My job is boring (?)

If you were to investigate the pockets of my work pants, you’d find nothing valuable in the traditional sense, just a plethora of meticulously folded slips of scrap paper graffitied with random observations. You’d probably think, “whoever wrote this is trying really hard not to be bored.”

You’d also probably think I make a habit of eavesdropping on people… and you’d be right.

It sounds nosy, but really, you can’t blame me. I work at a grocery store where the most exciting thing to ever happen is the Little Debbie snacks going on sale for 99 cents. My job is basically to stand there being as unobtrusive and non-unpleasant as possible, occasionally pointing people in the direction of the candy aisle, which no one can ever find (no doubt the result of some healthy-eating conspiracy). As such, people trust me to be bored and uninterested in their lives.

Their conversations float right into my space, like unmentionables on a laundry line, blowing in the wind. In the same way that you hold no guilt for double-taking when you pass your neighbor’s old-fashioned knickers catching the morning breeze, I cannot be blamed for collecting little bits of the lives around me. They stick like sand on wet shoes.

The things I hear are rarely scandalous, scarcely spectacular (though I keep my eyes peeled at all times for signs of mischief). And they certainly almost never have the remotest connection to me and my own business. No, it’s the trivial and harmless things I pick up, the tidbits of ordinary no-nonsense that people carelessly toss in among the pennies in their pockets.

“So-and-so had too much to drink on Monday evening.”

“Yes, Mom, I’ll be heading over around six, and I’m way ahead of you; I already picked up some Doritos.”

These things–the weekday hangover of a random stranger and the unapologetic devotion to a processed snack food of another–are the kinds of things that collect in the lint traps of my discreetly attuned ears as I mindlessly scan (and occasionally bag) people’s groceries. It’s important work I do.

You see, I’m not really a cashier–that’s simply a cover, an elaborate and cunning ruse. My real profession–my solemn duty, if you follow me–is in bearing witness to the everyday tedium of existence. I am a piece of furniture collecting the dusty particles of mundanity that provide the filler between the significant moments in our lives. These things are the the peanuts (or raisins, depending on your viewpoint) in our trail mix, the white noise we miss in a soundproof chamber.

They make us who we are–for the commonplace is what defines the extraordinary.