by Joseph Vanburen

Created on: January 02, 2009

The Dead Among Us

The dead walk among us; I've seen them, and you have too whether you realize it or not. Considering their abundance, you might even be one of them.

I've seen them, sluggishly slithering through the public, dragging their feet. Their blank eyes stare past everything as they seek satisfaction, their arms outstretched to grab that which they desire. Though their senses seem to be dulled, they somehow know that I am not one of them, and they advance towards me. A slur of semi-coherent syllables pours out of their mouths, a disturbing sound in the vicinity of language. They've come to steal my life away, yet I must deal with them. My paycheck depends on it.

My employer wants me to refer to them as customers, but I know the truth. They are zombies. Human bodies lingering between life and death, aimlessly walking around, driven by the instinct of survival, seeking sustenance with no regards to consequence. They drain me to the point of mental and physical exhaustion as I attempt to figure out how to get rid of them. They never go away, however, and in fact seem to multiply over time.

The grim reality behind the grocery business shows itself in the terminology the associates use. While stocking the store, any item that cannot go to the shelf yet is incorporated into a backroom storage stockpile known as dead stock. When the managers change the displays to make room for the current week's sale items, they say they are killing the ends. Every employee must have a gun in order to price the items on the shelves. Anything that cannot be completed during the course of the day is left for the guys on the graveyard shift.

Violence and death: the underlying themes that drive a business designed to make money off of people's necessities to live. It makes sense. After all, everything that people eat is the remains of something that was once living. We have to kill in order to go on living; that's the cycle of life.

In light of this observation, I feel justified in referring to customers as zombies. In everyday life, many of these people (though definitely not all of them) are normal, intelligent human beings. Something happens, however, in the brain of the average person while they are shopping. Apparently, it takes so much of the mind's attention and ability to make shopping decisions that certain mental links, which would normally be considered common sense or second nature, seem to be shut off.

If you've ever worked in retail or grocery, you probably know what I'm talking about. If not, pay attention next Christmas season. While doing your shopping, just look around at the other customers in the stores. Observe the way they wander, mindlessly, as if controlled by nothing but instinct. Watch the erratic frenzy as they all compete to obtain more things for reasons they don't even understand or bother to think about. See the glazed glare in their eyes, but don't look too deeply, lest you fall victim and become one of their kind.

Never mind, you probably already are.

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