Third and Pine III: Black Friday.

Clearance sales on commotion.

This essay is part three of a short series of essays about my time working at Macys in downtown Seattle during the 2008 recession. There are a few people briefly referenced in this piece that are first introduced in these two essays.

The line curled past the pastry case, down the freshly mopped stairs, and around the block like an endless human centipede. You could argue this was less violent than a human centipede, the stitches of torture less obvious, the mouths free to joke, yell, and complain about 60% off clearance sales on button-downs. But the look in their eyes betrayed an equal longing for freedom, a mind-curdling amount of psychic pain compacted into a string of reusable shopping bags.

At Macy’s Tastebar, Black Friday was always a blackout day. It wasn’t “blackout” in the colloquial sense. We weren’t pounding Four Lokos in an alley until we uploaded a heinous Facebook photo album. We weren’t sipping fresh Coquito while decorating the main floor’s Christmas tree. We weren’t finishing up day-old Thanksgiving wine while binge-watching House.

No, Black Friday was officially a Blackout Day in the work calendar, meaning: employees weren’t allowed the day off. Occasionally there were exceptions, but they had to hustle requests off months ahead, and it required legally viable trauma (death, disability) in order to merit acceptance. I never felt jealous of the few free employees because I perversely would choose to work Black Friday, not just at Macys, in earlier years at a movie theater, in later years at another cafe and at an Italian restaurant.

Working a shift only felt like Black Friday at Macy’s, where the entire store is dedicated to manic sales and choreographed capitalism. I’d arrive by 5AM, dead-eyed off the fluorescent depression of the 358 Bus. I’d wriggle into my oversized polo, my under-laundered apron, and take the elevator to the sixth floor where the kitchen was tucked away. Putting a kitchen on the sixth floor for a cafe on the first floor is pathological, it creates a glacial commute every time scones need to be refilled. And on Black Friday, the scones always need to be refilled, employees and shoppers alike need fuel to propel them through stampedes of low-cut jeans and parkas. The masses are already pissed off and hungry, even at 4AM, even before doors are open, even before they’re awake.

As I heard the slow-motion DING of the elevator, I considered the merits of disowning everyone I love so I’d never approach holiday shopping with this vigor.

But the silence of the kitchen calmed my hatred.

Those few hours before opening the metal gate, with large pans and slow thawing frozen dough, with my stringy headphones drowning out the Pandora Christmas playlist bolstered me with the psychic fortitude to plaster on an edgy smile between coffee pots. This psychic smile turned into a real and cursed smile, one of adrenaline, as doors opened and lines strewn in.

The regulars who didn’t work at Macy’s or nearby stores stayed away, except for Bobby. He would sit, as always, in the corner of the cafe with a full newspaper and one small drip coffee. Bobby lived in and out of neighboring shelters, and due to the nature of the streets, brushed shoulders with Sean Penn and his crew. Cops often profiled him when they were “cleaning up” but he was sober, and the only rapport he kept with Sean Penn was of neighborly survival.

Before M Train kicked town, he and Bobby regularly got into philosophical discussions. I once overheard them name-drop Beckett as they discussed the futility of life. Their unlikely affinity was forged through a mutual understanding of the loner life. M Train would disappear in the literal sense, on benders up and down third street, weaving through Pioneer Square, circling Ivars, and eventually to California. Bobby would disappear before your eyes, camouflaging behind a newspaper, writing down numbered observations of the city he both loved and hated. He told me he got his MBA twenty years earlier, but life happened, and once life happens you can’t stuff it back into a box. There are just more boxes and overflow. I never asked follow-up questions, unless he suggested one.

The ice first broke for us months after I’d started working. He was introverted, traveled alone, and I didn’t want to puncture that sacred solitude even if we exchanged cups daily. It wasn’t until he saw me sketching at the end of a shift and asked to see my drawing, that we peeled back another layer. The ultimate layer was peeled, however, when he waved me down during a walk to The Market. We exchanged a hello — he was on his way to read by the water, and where was I going? Well, I was going to see if the Living Statue was out, because I had a crush on him, because I knew who the statue was. He was a guy I’d briefly gone to school with, and I found it mysterious and ideal that he could paint himself silver and stand still so long. Bobby reasonably assumed I was kidding. So when he realized I was dead serious, I heard him cackle for the first time.

“That’s what you’re into? THAT’S what you’re into?”

He was holding his stomach, bent over in a full wheeze. My absurd and humiliating taste in crushes broke a wall of formality between us.

Moving forward, he’d bring it up in a whisper: “Did you see your statue? Did he move for you? Did you wake him up?”

I had a sense of humor about it. But the statue never moved for me, so I never had satisfying news for Bobby.

Given his propensity for spectacle, Black Friday was too action-filled for Bobby to miss out on. So while the cafe’s vibe was a haunting Tom Six movie drowned in muzak, he was comfortably parked in the corner, taking in the gore of consumerism with invisible popcorn.

Janice would glide in, positively energized by the chaos, predicting the commissions she’d make, critiquing coworkers for not keeping up with her Michael Phelps-speed strokes across the store. She’d roast customers for their novice indecisiveness, you gotta be revved AND gassed up if you’re going to enter the shopping race.

G would manage the cafe with an energy I could only attribute to cocaine. He gave all his credit to Crossfit and Acai bowls, but I assumed the spirulina in his cupboard was laced with medical grade steroids. He was high-fiving the staff, regulars, and even first time customers. Occasionally, I’d be ordered to give someone a free star cookie (dry sugar cookie that tastes like purgatory) because they bought enough patterned ties to build a parachute. G would leap out from behind his backroom office, and embrace the super-shopper with the emotional intensity of a soldier finally returned to his family.

Black Friday shifts were minimum 9 hours, but I’d work a double and squeeze out 12-16 hours. The bathrooms were always decimated to a point that feels cruel to describe. The cafe tables were adorned with fresh scratches from shoppers too stressed to fully sit, toggling their keys out and under their bags, winter sunglasses flying, chairs nearly tipping to the ground. There were calms amidst the storm, a 30-minute swell of slowness before a new wave hit the pastry case.

Marcia would arrive with a fresh blow-out, optimistic enough to inspire hope for survival, but cynical enough to be relatable. She’d bring free perfume samples, and mixed with the cafe the smells they created an arid punch of coffee-sweat-gardenia. She’d bemoan the tense dynamics between teen daughters and their moms, arguing over which cosmetics were necessity and luxury.

“I’ve learned,” she said, “to work as a sounding board. I am there, but not too there.”

Her job was more mediation than sales, her innate ability to play peacemaker more useful than years on the commission floor.

Given the sheer speed of things, the day flew by until 5pm, at which point the 12-hour brick of exhaustion hit like an anvil. The windows showed early darkness, a precursor to solstice, and sleepy lines of shoppers were no longer motivated. The human centipede wanted to sleep, alone, separated from its flock, but was forced to keep floating dissociatively through The Lists. Any death-by-trampling in the evening would be done in slow motion, and it would for once be the victim’s fault. Whatever horrifically unbalanced mix of cookies and coffee I consumed as fuel would leaden my bones into deadweight, and all the ingredients for sandwiches would be fresh out.

Those last few hours I felt more than a crush, but a kinship with the Living Statue, painted and still, waiting for the crowds to disappear so he could pack up his silver box, wash his face, and go the fuck home. Sadly, for me (and Bobby), the Living Statue, wasn’t outside by the time I got off work, he was already reheating leftovers.