Today, as I was in the checkout line in Wal-Mart, I was thinking about all of the retail jobs I’ve had. I thought about one summer when I was 16 years old working 40 hours a week at a popular retail store, making minimum wage and running my butt off for a large corporate company.
I learned all the tricks of the trade that summer, and began to spit out corporate-breathed lines like a robot fed by pats on the back.
This store, like many others, required its employees to ask each and every customer if they would like to apply for a credit card. And when we weren’t allowed to use the word “applying” anymore, that sentence changed to: Would you like to save $5 (or whatever 15 percent of the total was) on your purchase today by opening up an account with us?
I knew the lines well, and even excelled at conning people into further credit card debt. But things have changed, and now as an adult I see things a little differently. What I saw today in one of the largest retail stores in the world, was a teenage boy who, much like myself, had been sucked into the redundancy of corporate America. We’ll call him Joe.
“Hi, how are you today?” he said to a couple of women two people ahead of me in line.
“We’re fine, how are you?”
“I’m fine. Thank you for asking.”
He finished ringing them up and moved on to the next customer.
“Hi, how are you today?”
“Fine, how are you?”
“I’m fine. Thank you for asking.”
Now it’s my turn. I hear the expected “Thank you for asking,” and my heart sunk a little further into my chest. My roommate and I purchased some groceries we needed for the apartment and so we needed to split our total in half. The total came out to $25.88. He paused for a minute, as I expected him to, and then said that $25 split in half was $17. He matter-of-factly looked up, waiting for me to slide my debit card. I looked at him, almost apologetically, and told him that $17 was not half of $25. He wasn’t convinced and began to argue his case. Once I’d set him straight and agreed that $13 would suffice for half of $25.88, we walked out of Wal-Mart saddened by not only our corporate-fed American teenagers, but also by our education system.
It seems as though American society is training a generation of human-robots that know what to say, but not how to say it for themselves. Did Joe really want to ask me how I was doing today? And did he really want to follow up that question with a emotionless and rehearsed thank-you? And how has Joe made it to be a 16 or 17 year-old young man with no concept of simple subtraction?
I’m afraid there is no simple solution to the problem. Joe probably doesn’t try because there isn’t much expected of him.
I think it will take a change in attitude on behalf of society as a whole to fix this problem.

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