Some days the path is very clear but recently I’ve been struggling with how to proceed in my life. I think a recent trip to Office Depot, however, has helped me to clarify a few things.
I had arrived at the store in need of an ink cartridge for the printer as the old one had stopped working, as they always do, right in the middle of an important print job. Entering the vestibule from the sidewalk, I could see two men monitoring my arrival. One was tall, probably in his early fifties with styled graying hair, and his starched collar and clipboard quickly said ‘manager’ or ‘regional supervisor.’ The other man was young, average height, in short sleeves with various Office Depot badges and ribbons adorning his shirt. The men stopped talking as I walked through the sliding door and as if let off his line by the supervisor, the young man came bounding up to me like a dog set free in the park.
“What’s brought YOU to Office Depot?” he asked with fervor in his big eyes. His name tag said ALAN. My first reaction was to take a step back so I didn’t get muddy paw prints on my pants.
When I said I was there for ink he asked in rapid succession,
“What kind? What color? Do you know where it is? I can help you.”
As I was all ready moving towards the ink cartridge aisle, he leapt in front of me and led the way the remaining few steps. Now faced with thousands of choices, his eyes glazed over and he looked at me expectantly.
“It’s HP 74 I’m looking for,” I said, zeroing in on the area I needed.
He stepped in front of me, scanning the shelves and began to babble.
“Let’s seeeeeee…….HP 74…….Do…dododododo….HP 74…….dododododo…”
I leaned forward to select the voucher needed to take to the register but his hand shot out and grabbed one ahead of me.
“Here you go,” he said triumphantly with a nod of his head. “Just take that up front and someone will get that for you and you can be on your way unless there’s anything else I can help you find. Paper? Envelopes? Stamps?”
I said no, thanks for the help, and started towards the empty cash registers. Alan had a slightly panicked expression on his face. The tall man was looking around with a grim expression on his face. As a cashier appeared from behind them, both men intercepted her so that by the time she got to the cash register she all ready knew what I wanted, though she congenially double-checked as she pulled the cartridge off the shelf and rang me up. The two men walked past me out the doors. Finishing the transaction, I popped the cartridge box in my purse and left the store.
Outside, the two men were leaning on the brick wall in the shade. The tall man, who was staring out across the lot, seemed to not hear Alan who was waffling on about sales figures and computer programs. Once safely in the car, I started laughing. What had just happened in there? It was like something out of a sitcom. What was worse, it was like something out of a human resources role playing exercise on customer service. What was designed to make me feel attended to and valued left me feeling that I, too, was being watched by a man with clipboard and that my free will within the confines of the store was something to be challenged and subjugated.
(Take a minute to watch this clip from the very funny British series, Black Books. It started running through my head as soon as Alan descended on me!http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fyowdq4bVxQ )
The more I thought about Alan, I came to realize I stopped being him when I decided to pick up a paint brush and create. Once you consciously separate yourself from procedures and trends that regard you as a cog in the machine rather than as an ambassador of the message, then it becomes increasingly difficult to spin the spiel and dance the dance. The need to create something of your own and add your voice to the universal good becomes your trend, your procedure, your message. The desire grows to connect with yourself and others through colors, sounds, words and works, not because a man with a clipboard full of statistics says so but because it feels intuitively the right way to move forward. Despite the natural way of it, it’s not easy to be in today’s world as an artist and yet here I am, sensing that it might just be more beneficial to create something beautiful than to sell the most boxes of ink cartridges.
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