Polar Pop™️ Machine

You clean the Polar Pop™️ area as part of the job at Circle K. A Polar Pop™️ is a fountain drink you get from the fountain machine in the back left corner of the store. The machine has about twenty-four taps, approximately twenty-two of which are in good working order at any given time. About once a month the Polar Pop™️ machine goes down. Which is a real shame because one of the major (official) perks of the job is that you get free drinks. Up until about two weeks ago we had Mountain Dew: Voltage™️ on tap. It's the best Mountain Dew because it's blue. Now the only way I can get it is by paying two bucks for a 20 ounce bottle of the stuff, which if you think I'm gonna pay Circle K prices for my neon blue diabetes juice you've got another thing coming. (I shit you not, we charge 6 bucks for a gallon of milk. Robin Hood, forgive me. But if you need milk at two in the morning there's nowhere else to go, so... 🤷‍♂️) Anyway, cleaning up the Polar Pop™️ area is one of my favorite parts of the job. Along with cleaning the coffee machines, sweeping the floor, and (especially) mopping. Oh Lord God in heaven, do I enjoy mopping. I get an obscene pleasure out of slathering liquid across the floor of the place with my long rod. Plus there's a genteel enjoyment to be had in watching the sticky patterns of goop dissolve at the end of the mop. Thus must the Lord God Almighty have felt when he took his mighty hand to wipe clean Sodom and Gomorrah, the cities of the plain. Cleaning the Polar Pop™️ area begins with stocking the cups. For arcane consumer behavior reasons the cups are called Medium, Large, and Extra Large instead of Small, Medium, and Large, even though everybody knows that's what they really are. The cups come in sleeves of about fifteen cups each, and they make a satisfying clunk as you slide them home. Then you stock the straws and the lids all the way to the brim of their little cubby holes, to demonstrate the fullness and vitality of the Circle K cornucopia. The straws go in the bottom cubbies at the left and right side of the machine, while the lids go in the ones higher up. One for the Mediums, two for the Larges, and five for the Extra Larges, which are the most popular sellers by a considerable margin. Then you spray the counter and the bare parts of the machine with purple cleaning juice and wipe it down. And that's that. Do your best to focus on the task at hand and not dwell on the fact that you're selling your life by the minutes and hours. Try not to think about the time slipping away and all the things you could be doing if you didn't have to worry about money. Always greet customers with a smile and make sure they have a great Circle K experience. Feel the urge to get blackout drunk as soon as your shift ends, but beat it down because you have real work to do at home and a bright, brilliant career to work toward. Promise yourself you're not lying to yourself and it won't always be like this. The best part of cleaning time on night shift is that for about an hour you're on your own and don't have to let any customers into the store. Granted, official Circle K company policy is that we're open 24 hours a day and therefore night shift isn't allowed to close the store for cleaning. But practically speaking you have to clean the store at some point, which means shutting down and closing the store for an hour or two a night. A minor case of institutional hypocrisy. Corporate wants to be Open 24 Hours for branding purposes, but it would be cost ineffective to have two night shift workers in the store at a time, which is what it would take to actually be open 24 hours. Of course, the very best part of working night shift comes on a quiet night after you're done cleaning the store. Then you might have a stretch of as long as an hour and a half where you have no customers and nothing to do. Pull up a chair, boot up the Kindle app, and get paid to read Michel Houellebecq, Camille Paglia, Edward Dutton, and Delicious Tacos. It's almost like winning. Anyway, yesterday I was cleaning up the Polar Pop™️ area and ruminating on the usual things. I'm an unappreciated genius, I don't want to be here, I'm having my life stolen from me, everything that exists deserves to perish miserably and I wish I could be the one to push the button, I've dug myself into a hole I'll never get out of and it's not my fault no it's entirely my fault no it's not my fault no it's… Just mechanically doing the job, stocking lids while pretending to be somewhere else. Fighting against being where I was, resisting life, resisting reality. Like I've always done. It's the same thing that's driven me to drink in the past. Looking for reasons to be miserable. Because if I wasn't miserable, then what would I be? Is it really so bad to be stocking lids in a Circle K? But if I accepted this, I might end up here forever. Would that really be so bad? But I don't want to be here! But you are here. Fuck you. Fuck me? Fuck you. You're the one who wants to bitch and criticize everything. Everything's shitty! You're shitty. Quit your bitching. But I don't like it here. Because you keep looking for things to hate about whatever you're doing. You could be King of the Universe and you'd still play the poor whimpering victim. You're addicted to your own misery. Fuck you! Teehee,I found your secret… 😋 ~~~ Trace little circles with the orange washrag on the brushed steel. It's clean. Lao Tzu sez you must fully choose to do that which you must do. Maybe it's not so awful here. It's the holding back at a distance that makes it unbearable. This is beneath me. I'm so much more than this. Oh my God I'm gonna be here all my life and I'll never make it and one day I'll be a hundred and fifty years old on my deathbed and I'll realize I spent my whole life polishing the steel of the Polar Pop™️ machine and no one ever knew my name and no woman ever loved me and I was always a disappointment to myself because I never dared to live and this was all and this was all and this never went anywhere… Polish the steel. Stock the straws. Stock the cups. People will have their drinks in the morning because of you. And sure, they won't thank you, they won't think of you, and some of them are going to look at you like you're an idiot because you can't read their minds when they don't actually articulate what they want. But you'll know, and maybe that's enough for now. Nobody ever writes about work. Or if they do, they write about cops, or hookers, or being the President of the United States. Nobody ever writes about tedious, boring, everyday work. Or if they do, they lie about it because they're recruiters writing ads and they have to pretend every job's exciting. Nobody ever writes honestly about their basic, spontaneous attitudes to the work they spend half their waking lives doing. And maybe it's because writers can't understand anybody wanting to be anything but a writer, but even when they write about it, it's always like Bartleby the Scrivener's, "I would prefer not to." Would I prefer not to? Sure. But maybe the real wisdom of art is in redeeming those parts of reality we most want to reject. Anyone can find beauty in a rose, a forest, or a sunset. But maybe it's worthwhile to seek out the beauty in a 24 hour convenience store. Polish the steel.