Follow Your Passion: A Seamless Tumblr Journey
I actually have 2 stories about this at the same place!!! The first one happened to my roommate, who I worked at the same place with.
We worked at a charity retail store and we were both placed in the clothing department. Which meant all we did was go through giant bins of donated clothes and hung up what could be sold. Really really simple. Not a single customer ever saw us as we worked in the back.
My roommate had a sprained ankle. Also note: we lived down the street and down a hill from the store. We didn't have cars. We walked to and from work from 7 am to 3 pm. My roommate was using a stool to sit on and hang clothes. She got dirty looks from coworkers the entire time and every single time she left to use the restroom or take her breaks or whatever, they'd HIDE her stool!
The second story actually happened to me. I started working there shortly after that so I knew how they felt about sitting at work. But I did not care. We walked to and from work every day and some days we had to make grocery trips, which consisted of us bringing our own bags and filling them with groceries, paying, and lugging the 10 large bags home between the 2 of us. We did that in snow and rain. We didn't have a choice. So I REALLY did not care that my coworkers didn't like that I felt like sitting. I didn't sit my entire shift. I only sat about an hour or two before my shift ended so I could give my feet a break before I had to walk home or get groceries etc. But the LOOKS I got!!! My god!!! They kept taking my stool too whenever I walked away, but I'd just grab another one that wasn't being used.
I have one more story regarding sitting at work in a retail setting. This is a different job. I replaced an elderly woman at a crafts store as she had fallen ill and I think needed surgery. She was recovering for months but I kept hearing stories about her from coworkers. So when I heard she was finally coming back I was excited to meet this legendary woman. When she got back we were both assigned as the cashiers for our shift together and she sat behind the counter in a stool. You know what???? I didn't question it!!! I was fine with her sitting!! I wanted to sit! I wouldn't have cared if she was young and had no health issues and still chose to sit for her shift! She still did the work.
Now for the scary part, because whenever I think of this lady I always think of this moment. We had radios and earpieces at this job for quick and efficient communication. We had a line and we were both taking care of customers. All of a sudden I hear her say over the radio "I'm not feeling well. I think I'm going to pass out." It honestly took me 10 seconds to register what she even said. But as soon as it registered, I stopped what I was doing and looked over at her to see her falling out of her stool, eyes rolled back, falling backwards over herself. I had never experienced this before! Wth??? My body started moving and I started yelling frantically over the radio and a customer called the ambulance. Everything both felt like slow motion but also very fast. She's fine!!! She came to a few minutes later. She decided to retire after that and she stopped working.
Anyway, those are my stories about work and chairs.
“Its lazy for cashiers to sit down
And it’s weird to care. Work shouldn’t be an endurance test. Let me sit. We’re not doing a survivor challenge. You don’t think people can sit down and work at the same time? You’re gonna be real mad when you find out what an office is.”