“What can I do for you today?” I ask with a smile, crinkling my eyes above my mandated cloth mask in a brief effort to hopefully incur less two-star reviews this week. I’m resigned at this point to reviews from customers over 60 complaining about the service they get at my pharmacy. I can imagine the man currently standing in front of me writing such a review as soon as he got home: Long line. Cashier was grumpy, didn’t greet me when I arrived at the front of the line. 1.5 stars.
He seems to gaze past me as he speaks. “Prescription for M. Hargreave.”
“Date of birth?” Since all of our records are by birthdate, it’s a phrase I say hundreds of times a day. Once, after a double shift, my mom called, and I asked her “Date of birth?” and successfully reduced her to a number as well.
“July 19th, 1957.” My brain automatically translates this to 07191957. I click on “HARGREAVE, MATTHEW.” He’s here for lisinopril. 2 more clicks while I mentally picture the “H” section, where the little bag containing his pill bottle has been sitting for two days. I try to minimize the amount of steps it takes me to get there and back, because every step reminds me that I spend ~40 hours a week standing on the same two feet and that every time I take my shoes off at the end of the day those same two feet scream at me while I, deafly, open Netflix to my latest cooking show, put chicken casserole leftovers from Sunday into the microwave, and pop open a can of Coke Zero.
HARGREAVE, MATTHEW takes his pills from the counter where I set them, signs his name on the grainy screen, helps himself to a squirt of hand sanitizer, and disappears forever. Or until next week, when I will have forgotten what he looks like, his date of birth, and his prescription.
I give insulin to BROOKERS, STACY [02231978]. 12 steps. I give birth control pills to JOHNSTON, REBECCA [11041998]. 10 steps. I give amlodipine to GONZALES, ALEJANDRO [09061982]. 9 steps. I give escitalopram to SCHNEIDER, TOM [05272000]. 11 steps.
The line still stretches beyond my view, but it’s 4:00pm now. Christine, another cashier, appears at 4:01. I wash my hands. I walk to the breakroom. I sit down. Time passes. Deep in the quagmire of my mental cooldown, a thought reaches me. I am thirsty. I get up to retrieve my water bottle from my cubby. When I enter the staging room, however, I stand in the doorway, puzzled. I look around me for any clue of why I left the breakroom. I check my phone. I feel my feet complaining beneath me, so I walk back to the breakroom and sit down again. My break ends.
Four hours later, my shift ends. I sign out on the computer in the back. I type my own number, 05122018, not my DOB, but the date of the start of my employment. I stop by my cubby for my bag. My water bottle is there, mostly full. I lift it to my lips, realizing that I’m thirsty. I drink probably half the bottle; my mind goes blank. My whole body feels like it is spent bathwater draining away. I visualize my day as a cold soup of skin cells, soap, and grime disappearing steadily into the pipes, gone and forgotten.
At the bus stop, there isn’t room for all of us to stand under the rain cover six feet apart. My breathing feels damp and miserable inside my face mask. I absentmindedly begin to twist my wrists in a circle, trying to relax them and break the tension of typing all day. Carpal tunnel syndrome. Prednisone. Maybe Indomethacin. It doesn’t matter. I can’t afford medications for my wrists. It doesn’t matter. The main treatment for carpal tunnel syndrome is rest. I can’t afford to rest either. I try to remember if I gave anyone prednisone today.
The first bus passes, at capacity for COVID. The second bus has room. I try to breathe lightly. I put on hand sanitizer as I leave the bus and when I get into my apartment, the first thing I do is wash my hands. I feel like my hands will grow scales. They are red at the knuckles, dry and cracking. I see the note on the table, telling myself to buy more hand lotion at work today. I sigh and my sigh echoes for miles, skitters through my apartment and dances down the street, soars into the pitch-black drizzle and glances off of a streetlight. My sigh finds its way to the house I was born in, raises its hand to knock on the door, hesitates, and scampers fearfully three states away, back to my street, through my apartment, and into my own ears.
———
It’s Wednesday. I was scheduled for the 7am shift. Outside, it's the kind of all-enveloping opaque void of darkness which everyone simply ignores except to put up a string of lights on December 1st. I get off a stop early in order to purchase a muffin from a nearby cafe. $2.95. The cafe has “Thank You Essential Workers!” chalked out on a wooden sign. I peel back the paper and bite the crumbly pastry, but it feels like I’m chewing sand. I’m too tired to register the taste of my muffin, but I swallow anyway. I know I won’t make it to noon without eating something now.
The new shift manager, Brent, greets me with a glare. “You cashiers need to step it up. Long lines yesterday, people walking into the store, seeing the lines, and leaving. You need to work faster.”
I nod and hurry to the back to get ready for the day. Before I make it to the back, I hear Brent yell at another employee: “Look alert, Toby! You’re on thin ice!”
It would’ve been pointless to point out that the company only staffs one pharmacy cashier at a time, when they have the space, and the capability, and arguably the necessity to staff two cashiers, and maybe even three cashiers, during weekends. Brent was a decent enough shift manager when he got here a month ago, but just like all the others, he was hitting the end of his tether. Shift managers spend their time doing what should be a four-person job, which involves managing the cashiers, unloading and sorting new stock, labeling, tagging/retagging the whole store, keeping track of overstock, the safe, cash registers, and the pharmacy. They always burn out eventually, it’s just a matter of time. I’d seen it over and over in the two and a half years since my DOE (date of employment). The dumb ones complain to corporate, get no sympathy, and no help, and leave. The smart ones realize they’re only being paid $3 more than a cashier and leave.
As soon as I enter the pharmacy area to begin work, the phone rings. “Get that, will you?” asks Joe, the pharmacy technician, not looking up where he’s reviewing orders. I don’t bother to point out that it's within his job description to answer the pharmacy phone. Joe’s been forcing cashiers to do all customer-side interaction since he got here.
“You’ve reached Brightside Pharmacy. How may I help you?” As I navigate BELENKY, NAOMI [09231991] through the process of transferring her prescription to another pharmacy, three customers appear in line, checking their phones and adjusting their colorful face masks.
I serve all three pharmacy customers quickly, not that Brent notices or cares. He’ll be bogged down with administrative reports till the afternoon. The line dealt with, I sort the labeled prescriptions Joe hands to me by last name. I check the clock. It’s only been an hour.
With no current tasks to do, I stand in the corner by the W’s where I can claim to be sorting prescriptions if Joe accuses me of wasting time. I can see the main store area from here through the pharmacy glass windowpane. A woman enters the store. Two toddlers are tugging on the sides of her pants and a baby is asleep in a carrier on her back. Toby doesn’t notice. He’s a recent hire too, and probably won’t last long. He smokes weed during his lunch break. The neon energy drinks he always has with him don’t seem to affect his unresponsive and listless demeanor. The woman glances at him, quickly. The woman’s toddlers are quiet, quieter than toddlers should be. She has a deep slouch like she’s carrying the earth on her back. Her hair seems unkempt, unwashed. One of her toddlers' masks has slipped down past his nose and I can see snot dribbling in his nostril when he breathes.
She walks towards the pharmacy. She doesn’t see me. She peers at the shelves of over-the-counter medication. She slips something I don’t see into her coat. The next ones I recognize. A two-pack of Dayquil/Nyquil. Tylenol. Mucinex. Cough drops. It all happens in a blink. She straightens up. Her coat looks no different than it did before. She walks towards the front of the store. Pauses to look at the cooler of drinks. I pause as well. I realize I am holding my breath only when the automatic door shuts behind her and she disappears out of sight.
I startle as the phone rings. “Brightside Pharmacies, how may I help you?” I answer.
“Hello, I would like to renew my prescription for next year?” A nameless, faceless voice answers back.
“Date of birth?”
———
I don’t have time to think about the woman for the rest of my shift. I take my breaks, I serve customers. I answer the phone. I ride the bus, I shower, and I order take-out for dinner. Of all the tasks I’m paid $11.18 an hour to complete, thinking isn’t one of them. But after I eat dinner, I pace back and forth on the old linoleum floor of my cheap apartment kitchen. Each step hurts my feet, but I don’t stop pacing. I stretch my wrists and I ignore the sharp nerve tingling. The number code 04071995 appears, suspended like an omen, like the afterimage of a bright light on the inside of my eyes. Sometimes I forget that DOB is anything other than a data point.
Twenty-five April birthdays in late snow. A grainy photograph of me with bright blue cake all over my chin used to sit on the mantle of the house I was born in. My dad had begged my mom to go to the hospital, but she’d insisted on a home birth. My mother was in labor for twelve hours. She once told me that birthing me was the most excruciating pain she’d ever felt, but that when I opened my eyes for the first time, she knew she’d do anything to keep me safe. The first time I remember seeing her cry, I was seven. She’d lost her job at the post office. It was only two months after the divorce. I was a child; I didn’t know why she was crying. I didn’t understand. There were too many things in life I would understand too late.
Why didn’t I alert Joe, or Brent, or even Toby to the woman who shoplifted today?
I wish I could say I felt sorry for her, and I wish I could say, at the very least, that I did nothing to spite the company that’s never done anything for me. I wish I had thought of my own mother as I watched her carry her baby on her back, but I didn’t. I only thought of myself and the fact that I’m not paid enough to deal with this.
I’m not paid to care.