Break Room Thoughts: Keeping Watch Over Your Own Life
Multiple years on this job. Years walking the same aisles, watching the same doors, nodding at the same regulars who came in for milk and eggs and left with a wave. He liked the work. He liked being someone people trusted to keep things calm. But lately something had been gnawing at him, quiet and persistent, like a itch he couldn't quite place.
He wanted more. Not more money necessarily, though that would be useful. More purpose. More growth. He kept hearing that phrase in his head, level up, like he was stuck on some early stage of a game and refusing to hit continue.
The problem was he didn't know what was actually stopping him. Was it fear? Comfort? The simple fact that routines are heavy things and hard to lift once you've been carrying them for years?
He thought about his shift supervisor, a woman named Rita, who had gone back to school at forty two and now ran loss prevention for six stores. She always told him the same thing when he asked how she did it. She said the barrier is rarely the world telling you no. Usually it's you telling yourself not yet.
Marcus turned that over in his mind. Not yet had been his answer for a long time. Not yet to the security certification course. Not yet to asking about the assistant manager training program. Not yet to a hundred small doors he could have walked through if he'd just reached for the handle.
He pulled his phone out and opened a browser tab. Typed in the certification program Rita had mentioned once in passing. He didn't sign up yet. But he bookmarked it.
Sometimes leveling up doesn't start with a leap. It starts with admitting the wall is mostly made of your own hesitation, and deciding today is the day you stop calling it permanent.
His radio crackled. Break was over. He stood up, tossed the empty up, and walked back out onto the floor, feeling just slightly lighter than when he'd sat down.