American Chain Store Christmas

The past seven days have been a strain on my body, but for good reason.

I got a temporary job with a chain store opening a store locally.The shifts are long (10 hours, not counting breaks), and there's a lot of heavy lifting involved, not to mention a demanding schedule in which the store needs to be built, stocked, and cleaned in a matter of 10 days.

The past three days have been somewhat of a chain store Christmas. It's been consecutive days of waking up, having barely enough time to have breakfast and assemble lunch and break snacks, and unloading a tractor trailer. A "mom" (manager) has all the"kids" (employees) get to the "car" (tractor trailer) to unload "gifts" (probably not the most accurate term for items).

Once the tractor trailer leaves, the kids open the gifts. In a bout of reversal, the opened gifts are placed under the metal trees, waiting for their true giftee to arrive. Mind you, with four days until the grand opening, there are already people showing up to the store, eagerly awaiting their time to enter.

But until then, there will be more products to put on shelves, more carts to push, and more double-digit-hour days. When my time there is up and I get paid, I hope I'll have my own American chain store Christmas.