Desperate for Par (ruminations on retail)

Des­per­ate for Par

It’s a note my coworker left me on top of one of the tills in the safe,
an echo of a phrase I used once in pass­ing.
A joke.  Sort of.
We were so out of ones, fives and rolled coin
it was giggle-inducing.
Hol­i­days work­ing in retail make you punchy like that.

It’s meta, that com­ment.
She’s home­sick for the South, just a bit,
hav­ing just moved here and all.
I’ve got my usual things– life, the uni­verse,
every­thing.  (Shelved in Sci-Fi, upstairs,
to the right, straight off the esca­la­tor, under Adams.
Yes, sir.  A-D-A-M-S.  The sec­tion starts with the As.)

Aren’t we all des­per­ate for par?
They make med­ica­tion for that con­di­tion.
Some­times I even take mine.
Since right now it’s the turn of the year,
the store’s got tables full of self-help books
(and don’t get me started on all the diet and cook­book dis­plays)
to cater to that very human desire.

Equi­lib­rium.
Bal­ance.
The need to fit within some pre-set, well-defined range.

It’s not like the list in the cash­room,
the one that tells me to keep the
fives between forty-five and sixty dol­lars,
just for exam­ple.
It’d be nice to always know where the bound­aries lie.

All those books out on the floor and yet,
for all the mer­chan­dise signs,
spe­cial stick­ers and shelv­ing dis­plays,
there’s no blink­ing arrow,
no spe­cial tag that car­ries the mes­sage the cus­tomers crave.

Roadmap to Life.
Inner Peace Here.
Guara­teed Bal­ance.
Achieve and Main­tain Your Par Values.

Most days, I’m more than will­ing to fudge the num­ber of tens, so long as I’ve got enough ones, rolled quar­ters, nick­els and fives.

“Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff” is a big-selling title.