I Got a Job!

Managing a garden center

This is not actually a job managing a garden center. I have been hired as a contractor, for a giant regional plant distributor, working in a garden center in the most ginormous of all “brick and mortar” retail behemoths (RB). Plant distributor has a contract taking care of the plants too. Since no one currently works in the garden center, and no one on this earth really cares about these poor plants, then I’m calling it managing a garden center.

The place is in rough shape. I can work as many hours in the short term as I want, through the holiday season. I set my own schedule. No one will be overseeing me, no one on site can tell me what to do or how to do my job. My “manager” lives a hundred miles away, manages something like a few hundred of these stores and stores like them, in most of the northern half of Minnesota and all of North Dakota. He drives a minimum of 60,000 miles per year.

Not that I am going to be making any big bucks. I saw an ad in the same online jobs forum at this same location, grocery deliverer, listed at twice the wage. I’m pretty sure the cart pushers make the same wage I do. When I asked the woman who hired me about the wage, she said I clearly have some experience so she would start me at $16hr instead of $15, the latter which might be minimum wage in MN for such a big employer. I’m pretty sure that is less than I was making as a cart pusher at Sam’s Club in 1991.

Of course real inflation puts that closer to what, $25hr? 30/hr? Who’s counting? Not any economist I am aware of, or political party or intelligentsia marionette. That is $6/hr more than I was making at a different ginormous RB garden center in 2012 (in the depth of the Great Recession), and there I could only work 25hrs per week, five days a week, every weekend, I didn’t get to choose my schedule and the schedule changed every week.

I sign in and out on two different apps I had to download, apps I am expected to use to check pricing, document progress etc. There is GPS tracking but I do not have to wear a bio-metric collar, though I assume that is just a matter of time and sufficient social conditioning. Some of the people who work here look like they are wearing a dog chain tied to their job. An acquaintance of my father said he doesn’t come in here because it smells like Trump supporters. The clientele is indeed the “great unwashed”, though they smell normal to me, even as I marvel at how very many of them there are, such that one cannot move a cart of plants down any isle of the main store unimpeded, at any time of the day. While a lot of the staff and clientele look like it is a burden to be alive, people tend toward polite and friendly and most are ready with a smile when I offer one, which is every chance I get. The head cashier complimented my tending of the poinsettias in the front entry, first day, and a lot of people asked questions, staff and clientele.

My manager who spent two hours training me in will be back sometime next week, maybe. If it is clear I am doing the job well and I don’t have any questions I don’t necessarily expect to see him. He suggested if I have questions about anything building related, ask the team lead or his boss, not the General Manager as she “hates” plants. Ginormous RB already bought the plants, the poinsettias, faux pines assorted Christmas plants, and the stock filler plants are a minuscule dollar generator compared to the regular stock, a living thing and like the staff I suppose a damn pain in the ass and a regrettable necessity. Someday maybe it will be all robot staff and mechanical plants who never complain, don’t need to be watered and don’t wilt or get sick and if they die you can just throw them in the garbage, recycle or compost bin. Whatever, technocrats. I intend on making a kind of psychic bond with these poor plants and maybe the staff and clientele, however unwashed and forgotten and regrettably living they may be.

In fact I assume these are the folks who are supposed to be the ones who would be killed off by jabs and social policy generally, but in fact they are still here in abundance, and look to me like they are going to inherit the earth.

It’s the middle of the winter in the great white north, and I get to work with plants. That’s alright by me. Thanks, universe.