Never again.

I frequently joke that my indefinite maternity leave is the first time I've had anything close to a vacation since the fifth grade. That actually is pretty close to the truth. You name the job, I've worked it. Usually half-assed, with a cynical approach and frequently bad attitude, but a lot of that is just because I don't like people. But I'm even more cynical toward the human race now, and I can't help but wonder if it is due largely in part to my work with the general public.

I've done retail. I've done fast food. I've done food service. And with the exception of my last serving job (I actually really liked that place and the people I worked with), each new employment made me hate the human race more and more. I am not meant to work with the general public. I'm just not. I fail miserably at it.

Of all the jobs I've had though, the worst was in clothing retail. I worked at Old Navy for almost nine months during college. It's where I met A., when we were both sadly employed, but other than that little positive came from those nine months. Not only did I work during back to school season, but I also worked through Black Friday and the Christmas season. I no longer fear hell because I worked Black Friday in cheap retail.

When I first started, I was promptly placed where all ON rookies are stuck -- in the fitting room. It's like they put the newbies there just to see if they can hang. I have seen some horrible, horrible things in fitting rooms. I've picked up dirty diapers. I have seen puddles of human waste (puke, poop, pee -- you name it, I've seen it). I've seen tampons on the floor. It's seriously disgusting the kinds of things that people do in a public fitting room when the restrooms were literally AROUND THE CORNER. Working the fitting room was a miserable experience on so many levels, but one of my most embarrassing moments came on my second day on the job.

I started in early August, in the middle of back to school shopping season. The fitting room was always packed to the gills with overzealous mothers forcing their children to try on dozens of garments against their will. So many people came and went, it was hard to keep track of what fitting rooms were occupied and which weren't. Since I had to unlock the rooms for customers, I'd knock on the door, wait for a response, and if there wasn't a response, I'd unlock the door. Pretty simple, right?

So a young guy (probably college age) comes in wanting to try on clothes. I take him back to a fitting room and knock on the door. No response. I unlock the door and the knob won't turn at first (it wasn't unusual for the locks to get stuck). After jiggling the knob a bit, with this guy standing right behind me, I open the door. And there's a little girl, probably about 6 or so, standing there stark naked. BUCK. FREAKING. NAKED. And she screamed.

Not just a little scream of surprise, or embarrassment. No, that I could have understood. No, you could hear it from all over the store. It sounded like a child was being murdered with a dull knife in the fitting room. It continued AFTER I shut the door and didn't stop until her whale of a mother came stampeding into the fitting room demanding to know how dare I open the door on her daughter for some pervert to witness. (All the while, the poor jeans guy was just standing there.)

Somehow I survived that incident but I always did two series of knocking after that. (The doors to the fitting room went all the way to the floor so you couldn't just check under the door.)

There are a lot of things I could bitch about my Old Navy days. Folding pile, upon pile, upon pile of sweaters, only to turn around and they'd be completely unkempt again. There was the day I was exhausted and trying to fold the mess of t-shirts and a lady came, picked up a shirt like it was drenched in urine, sneered, "This is a disaster" and threw the shirt on the pile again. But hands down, my worst moment came during the poop in women's section 2.

It was near the end of the night, and I was cleaning up my designated section, women's section 2. There were a few customers milling around the store, including a woman and her approximately 9-year-old son in my section. I'd asked if they needed help, and she politely said no. So I was just cleaning up and doing my best to make it out the door at a decent hour. Then I saw her son. He was squatting down, and at first I thought he was hiding from his mom -- which couldn't have been possible because he was in direct eyeline of her. She'd glanced at him, so I know she was watching him.

Then I turned the corner and I saw what he was doing. This child -- CLEARLY old enough to know what he was doing, and in direct view of his mother -- was popping a squat and pushing a log out on the floor. I don't remember what I said exactly because it's one of those moments that just completely defies logic or rational thinking. But I remember seeing that turd hit the floor, seeing the kid stand up and pull his pants up (never mind wiping, but there was already so much wrong with this situation that I can't even begin to process that), and ran over to another section. The mother looked at me, looked at the turd, and walked away without saying a word.

I quit that night.