The furniture store advertised a sales job, so I applied figuring it would be easy work that could be done while high on fentanyl. It paid hourly plus a good commission and local people with money would be coming in to buy something spontaneous they decided they needed today, putting honest money into my pockets.
They called me back that afternoon.
“Is this Aiden?”
“Yes.” (Who else would it be? I gave you my phone number Boomer.)
“Thanks for applying for the job. Unfortunately, you don’t have the requisite experience selling cardboard facades over compressed sawdust, so we can’t hire you.”
“Okay.”
That night I gathered a few dozen of my political activist friends and we descended upon the store in darkness, wearing masks of course. Some brought bats, metal pipes, bricks, Molotov cocktails, and other improvised tools of protest.
It was a big mistake for the manager to tell me the furniture was made with cardboard and sawdust. I knew then what the weak link was to exploit for revenge against the oppressive economic system they were facilitating with their standards.
The protesters began smashing windows in the storefront showing off its wealthy products available for sale. Cars parked in the nearby street weren’t spared either. Their windows too were smashed and tires slashed. Spray-painted graffiti attached slogans and recorded criticisms of the social system keeping people down, to which car owners surely contributed.
The people who worked at the furniture store perpetuated terrible inequity while holding their positions of privilege over others, since they sold the products and others were forced to pay whatever price had been assigned arbitrarily to their goods. Since we were all equal, it would have been no skin off their back to let people have whatever items they needed, but they probably had never read Marx or thought much about the needs of other people. They just unfairly stole and cheated to get ahead and then locked others out from similar success.
How could humanity ever cultivate a progressive society unless there was mutual respect that gently offered help to others with an understanding that only together could we build up civilization to express our true unbridled potential?
A throng of protesters frantically rushed into the store through now naked window frames. The storeroom held literally acres of cardboard facade products imported from exotic Chinese factories taking more jobs away, but now their products were about to face ruin. While early protesters took bats to tables and cabinets, the next wave began with flammables.
Cars too were set on fire, eventually exploding after their security systems registered protest with flaccid alarms. Soon the whole block would be engulfed in flames. Everything around would be destroyed and would have to be rebuilt or abandoned, birthing a new ghetto that would gradually expand like a black hole unleashed into civilization.
They could have saved a lot of money if they hadn’t activated my need for social justice.