My Most Common Nightmare: Working Retail

Yes, you read that right -- my most common nightmare is working in retail on Christmas Eve.  I wish I could write that my most common nightmare was a little something more creative or twisted, but I'd be lying.  At least once a week since I was a teenager, I've dreamt about being stuck in a retail job in late December or on Christmas Eve itself.

I worked retail for over ten years or at least one-quarter of my life (ain't THAT a depressing thought) and getting rid of those years' worth of memories is getting to be a nearly impossible task.  Stores I've worked for include Kmart, Macy's and CVS.  Each store had it's own levels of horror, but I can honestly say that working Kmart from November 1 to January 5 is the deepest layer of Hell you will ever possibly know.

My retail nightmares include:

• quitting and walking out of the store triumphantly, only to blink and find myself back in the walls 
• having to stock shelves while I'm caught in a bear trap (and when I ask my supervisor if he could take the bear trap off of my leg, he berates me for not being a team player)
• being forced to work at a Kmart without pay for over a year
• trying to fly out of a store, only to get trapped by the walls and am physically unable to get out of the sliding glass doors.

I've also had retail nightmares where I've been on the other side of the cash register and discover that it's Christmas Eve, the store is closing and I haven't finished my Christmas shopping yet.  I doubt that Stephen King will be writing a best-seller based on that premise, but it always gets my blood a-chillin'.

Last night I was dreamt that I was Superman -- and I still couldn't get my Christmas shopping done on time, even after breaking into closed stores and a museum.  My fingers were so large and strong that I had trouble carrying my shopping, which tended to slip from my hands and fall into the arms of the delighted streetwalkers below.

Every year I keep trying to convince my family to skip Christmas and so far it has not worked.  Even if it did, I'd probably still have nightmares about working retail in December.