June 1, 2047

I received some fantastic news today. It seems Walmart has some type of pension plan in place for its loyal longtime workers. Our personnel manager gave me a whole package explaining what I was entitled to and though I only briefly skimmed it, a date jumped out at me. June 1, 2047 is the day when I, at age 65, can retire. I believe I had what Oprah refers to as an "Aha Moment". Or in this case, it was more of a "Holy Shit! Moment". It dawned on me that if I don't leave, I'll still be here. Ellen, the personnel manager, also congratulated me on my five years with the company. She told me that she had already ordered me a new 5 year name badge and promised that there would be some type of presentation at the morning meeting. I said, "No thanks" and that I'd rather mourn privately.

The advantages of this new badge are that it's silver and sparkly. The disadvantage is that it says "5 Years" which roughly translated means "things sure didn't turn out the way I planned". Also disadvantageous, it's sparkly visage attracts customers who think they've struck gold to have found such a seasoned professional to answer their questions. This renders useless my standard go-to response for all customer inquiries: "I don't know. I just started yesterday.

In related news, five years is the length of time I've been threatening people with facial mutilation apparently. When customers exit the fitting rooms, I always offer to take the items they don't want to buy. I have been saying "I'll take your nos" which, it was only recently pointed out to me, sounds exactly like "I'll take your nose". Looking back now, there has been a trend of people stepping back and protecting their faces when confronted with this offer. On those occasions, I usually thought they hadn't heard me so I would advance towards them and repeat it louder, "I'LL TAKE YOUR NOS!"