One application can change your life. That's enough idyllic asininity for one day. Once again, I'm searching for a job and hoping to break even. With 18 days before my store is set to close, the pressure is on and hopes for the near future are low.

The applications with tiny spaces and the ache of writer's cramp. The repugnant enthusiasm that comes out torturously. Applying at all those substandard shops and restaurants that we'd rather die than dine at. Answering stupid questions and groping for positive things to say about former employers. The hunt is on.

I'm reminded of bleaker times when embarrassment and failure were the order of every wasted day. During one three week period a few summers ago, I submitted more than 100 job applications. Every morning, I caught a bus to my next series of rejections. Under the broiling Texas heat for the duration of every business day, I went thirsty rather than drop 75 cents on a beverage.

I was dressed for success and verging on heat exhaustion. A pack of cheap smokes was my comfort while an empty wallet kept despair at the forefront. When the pressure of joblessness overwhelmed me, I might drop by a strip club during happy hour for all the free bourbon I could chug. I became a master of the research game. The bulk of my income came from focus groups, clinical trials, taste testing and product testing. Also, I sold many gallons of plasma. When these resources fell short, I resorted to a childhood pastime of selling personal belongings on the street.

I've always had the job that every worker loves to hate, but hatred pulls a 180 when the job is lost. On my current job-hunt thus far, I've been interviewed and rejected by the best in the grocery business. Target considered me for a position on my favorite shift; the primary responsibility was hanging price tags, which I am experienced with. This was an overnight job--no customers are allowed inside at night. After two smooth interviews, I was summarily told to screw off and die. Another candidate who I assume was my competition was sporting a wrinkled shirt and a slack-jawed expression complete with the ever-popular vacant stare. I should have guessed that speaking correct English and shaving would put me at a disadvantage.

A teenager I worked with at Albertson's comes to mind. He had an obsession with behaving like a toddler and abandoning his station at whim. Naturally, the same Target hired this little punk for a grocery position. Aside from the fact that he's a pre-pubescent jerk-off, I presume he has no grocery experience to speak of. Out of sheer jealousy, I detest the scrawny little bastard. Nothing new here; just the story of my disgruntled low-rent life.

Meanwhile, my store has descended into unadulterated Pandemonium. The closeout sale has attracted legions of North Dallas' cheapest, most vacuous lowlifes. In all my time cashiering at the metroplex's most unruly hellholes, I've never seen this degree of profoundly retarded customers and unbridled chaos on such a grand scale. Forty percent off does not make an item free--find me someone without a name-tag who grasps this concept. These tightwads of legend actually have me void off multiple items or entire orders because they aren't blissfully in love with their total. May I be so irrational as to suggest that when one buys 100 items, the balance may exceed $25? The voids I bothered to record Sunday night totaled $482.83. I stayed after close to help return 11 full carts of items that were decided against at the last minute. That would be perhaps 1,000 percent more returns than the pre-closeout usual.

Suffice it to say that I'm leaning on the bottle quite a bit more. The savage bedlam of closeout has given rise to a personal level of acerbic psychosis reminiscent of my drive-thru days. Mysteriously, I have yet to scream obscenity-laden death threats over the intercom and walk off the job. I just came off of an eight-day workweek. Another cashier is finishing with a nine-day damnation to self-check Hell. The great uncertainty of a cashier's life is not knowing how much more he can take.

My job hunt began as infinitely more promising than previous searches. It could have been a gateway to a life without cashiering. The quest for a better life has disintegrated into the scramble for economic survival that I expected. Will I be working the dire poverty 22-hour workweek that has become so popular among retail employers? Maybe someday I'll have a job without customers and the intellectual nausea of a fake smile. We should all be so lucky.