Day Twelve
I talk a lot about the emotional flow of watching your business close, but there are physical effects too. Even today, where business was a brisk $10k or so (I honestly didn’t check before I left, so who knows. We were busier than yesterday but not slammed all day.) I come home and could pretty much (and sometimes do) just drop.
Last Wednesday I plopped down on my bed to take off my shoes and fell asleep. Between the stress of not knowing if I’ll walk in and hear “Friday is our last day”, the undercurrent of tension and loyalty issues and the demanding physicality of recovering the store I plain old hurt. Of course what should I expect, seeing as I condensed the cooking section today, which means I moved probably 400-500 pounds of books today.
More than being on your feet and ringing constantly, or running around the store dodging customers and reshelving books, and even more than the fact that it’s still cold and flu season, the stress wears on you, makes aches you can ignore otherwise sharper and brings on a constant headache, even when you’re at home, sitting around (um, like we have time for that with families and second careers to fit into the off hours). And its been proven that stress can actually cause pain as well (not that I’m saying that’s happening to me, just that other jobs and loyalty issues aren’t the only reasons one might not be able to take the turmoil of closing out a store).
It makes me feel old, useless, coming home with aching feet and a headache and a back ache every day. Spending my days off just recovering. It’s not like I’m not “adjusted” to an increased activity level. Two weeks ago I could work a shift, come home and work on cleaning the house, make dinner, sit down for family time and then get some writing done. So why can’t I now?
I sympathize with you. The same kind of stress is hitting us too. Then today we received 10 pallets of mostly Gaylords and it was as if the collective spirit of our store just broke. We managed to suck it up, for now at least. But the disbelief, anger and just weariness overwhelmed everybody.
I hope you can find another, stable job soon.
Thanks, and I hope you find a better job as well. It just sucks so bad to see the store you’ve put so much work into become a dumping ground for customers and corporate. The general consensus here is that none of us would ever work for Borders again after this.
I’m sitting here at the computer aching from a long day. Thanks for summing this up so well.
I’m sorry you’re hurting too, but I’m so glad to know I’m not just going crazy. Another co-worker (a transplant from the cafe) also told me today that she doesn’t know why she hurts so bad, physically when she’s just standing around all day ringing on the reg.