I recently got a job at Toys R Us, which is an excellent choice of employment on my part because I don't like children once they advance beyond the age where they learn to speak. I chose the job because at least half of the employees happen to be close friends and insisted that I apply. Now I get paid for standing around and doing what I would do in my spare time anyway, with the addition of the occasional soccer mom buying her three year old daughter Baby Bratz dolls. It's important to train them to be whores from an early age, after all. If our infants were crawling around without being coated in a thin layer of eyeshadow and red lipstick, I would feel like our values were being compromised. There has been a single instant during work that has been thought provoking, the rest of the time being filled by trying to sell buyer protection plans to customers in an attempt to make them pay more money to insure items they don't need insured. I have yet to figure out why it's necessary to ask someone if they want a fifteen month policy to cover their Rubik's cube, and don't want to interact with anyone that would agree to it in the first place.

This moment was fleeting, five seconds at most. While I was at the service desk asking one of the managers to perform some menial task, a woman walked by with her child in a stroller. The child could not have been more than a year old, but seemed somehow out of place. The look in her eyes was not the familiar one of excitement and wonder, but a complete lack of comprehension. The surrounding environment was completely foreign and unnatural, there was no genetic programming to prepare her for these sights. As she looked around with wide, confused eyes at the colorful devices it struck me how unnatural the whole process was. This infant did not want toys. She didn't know what a Barbie doll was. She wasn't craving the newest play set from Fischer Price. She had not yet learned to need these things like so many others have.

So based on that moment my job is quite clearly worthless and does nothing more than spread the materialistic and selfish mentality of humanity as a whole, but I already knew that from the beginning. I could approach that mother, who is oblivious to just how important that moment was, and insist that she not contaminate her offspring with advertising tactics and forced gender roles. That she maintain that confusion for as long as possible, because the store I work in shouldn't be allowed to make sense. I work as a purveyor of philosophical blindness, my sole purpose is to drag people as far away from Nirvana as possible. You need the new Hannah Montana CD, and yes I think she's a very talented singer. Your daughter would love the new My Little Pony doll, they're very popular with other girls her age. I strongly advise that you sign up for our credit card so that we may take over your life. The check is fine, we'll just need all your personal information so that the company can sell it to advertisers who will flood your mailbox with sales catalogs. If we send enough, you'll see another item that you need and you'll come back and give us more of your precious money. I am here to destroy the innocence of children and make your life even worse than it already is, but I do it with a smile. You get a wooden train just so that it's a fair trade, so enjoy it.

I imagine an exemplary cashier at a major retail outlet would do well in politics. We both hope that if we grin wide enough you won't notice the sodomy. I'm trained to look at you as a tool for making the company owners richer, so I'll sit through the orientation, say how customer service should be the number one priority, then get hired because it seems like I'll be a good employee. I leave out the details about how I only applied so I can work with Sam and joke around all day. Collect carts with Jason and treat it as a fifteen minute break while we stand around and laugh. Work in the games department with Nick and discuss the new games that are coming out. Customer service is just a secondary part of the job to me, but I put on the facade of caring about my work. My only goal is to get the customer away from me as fast as possible so that I can go back to doing something important.

Upon review, I end up as a decent employee who gets along great with his coworkers. I get paid for giving people the short-lived and meaningless satisfaction of knowing that there's one less thing they need to buy for their Christmas shopping. I would never dream of buying any of the items in the store for anyone, but if the customer insists I won't verbally question it. Inanimate objects are an important part of their existence, and they're willing to waste their lives away in an office so that they can return home and give their kid another thing he was complaining about so that he'll shut up for a few days. Children are just another obstacle, and I'm someone to help them overcome it. What a brilliant way of looking at the family unit.

That's all fine, and I could justify it by using misanthropy if I really wanted to, but that child in the stroller shakes the foundation. The mask slips off for a second and for a few minutes I think of myself as having been assimilated as part of the evil entity. I think to myself "Maybe there is something inherently wrong with what I'm doing, how can I rectify this situation?" Somehow, I have to balance out my version of good with their version of good. It may be a few minor things, but I can feel like I'm making a change in the end. If a mother asks if she should buy an item that complements another item, I'll use the opposite of suggestive selling techniques and insist that she not do so. One less item to occupy her toddler, maybe she'll have to use actual human interaction now. Whereas others would look at taking toys away from children as a bad thing, I look at it as a removal of distractions and an opportunity to glance at something real.

No more damned illusions, your money will never buy happiness so stop trying. Teach your child to read rather than relying on Dora The Explorer. Give your child some real music rather than this Disney bullshit. Reject false evolution and advance the path of primitive behavior rather than trying to cover it up. There's no point in being creative if it's handed to you in tangible form, use some imagination instead. A five year old doesn't need a $150 electronic space shuttle, just give him a cardboard box and tell him to figure it out. Stop buying my shit, I have no faith in it and you shouldn't either.