posted on Apr, 29 2013 @ 10:17 PM
I work as a 'Customer Assistant' in a moderately-sized supermarket in the centre of my local city. I am not a particularly talkative or outgoing
person, so I was dreading it at first, but after a few days I settled in and, beyond all my expectations, began to enjoy it! Speaking to customers has
become interesting for a few reasons, and for the first time in my life I can honestly say that I enjoy working as part of a team! I went to work with
a smile, smiled for eight hours, then came back home still smiling. This continued until the end of the second week, when I was assigned a task called
'waste disposal'.
I assumed it would be disgusting, and my assumption was correct, but for completely different reasons to what I had imagined. Everyday without fail
the store throws away at least a cubic metre of perfectly good food because the numbers on the front say otherwise, and on that day, with my own two
hands, I did it. If you don't work in retail, to give you an idea of just what a cubic metre of food looks like inside, imagine four-hundred
average-sized microwave meals. This is on one day, in one store, and is 'completely normal'.
When I finish my shift and leave the store at 10pm, I cannot walk more than ten steps without seeing a hungry homeless person, curled up in a doorway,
an overturned hat or flannel lying before them hoping to be graced with a few pennies so they may survive one more night, for whom even a fraction of
that cubic metre would help to alleviate the suffering for a while. But if I were ever to put any of this into practice, I would be fired and tried
for theft, and so I don't.
I have become someone who is willing to throw away good food and turn a blind eye to the suffering of others because if I don't, then I will
ultimately end up becoming one of them, and I'm not sure which is worse.
I have never felt more morally raped by this world, and I have never hated myself more.