Working At American Apparel- Diary, October 2006

I used my fake ID and hustled a job working at that stupid preppy American Apparel shop that recently opened last Saturday. Who was I pretending that I could do it. I managed 3 shifts and then made up some stuff about family problems and just stopped answering their calls. I really don’t fucking care about block primary colors or how much East London kids love the band The Teenagers. It’s not worth £6.80 an hour to endure it. I have to pay a £5 debit card minimum to get my fucking coffee in my lunch break and normally while unemployed I’d never question it, I stood there thinking Jeez! This coffee is a an hour of what I’ve just been doing?! I worked for an hour for a coffee and an Innocent Smoothie that I chucked in just to meet the card-minimum? Its not the price of the coffee that bugs me, it’s getting paid £6.80 an hour to endure the vibe of American Apparel. I stand there (mainly pretending) to sift through Small, Medium and Large, then look at the clock and realize only 20mins has gone- and my mind tells me You’ve just made £2.266666666 for this shit. I could take that from a wallet and not even feel bad. £6.80 is not even a pair of jeans at Primark. It’s not even 6 Fillet O'Fish at McDonalds. Its pasta shapes and frozen peas for the rest of my life from the economy line of Aldi. How boring to sift through the same clothes every day, in the hope, the delight that you might find an extra deep v neck in a medium that needs to be returned to the stockroom, where maybe I can cheekily sneak in a snack or hopefully, some arsenic.

The kids there are so fucking into it- sweet I’l give them that, but when the (albeit lovely) American girl Vanessa came up to me with a ‘dilemma’ (yes! I thought, gossip!) that she did not know whether to start her rainbow rail of men’s t-shirts on black (then its not eye-catching Riva ..) or yellow (then I’m missing aubergine in a medium and it just does not work!!)  Fuck me Vanessa, who the fuck cares. Just put them in a pile on the floor and kick them. Get out your lighter and burn them. Take the plastic wrapper off the t-shirt and use it to smother to death every single Mexican orphan that sweated to manufacture these clothes in “Downtown LA”. Play some really cool east London alternative music like The Teenagers to cradle them into their deaths. I won’t even tell anyone what you did Vanessa. As long as you promise to never, ever make me go to American Apparel.