A Gloomy Week

There was a lot of sad work stuff going on this week as there was a staff restructuring, resulting in several long-time employees being laid off. This contributed to a grim mood in the store, and a lot of extra work to pick up from remaining employees. Our head cashier, who had worked there 12 years and also trained me when I started, was the hardest to lose. It is so strange and sad to be without him now. Through it all I just kept plugging away, having the most hours for any work week since I started there and learning two new positions in the store. I’m hoping that the layoffs will stop now for awhile and the rest of us can continue on doing our best. My boss didn’t want to speculate on the future of the store, and I realized it didn’t matter specifically to me. This is what I like to do and what I want to do while I’m still going to school, and this is what I’ll keep doing until I can’t any more. I would like to make a special urgent plea to consumers out there: Buy your books from book stores, and not from Amazon or Wal-Mart. Bookstores are becoming an endangered species at this point, and it falls on us book buyers to shop responsibly if we want to continue to have bookstores to go to.

So all this was going on when I woke up the other day to see there’d been another school shooting, this time in Florida. Why we as a country continue to allow this to happen when there are so many things we could do about it leaves me baffled and sad. We’ve seen where other countries have taken action and seen improvement. My opinion has always been if there is anything in the world we could possibly do to even remotely maybe stop at least one person from being shot then why wouldn’t we want to try it? My poor sister in Mississippi was so upset and so anxious about it I got a midnight message from her telling me how much she loved me and how she hopes I’ll be careful while on campus at PSU. My newsfeeds for days have all been about the shooting on social media. When I turned on NPR I heard interviews with survivors. This is all happening yet again, and yet again the dialogue is happening about what we’re going to do about it, and I worry that yet again nothing will be done….