Having observed bakers in a grocery store complaining at length about their jobs, and in plain view of shoppers, it did not seem a safe way to inspire employee-customer relations -- but there you are, the deed was done, and it set me to thinking about much in this world.
Surprisingly, my mind handed me a matter-of-fact complaint to hurl back to the bakers, just in case I might be asked: Nice you two guys have a job, so you have something to complain about here at your work, while the rest of us are shopping here for groceries, just trying to find our daily bread.
When the thought braided itself together and presented me that sour loaf, I was as surprised as one can be at it -- that thought was like catching a bolt of static leaping from the doorknob after scuffling across carpet in dry weather. I didn't know I was packing that kind of electrical current around in my head, but it generated during the overly theatrical display observed, back in baked goods, and, somehow, that bolt discharged while I was gripping the metal shopping cart handle, wheeling it around, wondering what to do with this terribly-unlike-me thought that had arrived, unwanted, unbidden, woeful and unwashed.
Now, I noticed I was in Penance Land -- or, Produce, if you like -- plotting fresh veggies to offset the doughnut therapy session still in wait, wondering how I'd not plowed into shoppers or pyramid displays of wines in bottles on my route from the bakery, still lost and adrift in my thoughts, more than a little startled at that bolt in my head, that cold one from out of the blue. See, as soon as it registered, I knew that thought was an error in assembly -- this was not from the contents of my head, it wasn't me, couldn't be, this thought from who-knows-where. It was a thought steeped and scented in worker-against-worker, and it was a revolting sensation, but, there you are, tart after-taste and all.
None of us knows when we will fall into the many open-pit-traps set out, purposefully constructed all around us by those who are in power and who aim to keep it that way, no matter what, no ifs-ands-or-buts. This thought was, I puzzled out, a knee-jerk reaction, a survival-level gut check, from being so long excluded from the sole honorable system of life support available on this planet. I will never stoop and steal from others in order to ensure my own survival, unlike so many vulture- and venture-capitalists all around us, infesting and infecting us all.
You see, if you have employment right now, of any kind, it is easy to forget how it goes. With a job comes a soothing memory-wash of how it is on this planet, the system into which each one of us is born without benefit of high-sign or vote: No employment means NO MONEY, simple as that. And, as you well know, money is still the approved scheme here of trading in order to satisfy our physical, daily needs and wants that predictably come along each day -- satisfying hunger and thirst, or the need for clothing, or shelter, or warmth, or spectacular and outlandish luxuries like health care. Or, as small in the scheme of things as a doughnut.
If you have forgotten in the mad, swirling, endless, clawing demands of your employment -- as I know so well from work done from age twelve on through -- there is a singular, harrowing, bone-freezing, skull-cracking moment of inescapably final pronouncement made on any soul unable to achieve acceptance into employment. It is a simple, straightforward message, and it is clear, and this is it:
"You are not needed here. Go away. Go die."
