September 28–30, 2002 — Can’t concentrate when I’m at work

The trip to IKEA from my house takes anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour and a half, depending on the time of day. I take a bus to the nearest subway station, then the subway to the furthest westbound stop, then a bus a bit further south to the stop nearest IKEA. Then I walk.

On my first walk from the bus stop to IKEA, a bike passed me on the sidewalk, and the person riding it threw a plastic bottle onto the lawn in front of a car repair shop. For the next week, I walked by the plastic bottle twice each day. The week after that, the bottle was torn into two pieces and disappeared one piece at a time. I had almost convinced myself that the plastic was slowly decomposing, and I was annoyed that someone had ruined my experiment by throwing the bottle out.

Now I spend my walk from the bus stop trying to determine the time of day based on the number of transport trucks being loaded at the bread factory. I’m not very good at it yet, but I’m going to get plenty of practice.

Two months in, it’s safe to say that I like my job. The returns department is a very interesting place to work, and the days never drag. Most customers are reasonable, and those that aren’t often make for a good story. I have no complaints, and I almost suspect that I must’ve taken part in some sort of corporate brainwashing to claim as much. But here we are.

If I had any criticism of my current working environment, it would probably be the music, but only because I was so spoiled at Booster Juice, where we were able to listen to whatever music we wanted. At IKEA, we hear the same music everyday. Most of the songs on our daily playlist are terrible, so I have to take my victories where I can find them. My victories are the following:

1. “Love will tear us apart” by Joy Division: I have heard this song once. They apparently have a different feed in the self-serve warehouse, and they get to hear Joy Division everyday. I am jealous.
2. “Self esteem” by the Offspring: I hear this everyday, and it is the highlight of my day. I sing along. I let customers know that they are experiencing the highlight of my day. And I make a mental note to dig out my copy of Smash.
3, 4, and 5. “Come on Eileen” by Dexy’s Midnight Runners, “1979” by the Smashing Pumpkins, and “Epic” by Faith No More: The three songs that round out my top-five. Though I’ve only heard “Epic” twice. And “1979” depresses me because it makes me think that I should be tearing apart convenience stores instead of processing returns.

Still, even the music has its positive points, and I always do my best to look on the positive side of any situation I’m in.

Working at IKEA can be scary at times, though. In some ways, it’s a lot like high school: lockers, cliques, and hundreds of people within a few years of my age that I see on a regular basis. All of which isn’t so bad; more difficult to deal with is seeing how different my life seems to be from that of most people I work with it. Almost everyone else drives. Most people are married. Most people have kids. Mortgages. Babysitters.

And these are people not much older than me. Some are my age. And when they tell me they’re working two or three jobs to save up for a house, I just don’t know what to say. And each time someone admits to me that they’re thousands and thousands of dollars in debt (a pretty common admission, and I’m not one to pry), I just try to smile sympathetically and leave it at that.

I wonder if I’m doing something wrong. Are my goals so out of line with reality? I feel like I’ve been living in a strange bubble where car ownership is an exception, not a rule, and starting a family isn’t something you think about until you’re thirty. I like to pretend that it’s not me who has things wrong. Which can be difficult sometimes.

But I don’t know how relevant any of that is. I’m happy. I only have to work three days a week, and my lifestyle is more lavish than ever: I should be able to buy a new computer soon, and my full-time schedule during training paid for antigreg t-shirt reprints. Now I have four days a week to do whatever I want and I don’t have to worry about rent or food.

If that was all that mattered in life, I’d be doing better than ever.