of the whole scene, I caught all the people who stopped to put down their shopping bags, grinning and ignoring the all the sale signs before them. It was as if for five minutes, everyone forgot what they were doing and how wonderfully alright it felt. Everyone was quiet to the sound of those two talented Italian gents and they roared on with an intense deep ancient sound. I noticed the red in each of the roses Cecilia clutched in her hand had matched her blushing complexion. Money well spent, I thought, and I smiled heartily.

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