Wow. What a letdown.

Well. It's 1:31 in the morning, and my last shift ended at 12:11 am. I am officially no longer an employee at my nearest grocery store.

I thought I would feel liberated and joyous at this auspicious moment, and instead I'm plagued by the niggling idea that I gave up too easily. I let the depressing people get me down. In the time since I gave notice a week and a half ago, I've had four really nice nights at work and two really icky ones. I even called in sick for one night. (And I was very glad that I did, since I spent most of that night feeling rather unwell.)

The thing is -- working in the grocery store wasn't all bad. It wasn't unrelieved hell. The vast majority of the customers were wonderful people. Most of my co-workers were interesting and very nice people. Some of them were even fun, and I often found myself laughing out loud while working my fingers to the bone.

If I were to determine a percentage of the time at the grocery store during which I was actively laughing out loud and having fun, I would have to say it was fun about 67% of the time. Compare that to the years at the ad agency, and a grocery store wins hands down as a "fun place" to work. It's also more fun than being an accounts payable clerk at a large manufacturing plant. I mean, accounts payable is a lot cleaner than running a cash register, but cubicles somehow dampen one's sense of humor. You chuckle. You don't laugh out loud.

One wonders if I'll find myself back at the grocery store next week. I would have to put my foot down and tell the store manager, "OK, I'll work here, but only for five-hour shifts, 20 hours a week at the most. I refuse to work longer than five hours at a time. And I want to work with Kim a lot. A WHOLE LOT. And Genzy, too, if that's possible. But those are my conditions, and that's the only way we will make this work."

I will miss my customers. It's so strange, but in only three and a half weeks, I already had a lot of customers whom I considered regulars, and I will miss seeing them.

I will miss the little old ladies (some as young as 60 or 65) who lived alone and would come in and talk recipes with me.

I will miss that good looking young man who always came to my register and would greet me with, "Hello, nice lady!"

But all of that said, I won't miss the few co-workers who hated the store, hated their jobs, and hated the customers in particular. That was the most shocking and unpleasant revelation. Finding out that I was hated when I was a customer was unsettling, because these people covered up their revulsion to my face. It was only when I started working with them that I found out that they cursed and shook their fists at customers who came in after 11:00 at night. Hey -- I didn't set the hours for the store. I like shopping after 11:00. No crowds, and I always get a great parking spot.

I won't miss standing up for hours at a time.

I won't miss feeling like I'm disappointing someone because the line isn't moving faster, even though there's no help for bagging the groceries and I have to do everything by myself.

Oh. I won't miss ringing up pig's feet. Ew, gross, yuck. I didn't even know people really bought that stuff!!!!!!

Tomorrow... I am free. I wonder what I'll do? Probably laundry!