The Break Room

The other day my brother and I were discussing the incredible disparity between the break rooms at our respective workplaces. Zack works at HEB, the nice grocery store in town. I work at WalMart. Zack was telling me about the HEB break room, which includes a nice sofa with an HDTV with cable. He described its niceness and continued to fuel my jealousy. You see, the WalMart breakroom is not nearly as nice. Don't get me wrong, you are missing out if you have yet to spend time in a Wally World break room, whether the things you are missing are fair or foul may lie solely in the eye of the beholder.

The room is filled with several rows of long rectangular card tables. My guess is that one day the managers had to take down some kind of clearance feature filled with them and decided that rather than send them to the garbage, they would give their employees tables for their break room instead. Only the Lord knows just how old those tables are, or Ms Hannah (not actual name), who I'm pretty sure is old enough to be his kindergarten teacher.

There are a lot of creatures in the break room (other than humans and other unidentifiable life forms currently employed there). Ants are a particular nuisance. They are everywhere. It doesn't matter where you put food, if you leave it there more than five minutes, you will be sharing with your friendly neighborhood colony of Camponotus consobrinus's.

Adjacent to the break room is the smoking room. It separated by a wall with the top half made of glass. I think it looks like a terrarium, filled with really weird people. I wish the glass was a one-way mirror instead, that way I could observe the peculiar rituals that people who smoke have. I just re read that and realized how creepy it sounds, but still, I think management should look into it. The regular break room has a photo of Sam Walton on the back wall, but the smoking room has a very strange portrait on its rear wall. Its a portrait with a first-person view of a man looking out at his study from behind his giant antique desk. In his hand is a giant cigar, which he is apparently enjoying while staring at his giant globe (maybe that's what rich smokers do, look at globes, thinking about the world and why it is round. I suppose it depends entirely on what exactly the person is smoking). The only part of him you can see is his hand, which is wrinkly and old and actually kind of gross. I'm not sure if he is actually old or if he's thirty and the artist just drew the wrinkles for realism. Either way, I think its a strange painting.

The one redeeming quality about the break room are the people. Its mostly full of old people to be quite honest, but old people can be the most entertaining. My favorite thing about old people is how they talk about illnesses (which come to think is about all they ever talk about, other than their kids/grandkids). I love how they put "the" before every illness, the same way peasants in medieval movies talk about the black plague. "Hey Bernice, did you hear Lavern has the Fibromialgia?". Just adding that "the" to the name makes chronic aches and pains sound more like terminal Lepracy. My favorite use of this sort of phrasing went as follows: Lady 1"Well I took the grandson to the doctor yesterday, says he's come down with the A.D.D."

Lady 2"Oh dear, whats his prognosis?"

Lady 1 "Well they got him on the Ritalin, but I think he already gets those from friends. I don't know."

Lady 2 "You think its gonna help him in school?"

Lady 1 "Nah, but there's always the military. He does like to play with guns."

I love my job