Wall Ball

     When I worked at the Swiss chocolate store in the second largest mall in the country, every so often one of my co-workers and I would play wall ball on the loading docks. Really we were supposed to be grabbing product from the stock room, or throwing away empty boxes, but it was nice to get away from the riff raff for a while and get paid while throwing a tennis ball against a wall.

     The loading dock would be empty and quiet for the most part. Except for the janitors and the occasional fellow disgruntled retail employee smoking a cigarette, it was mostly just us throwing a tennis ball around while my co-worker smoked a cigarette himself. Later on during Christmas time it got to be almost impossible to play around though, especially when the Apple store moved in and cops started hanging out down there. But during the summer time, when shipments were slow and the loading gates were open and the breeze blew in, I got to enjoy being a teenager for a bit, instead of a retail slave.

     Later on our storage room was bought out by Abercrombie and Fitch, and so we moved to another storage area on the same level as the store, so there was no real point in going down to the loading docks. When that happened, I’d ride through the hallways behind all the stores on the box cart that we used to transport both our products and our trash to and from the store. It was fun to just ride at breakneck speed through the back alleys of the mall, crashing into both the walls, and the janitors.

    Now that I’m a bit older, its funny working with teenagers and watching how they too try to make the most out of work, without actually working. There’s something mystical about working your first job. It’s your first real taste of the “real world,” but since you’re still young, it’s still sort of your own world. You do what you want with it, because in all honesty, you don’t really care all that much about it. It’s just money for video games, or a movie ticket, and if the manger fires you for using a dolly as a scooter, it’s not that big of a deal, because you were just using the job as an excuse to get out of the house anyway.

    Being older, when I see younger employees goof off, I scowl with the same intensity as a 60 year old, but then I remember I too was once in their shoes, so that later on, when I’m outside bringing in carts and no one’s around, I’ll hop on the back of one and ride it across the parking lot and into the store.