At last, somebody hired me for a job after I had been looking for what felt like centuries. PongysMart, the store where you can find anything imaginable, was not my ideal spot I thought I would end up in after college. It was my first day of actual work, after training, and there was so much to hate about it. The cacophony of kids screaming, the messy aisles, the water leak in the ceiling, are just all reasons why I go insane. The customers were interesting though. Everyone that comes in, in my mind, has a different story on why they’re here, and sometimes it’s pretty obvious.

     Around 10:30ish a tall, chubby fellow walked in wearing a plain, all black hoodie with 6 different children. He looked very suspicious, and I was set on my deliverance at 11:00 when we closed, so in my mind I wanted to avoid any contact with him. Before I could leave from my register, the six kids were lined up at register all holding one item: a TV, a couch, a vase, some soy sauce packets, face wash, and pencils. What stood out to me the most was that their father was still standing at the door with a disappointed face, while the kids are in line.

    Each child was around 7 or 8 years old and had a different emotion anywhere from languid to ecstatic. I hid under the counter because of my anxiety and thought about what was about to happen. Maybe the man is about to shoot up the store and his kids are just a distraction. Maybe the kids with the more expensive items are more loved and the man is ashamed to show favoritism in public. Maybe this could be a good thing, the kids could just be getting items from a list and bringing it to make it easier on the father. Who knows?

    I eventually came to the realization that I had to get up and serve these kids because thinking about this opaque scenario is going to drive me wild. The first kid and second kid that bought the TV and Couch paid separately and in cash. The child who bought the vase has very good taste because it was a translucent yellow and had an image of a mother hugging a group of kids. For me, this is such a sad scene to be going through and, to make it worse, the last kid was balling out crying as he put up the item on the counter. At this point I’ve had enough and I nudged the kid that I can call the police if he wants. The kid shuts that idea down real quick and proceeds to tell me the situation.

    Apparently, if I got the story right, the kids mother had been exiled from living in their house due to issues with the law, so in order to protect her. The dad locked their mom in their basement with little food, and little water. And every month, the kids get to go to the supermarket and buy her one thing each. The pencils was so that she could write notes to them and put them in a vase, the TV and couch was for her to be comfortable with some reasonable entertainment, and the soy sauce packets were to compensate for the dry flavor of the noodles she gets, and face wash so she can clean her face that their dad denigrates her for.

     This saddens me to me core and I eventually decided to use my employee discount of the items to help the kids out some. Their father obviously hates their mother, but I guess the kids being out the good in him. The coprolalomanic father curses at the children to hurry up, using 10 curse words get sentence. This made me realize to be grateful for my job, and realize others have a bigger struggle.