Help me, help me, help me!

This weekend was a test on my career choice. I work (as I believe I’ve noted before) at a music store, and this weekend we had a few groups of several young teenagers “shopping” without and sort of adult supervision. The rate at which these kids annoyed me was astounding and one of my first thoughts was, “Why is it that I want to work with these morons?” I even went as far as to ask a co-worker, “They’re different in the classroom, right?”

Her answer was a not-so-encouraging, “No.”



If we’d had more time to discuss it, I might have asked in more detail about my hopes that they go a little wild in public because they don’t have a direct authority figure to report to. I’m seriously hoping that, although they will be difficult, the kinds of issues that come up will be much different than I experience as a retail clerk in a store popular with teens.

There are a lot of differences in their environment that indicate to me that their behavior may be different. For one, they don’t have control over which of their peers are in their classes, which will hopefully mean that groups of friends are separated into different classrooms, and cannot stir up the same kind of excitement and frustration that they can as a unified group. Another aspect is that direct authority figure in the room. They are free to use any sort of language they want in public, but with a teacher in the room I don’t remember any of my friends letting a single curse word loose while I was in high school.

I really hope that my ideas about different attitudes in different environments is true and that I won’t constantly have to deal with the idiots that we sometimes have to kick out of our store. I’m a little discouraged because I don’t change my behavior too much based on my company, but in talking with friends I’ve recently come to realize that I may be the exception the rule and that maybe most people do.

Here’s to hoping I’m a freak!