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Computer literacy assessment at the Goodwill is like, I have to use the mouse to click on a picture of a mouse. Career Coach at the Goodwill it's her laptop, I have to click a picture of a laptop. Label the parts of an email. Drag the subject to the subject line. Say like, what would you do say I couldn't do this? Would you call someone? Career Coach at the Goodwill she is my age have some college, wants to know do I have food, a house, healthcare. Am I hungry do I want dinner? I just need regular money that's all. That's why. How I came to be here. If I was a time traveler say, come through work at Goodwill I couldn't label parts of an email, would you know that from this. She laugh she can tell the lights are on I am not a killer or a rapist. She is thirty in one month. We look at each other like, I am not supposed to be here. She tells me there's like a bike program for workers at the Goodwill. They will manufacture for me a bike. I say, alright. She ask what my dream job is and what is my favorite food. I say really I'm not hungry I'm not like a public eater thank you. She say, these are security questions for your account. So you can see your paystubs. I say oh. Put pizza, opera singer. And she say, really, do you sing. I say no. Sometimes. I like to write. She say she like country music and has not really heard any opera. That's okay, I'm not. I was kidding. Alright well, I need to put something. Put pizza. I've got that. Okay, yeah. Put opera singer.
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Lady she falls out takes most of a rack with her and her friend is there say she's epileptic and people are holding her hand and talking to her I set up traffic cones around like orange traffic cones and cops come they Narcan her and she's up shopping again and someone says dang man, it's The Opioid Crisis and I hear, she's having an Opioid Crisis and both are true.
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So much trash come in sometimes I go at it with the shovel get close and squint my head in the bin so it fills my whole field of view. Like a videogame where you have to cut through trash with a shovel. People give us literal bags of trash. Like half full drink cup food maybe one thing and you have to decide if that was intentional. Any kind of toy with batteries will contrive to come to life in the pile. You will hear it kinda gasping in there. Sound demonic. Ones that play a song you have to listen to the whole song. Thought is to make a joke about it or complain but then you are on the hook to do that every time. So eventually it will be silence and a thing singing and you won't even know what it is. Like what movie is it from. Means whole childhood's worth of media properties transpired you don't know one thing about it. Old stuff come in like a toy you had and you will pick it up and hold it but you will have to throw it back because it is against Goodwill policy to remove anything from this area this area under surveillance. If it don't sell in two weeks you will have to put it in the compactor. People donate old home movies and photo albums, like why, they have to go right in the compactor. Yesterday I put maybe 200 VHS tapes into the compactor. Sometimes I take the pictures out and put them in my pocket. Blind spot on the security camera I slip in maybe one. On my fridge there is a picture of an old lady and another old lady on the beach with seagulls. Look like maybe they are being attacked. Another one with one of the old ladies in a cowboy hat. I thought I would be ballsy and maybe take two. Sometimes like last week the compactor will jam cuz there is too much stuff in it so actually I am helping by taking stuff out. Let me tell you when that happened it was not a good time. All the trash it had to go somewhere so we had to put it in cardboard boxes. Then when the compactor was fixed I had to empty all the boxes into the compactor. The boxes were too big for the compactor so I had to empty them out by hand. Sometimes I used the shovel. There were twelve cardboard boxes for five days of no compactor. One of these boxes like five feet tall. Some math for you there. Well so I wore out the gloves they gave me so I bought new ones at Walmart where they wouldn't give me a job. Ten dollar white ones. Day later drew three black lines on each glove with a Sharpie. Now when I'm going at the trash look like Mickey Mouse is. I will forget and I will hold the shovel with my arms stuck out and I will see my hands and think dang that is funny. No one yet has said a word to me about this.
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I am a machine. Many people have thought that. They are wrong. I'm the machine. Machine that hang the clothes. Machine that hit the purse button. I look out the window. The parking lot. The sign. Bird. People, they want, they come to Goodwill set price in mind. They say, today I will spend fifty dollars. They will load a cart up. The value of which far exceed fifty dollars, even I hit sock button twelve times consecutive. Such items as brass tea kettle, old jar, shadeless lamp. Try to depress the value for them. There's no way. Even as I am, I can't. They can't tell that I'm doing it. They figure it out, they will try to get more. Must exceed the fifty dollars. Blow past it. Make hard decision. Scrabble, claw back. Decide: old jar, plaster angel, legless Barbie. Pay in loose change, pieced out slow. Various hidden pockets. Fingerless glove. They will return. Have another fifty dollar. Twenty. More. I don't know where it come from. I don't know where it goes. I will say thanks. Mam. Sir. I won't look in nobody's eyes they don't want it.
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Worker say he learnin German so to talk to German Shepherds in their native tongue. I say well but couldn't you. You could teach them English. He looks at me like I'm fuckin. An idiot. Well, but also you could teach it Gibberish. Like any kinda random noise you could make. Get it to associate that with whatever it is. Like maul. Kill. Wouldn't that be scary? Like. You're breaking into someone's house. It's dark and all you hear doolooloolooloolooloo. Dog gets you. He say he don't want anyone to control his dog. I say, well. That's, you know. The Gibberish. It could be whatever. Like any sound if you just. I'm importing the dog. Oh. From Germany. Oh okay. I already have money on it. Like an installment plan, I guess. You don't have to pay it all. Like at one time. Okay. Here, hand me that. Gimme the shovel. You know why I'm doing this right? Here. Okay I'll get it. You know why I'm doing this right? No. Dog saved me when I was three. What? Like it. Got my shirt. Like. Car was coming it got my shirt. It lifted you. Got me up and got me outta there. Damn. Yeah it got, carried me. Maybe it was your ancient ancestor or something. Got me out of the way of the car. Right. I mean that's cool but you know what I mean. You could teach it any phrase or word you want it would do the same thing. Doesn't have to be German.
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Talk to my manager about his hard life in Appalachia. He live with his grandma they have to shit in a bucket. Say that shit sound like Winter's Bone. He say that's his favorite movie. He say actually wait, let him get his phone. He has a new phone. Like one of them phones that fold out, like Samsung. He say he wrote something about it actually. His life in the Appalachians and bucket shitting. He had to clean out the bucket with a hose, he says. He folds the phone out big on the Winter's Bone trailer. Shows me this comment. You have to click read more. It's like him talking about shitting in a bucket. His mom is like a drug addict. I tell him I can think of like five literary magazines would publish this shit no edits. Like online. He say it's terrible, it's actually really bad. I said yeah, but, like, what's good anyway. Fact you can form a coherent paragraph, that's. Most people cannot. You talk about Appalachia, people think it's good. Like what's that fuckin senator. Or you know. Like Winter's Bone.
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Other manager at Goodwill he's like, he's barbing clothes with a barb gun one minute next he's losing motor function. He's like all but falling down, held up by like his parasympathetic nervous system seems like, you would call it, but there's suspense he's like teetering and he is holding a sharp needle type gun thing and also he's on probation we think, for some serious drug thing, so we don't want him to like A hurt himself or B go back to jail and he's like singing and also crying sometimes and still having to like do manager stuff, like he has the key for voids, there's a key for it and only he is trusted among us to have it here tonight and later he will have to count the money and file like a report of some kind, all of which seem, uh, not accomplishable by the man's, um, parasympathetic nervous system, specially if the floor is like this much of a conundrum for him, now, and all of us are like, well, we can't, we are literally not allowed or trained to do this stuff and the other manager that's there, he has to leave he's not, he says he's not going to stick around, at like seven he's gone, so I'm thinking like, well, I could like maneuver his body but, really we should call someone, but that goes against like all of the things of like, and he's running. He's going out through the double doors of the back to where like customers are and surely, anyone even looks at this man, it's game over and I go out after and it's like busy in there he's draped his body across a rack of new, outgoing clothes his shoe's coming off and I ask him, like, a question about the furniture I was trying to organize, in the warehouse, he's like, I got to show you something in the bathroom. I'm thinking like, well it's the drugs he's gonna invite me to do drugs in there, and we get in he's like, the stall, and I say man, what. I get in with him his eyes are crazy he's like, look, and on the seat of the toilet is a bootprint, part of a bootprint of like dirt on the seat and I look at his shoe, he's got one, sneaker so like, then he points up to the ceiling, the drop panel, and it is askew a little, scalene of black and he asks me, he asks, do I think, do you think anybody is up there? I say naw man, like. I think it's wires, and fifteen minutes later, he's totally fine.
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Man at Goodwill ask, do we have any more of this shoe in the back. A different size maybe. I say no, explain to him what Goodwill is. He process the information. He put the shoe back. Look confuse about everything. Like who am I what is my name. I am extra kind to people in the Goodwill. So often they have this look.
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