Suckers

The word sucker keeps popping into my mind lately. Its a label that kids put on people to imply that person has fallen for something that is less than something else they could have had. And the worst part of being a sucker is that its usually said behind your back…you don’t even realize you could have more. One of my worst fears is to find out at the end of my life that I spent most of it being a sucker…taken in by my culture, my surroundings…completely oblivious to true reality.
I open at Starbucks most days, which requires me to leave my house at 4:45 in the morning. I’m usually grabbing my green apron and my keys as I race out the door, hopefully remembering a banana or granola bar because my first ten-minute break won’t be for a few hours. That’s usually when I stop to realize that I did in fact wake up that morning and make decisions to get where I am at the moment.
The other day I was racing to work…not obeying the speed limit because after all I was the lone car on the desolate street. I come across a red light at which I obediently screech to a stop. My subconscious is annoyed, realizing the ridiculousness of stopping at an empty intersection, but there is a distinction in my mind between breaking traffic laws by speeding and breaking traffic laws by intentionally running a light. About that moment two tow trucks approach from the opposite direction. One makes a command decision to disregard the red light altogether. It speeds through the intersection as the other one slowly comes to a halt. There is a moment where the stopped tow truck and I seem to have a brief meeting of souls. Like when you accidentally make eye contact with someone from across the room and you both grin before looking away. “Hi, I see that you exist and I choose not to ignore it like most people. I’m of the friendly type and I see you are too.” In this case we are both the law-abiding type. We stare at each other for a brief moment. Then, in the same moment we are both hit with it…”We’re the suckers!” We simultaneously run the last few seconds of red light.

I decided to quit my job at the bank. I was only a measly credit analyst. Though you have to have a finance degree for that position, it is usually held by newly graduated students and they pay you as such. I was above it…I had graduated three years before I got the job. I had real world experience…three whole years of it. Most of my real world experience told me I would never like working at a bank. I took the job with my eyes wide open to this fact. Almost taking it as proof to myself, or my parents, or to society as a whole that it would never work out…me and corporate america. “See, I tried it! Now leave me alone…societal pressures.”
I worked there for a year and a half…no… a year and nine months. I felt trapped…by the windowless grey walls and the grey fabric of my cubicle. I felt taunted by the eagle in the picture framed above my desk that read “soar to new heights.” Next to my cubicle there were floor to ceiling file racks that we locked every night and unlocked every morning. They rolled on wheels through a groove in the floor and had a large spinning handle to separate them. Sometimes I felt like I was standing in between the walls of files and someone was slowly spinning the handle. It was probably Barbara, the eighty-year-old woman who decided my first day that she didn’t like me. As the walls came closing in around me I kept frantically looking for some way to escape, then wondering if I could find something to jam in the wheel to slow it down, then wondering if it was even worth it and I should just let it envelop me.
I quit four months ago and I am currently a Barista. I make lattes and sweep floors and exchange people’s money for sustenance. I am always moving, its fast paced and I love it. I love making the drinks and talking to the people. There is so much more life there than in my old cubicle. There are a few things, though, at Starbucks that make me feel like an underling working in the food service industry. My all black all leather shoes, the ten minute timer that we have to take on our breaks because we are not responsible enough to time them exactly and taking out the trash. The dumpster is around the side of the building and we have to roll the big black trash can behind us as we carry as much as we can in the other hand. It usually takes at least two trips to get all the stacked up bags out on a trash run. It is a humbling experience for me.
The other day there was a group of young business people standing on the sidewalk as I lugged the garbage along behind me heading for the dumpster. I had to ask them to move out of the way in order to pass. I glanced up and saw pity in the eyes of the good looking young man that just ordered a grande vanilla latte from me ten minutes before. For a brief moment I began to feel pitiful. But a few minutes later, as I walked back past them empty handed watching them try to impress each other and say just the right things to the right people, I said in a barely audible voice that sounded like Nelson from the Simpsons…”Suckers!”