Working at The Great Satan for the past two days has given me a front row view of our economy. As a self-employed person without any co-workers, or mouths to feed, I’ve been so isolated from the realities of what people are faced with right now. It’s scary. People. Are. Hurting.

I work with a Mom who puts in a full day at the Great Satan, then walks over to HellMart to work, because she can’t feed her family on HellMart’s generous $8.25 an hour. Another woman I work with is an EMT in real life. A guy in my department took the job despite a 30 mile commute, because the hardware store he used to work for laid him off. Another gal I spoke with has been out of work since April of ’08, after getting laid off from CitiBank. There are people so overqualified for this work, it’s insane. I feel so humbled and fortunate to be there by choice.

Meanwhile, management plays shuffeboard with the worker bees’ lives. The group I was hired in with got our hours changed, and our job roles too. They told us on our first day; we could live with it, or leave. There’s a thousand more behind us.

Everyone is calling this a recession, but this is more like a depression. I look around that warehouse, and so many people appear exhausted.

As I stood there doing my job today, I saw thousands of expensive gadgets and gizmos pass before me. With each new order, I kept wondering; who’s buying this stuff?