[1256] Sample Size

Of the 30-ish small, part, or full-time jobs I’ve had in 23 years, handing out food samples isn’t one I thought I’d be writing about in a dedicated way. The first instinct is always to contextualize and list my previous jobs or accomplishments. There’s a “shame,” in a sense, that I would find myself, ever, doing something like standing in place for 6 hours, parsing chips, jerky, or cold brew coffee into little cups.

It’s all self-imposed. I know how to reframe on a dime. After all, I’m doing the noblest thing my sick and pathetic country pretends to respect. Working! I dressed the part, showed up on time, followed instructions, and await my $240 for 2 6-hour days doing something that also allowed me to power through a giant podcast backlog simultaneously. My coworkers were nice, customers inspiring in a way I will digress on shortly, and in comparison to the thousands of rocks I shoveled with my dad on a grave he was hired to maintain, I’ve certainly put myself through considerably more work for $100 recently. (He also took me out for a baller lunch steak, so, you know, my dad’s cooler than yours.)

My ADHD self is not equipped to stand/sit still. The first 2 times I’ve signed up to hand out samples, I didn’t have the podcasts in my ear. I got by chatting with coworkers, dancing out, play-boxing with the food around me, and finding “creative” ways to wipe down and clean the cart. As the bounds of my sanity get tested, I move towards crowd-work. Often, I get a smile or laugh. Awkwardly, I get zero acknowledgement at all. But there’s this sensitivity and fragility that presents itself in the moment sometimes.

Sam’s Club is like a family spot. There’s so many kids I don’t think I would have otherwise noticed except for their very different posture in the approach and/or ability to grab a sample. Then there’s the parents who almost insist their child take in whatever clearly unhealthy thing I’m pushing. I appreciate the ones who have internalized early that stopping and waiting and asking for permission. It’s nice to see. I seriously wonder about the parents who hand their child something they clearly have no capacity to even hold.

Then there’s the “let me touch every piece of food reaching for one cup in particular” type. These people are under the impression that food taken from a package at the same time as other food is actually fresher in the back. Invariably, they will have extremely dirty, like cartoonishly gross fingernails and/or open sores on their hands really emphasizing how much you can’t just let it go what they’ve touched along the way.

Mostly, though, it’s the weird oscillation between people insisting they say “hi” or nodding as they walk by, and those who don’t register you’re standing there at all. You’re in the flow of a thousand people’s weekend errands. Your status as the bringer of potentially tasty free noms is explicitly indicated well before they actually arrive at your booth. Your existence as a person altogether equally indicated.

It’s the definition of a job that could/should be taken over by a machine. The gig doesn’t even work for Sam’s. The handful of people asking me where things are in the store, and I’m like…I don’t even work for the company on my hat, technically. I remember as a kid being wildly excited about Sam’s Club samples. You can feel the institutional knowledge that has kept it a sizeable franchise for so long. You bet your ass my lunch every day I worked there was between $2 and $5 to get full from their cafeteria.

My supervisor really liked me. She was so thankful they didn’t have to really train or babysit me. She liked that I was polite and on time. She was relieved that I could read the instructions, operate a 3-bin sink, and innovatively served iced coffee, get this, on ice, layering the cups.

Because I’m back to normal broke, 3 shifts, 6 hours a day, 45 minutes away, technically, pays my monthly bills. It’s why I may continue to do it as a side job. I still don’t have running water, which is probably around $2,000 to get fixed unless I discover a magically cheap way to safely pull and repair my own well. I owe my dad about that much as well. I’d like to throw a few grand to a couple friends for work on my car and support in my business endeavors. The bear-minimum isn’t going to cut it.

Incidentally, I think I just got hired onto a new counseling job at 35/hr, independently contracted, in which the executive director already sent me the forms to fill out for direct deposit and logging into their billing system. If it’s not a raging dumpster fire, I could potentially make all the money I just talked about needing in a month of full-time. Full-time counseling, maybe casework, or maybe crafting the team she discussed wanting to build to help scale what sounds like a massive influx of cash they just got. I could work somewhat remotely. I can craft my own lesson plans and hours. It sounds like an improvement on the model of a similarly sized company I had to quit when they just kept hacking away at my paycheck and killing everything I built.

I talked with the executive director for an hour, and she both emailed and called me within a day or 2 of me filling out the application. This was already a good sign. I’ve had to beat on doors, proverbially, for weeks/months to get hired on at places allegedly desperate to hire. I’ve spent a week “on-boarding” because they couldn’t be bothered to send a pre-populated email with digital forms. The basics appear to be in place here already, and those in social work long enough know when like recognizes like when you’re talking expectation setting and drama navigating, so clicking on that level quickly did not register as superficial and going-through-motion-y.

I’m not ashamed to do gigs. I’m ashamed of the country I live in where someone as educated, motivated, and capable as me is often finding himself wholly adrift, feeling behind, and lost in ambivalent woods. I know what that means for people less capable than me. I know what that means for those who don’t have a dad who will offer a spot to help him with his extra income job, then feed them robustly without hesitation.

I knew, somewhere, sometime, a job like this one was incoming. My temporarily embarrassed, slightly impoverished or inconvenienced state is, in the righteous telling, a choice about what I won’t do for money. It’s significantly moreso a choice than it is a story of my irresponsibility, disregard, or laziness. I’ve had plenty high-enough-ish paying jobs to keep pulling in funds if I was willing to explicitly destroy what I value about myself or how I learned to care about other people.

Knowing it’s a choice to gig, and knowing how I get there, is an important step-by-step story of agency and the salience of consequences. If I don’t feel like I’m “doing the right thing,” I get very, dangerously, angry. I get self-destructive. Manipulation tips from “tempting” to “practical.” I don’t ultimately really want to be here or alive if I push the conclusions all the way through. I’m erasing myself. I’m lying. I’m so inconsistent so as not to be able to recognize myself. That’s a terrifying and dark place to be.

My “energy” or “awareness” is born of a certain through-line you might identify through everything I write, job I work, and goal I set. I don’t get to just pop in and out of being like the littlest particle. I need to exist somewhere in the noise the whole time, or I seek annihilation. I may not have the whole picture of the many levels on which I can exist, but I can certainly recognize when I’m under attack. Better stated, I’m always under attack, and I can tell when fighting the wrong fight is destined to lose.

This is why I maintain my sense of self relative to time, my relationships, and my interests more than my job or money. This is why I turn inward and contemplative when I recognize I can talk to a dozen people that day, and none of them will be capable of hitting that “real” place without seriously destabilizing their mental health or self-conception. They didn’t come that day to discuss the precarity of gig work, and I’m not offering them the revolution.

It’s “normal” to come to a giant warehouse and pick up a box of crackers that will feed you for months. It’s normal to be tickled pink by the silly joke over the flavor of the latest Dorito. I’ve been in Terre Haute. I’ve seen More U.S.A. and gun t-shirts and hats than anyone should ever have to. It’s normal for these folks to think nothing of what the government they voted for is doing in the background to kill hundreds of thousands overseas as they walk their 75“ TV out on a pallet cart. You could be accused of being in your sober and sound mind just carrying on like it’s a normal Sunday after church milling about the food library in your nicer clothes.

The control that capital has to put us under a spell is amazing. I’m not in that store unless I need money. Many overheard conversations are about the money saved by buying in bulk. It’s a wonder if those who hesitate and question whether they can really take the free sample, are they so caked in capital dynamics, they feel wrong or scared if it doesn’t cost something? Somewhere inside, they just can’t believe it!

And they’re right. You gotta be a member. You might be denied by the flimsy authority bestowed upon me by my hat and apron. What a curious thing it is to witness a dozen people eyeball the treasure on the tray as they slowly creep on by. Then, as if by licensing hoard, to swarm behind an emboldened sampler who heard about how these Doritos are healthy and they’ve been meaning to try them! I sold something like 40 bags, if you think millions spent on bliss points of flavor don’t sell themselves. Audible expressions of joy and the sentiments about the deliciousness did abound.

Simple food for simple folk. Simple consumer role to occupy. Simple jobs. Simple asks. Bound up in infinitely complex power and need dynamics, but if you value new chips, it does a lot of the heavy lifting and cuts through the noise.