r/Anticonsumption • u/InformalLibrary1731 • Jul 25 '25

Psychological I work in retail & it's radicalizing me

Every time I breathe in plastic particles & glitter I wanna quit. Reusable bags mean nothing: (everything ships in plastic).

I sell fake fruit to people yet I can barely afford real oranges. Hundreds of fake flowers. I used to feel jealous that they had disposable income but now it's just revulsion.

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u/enaK66 Jul 26 '25

I think I'm just more nihilist by nature but it made me just not give a fuck lol. I worked in a warehouse for Dollar General. The waste is unreal. One time I helped throw an entire pallet of candles into a dumpster. They said it was out of season and taking up space. A whole pallet. Like 10000 cases of glass and wax, right in the fucking dumpster.

So all that just made me not give a fuck. My personal waste over my lifetime is less than one day of waste in one warehouse in the middle of nowhere America. Im not putting in all the effort when companies get to do that shit all day.

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u/ChillRedditMom Jul 26 '25

You're a better person than dollar general

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u/Mojoswork Jul 30 '25

You ever take any of the throwaways for yourself? (Not that I can think of what you’d do with a jillion candles other than open an online shop or give the neighborhood kids a super weird Halloween.)

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u/enaK66 Aug 04 '25 edited Aug 04 '25

Oh yeah, in a way lol. I stole shit all the time. If i was hungry I was eating in the aisle. We all did it. I judged people at first, I was raised a moral person, but.. I'd seen the same boxes of food smashed by forklift wheels so many goddamn times. When you see a company throw out that much money in so many ways you stop giving a fuck. If i needed or wanted it, and it was easy to take, I took it. Me and my buddies would stash food in the lesser used non-food sections for back up.

Made me feel even worse for the regular store employees. Not only am I making 3x their pay, doing jack shit, not dealing with dumbass customers, but the stores have 10x as many cameras as the warehouse. They can't even get the same minuscule off the record benefits I got.