At Mart Mart, Francine feels like she's checked out the entire population of a small town since her shift began when Berken Krek, her harried manager, finally stops Francine's line and tells her to take a break. A collective groan breaks out from the people standing in her checkout lane and for a moment Francine thinks a riot is going to break out amid the chewing gum and other impulse buys that line the aisle, but Krek pacifies them by telling them that checkout 9 is now opening. As the shoppers march off for a new frontier of checkout, Francine feels tension drop from her tired shoulders. The store is a sea of people, with wave upon wave of customers washing up on the shores of her checkout lane. As she heads to the back of the store and the grimy employee breakroom, Francine wonders what could possess so many people to head out on a cold day and buy things most of them don't even need. Admittedly, in addition to the weight of tradition, people were ideologically assaulted with commercials promoting holiday shopping, but why did so many people give in? It was like they were programmed to respond to cold weather by storing up goods. Was it biology? Is this shopping mania just the modern manifestation of storing up the harvest so it will last through the winter? Or was it the logic of capitalism imprinted upon a spiritual need, with spending money and consuming products turned into a virtue to keep the economy growing? If Francine weren't working, then she knows that she certainly wouldn't be spending her Saturday here battling the crowd in order to buy some cheaply made plastic products. Francine wonders if the shoppers are all possessed or under some form of mind control. They certainly seem to act like zombies. She doubts any of them would admit they were under the influence of anything though and would just claim they came to be here on the basis of their own free will. Francine supposes that with all the people in the world they need to be controlled somehow and the best system of control is when they are unaware that they are being controlled. Was anybody in control though? Francine thinks that everyone probably thinks that he or she is in control of her or his own life, but how much is anyone in control? If Francine were in control, then she certainly wouldn't be here, working for little more than minimum wage. She could think of her time here as just paying her dues to society, but she notices that a lot of rich people get away dues free.
Unless of course one wants to argue for the idle daughters and sons of the wealthy that their grandparents or whoever paid the dues for them.
Francine doesn't want to argue that point though because she thinks it's mostly bullshit, so she keeps wondering if anyone is in control. The rich like to think they're in control, but are they really? Government leaders think they're in control, but are they really? The Bilderbergs think they're in control, but are they really? Conspiracy theorists like to think that somebody, somewhere, even if they're evil, are in control, but are they really? Lots of people like to think they're in control, but life and the world is probably too chaotic to be under anyone's control.
Nobody's in control, and that may be more terrifying than thinking that somebody somewhere has things proceeding according to a master plan. Maybe that's why so many people still believe in God. We like to think that somebody's in control. There's a plan. Things are proceeding apace. It's nice to think that somebody's on your side even if that somebody is an invisible force that you can't really be sure exists. And thinking that life has some grand meaning even if it isn't entirely clear to you may beat realizing that all this variety is just more interesting than a big blob of static darkness, at least for a time, until the energy source grows tired of this dream as well and wants to go back to nothingness for a bit of eternity.
When Francine wades her way through the last shoppers, she reaches the the breakroom and buys a sickly sweet iced tea from the vending machine. As she picks up the cup and sits down at a table, she sees the clock and realizes that she needs to start walking back if she wants to get back to her register before her break is over.
She is glad that her bladder is under control.
Blog Love Omega Glee is a novel by Wred Fright about two bloggers who fall in love while the world falls apart, which is being serialized on his blog. To start reading from the beginning or read another installment, please visit Blog Love Omega Glee Central on WredFright.Com. If you like what you've read, or you've read all of Blog Love Omega Glee and want more Fright, then please read his first novel.
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