How I sliced my finger on my way here

By Sophie Dufresne 

I sliced my finger as I was cutting bread this morning while making a sandwich for my lunch since I have to go to work after this meeting. I work at Canadian Tire as an order picker, which is the only position that doesn’t require customer service, but customers always bombard me with questions. It’s very overwhelming—I’m pretty sure I have social anxiety because I freeze every time someone asks me a question, like the time I was talking to a coworker who works in customer service and they asked me how long I plan on working here. They added they had only originally planned on working here while they were taking time off university, but they somehow fell in love with working at Canadian Tire and want to do this for the rest of their life. I didn’t hide my surprise. I told them I panic every time a customer asks me a question and I can’t imagine doing that as my job for an extended period of time. I told them I would quit after a week if I had their job—in hindsight, I realize this may have been a bit insensitive, but I never really had a way with words. Maybe they like this place because of the pride flags that are everywhere? Honestly, it makes me sick when corporations use pride flags to manipulate their employees into submission. Because that’s what rainbow capitalism does. Corporations don’t care about queers, they just care about appealing to us in order to better exploit us. I wish people saw it as it is: culture appropriation. It’s culture appropriation when corporations use the symbol of the rainbow to appear less heartless. Honestly, Slavoj Žižek was right about nice bosses: they’re worse than mean bosses because they get you to lower your guard around them and next thing you know, you’re doing favours for your boss or worse yet, you’re changing your career goals to align with theirs. When a boss is mean, at least their subordinates know they’re being exploited and won’t go the extra mile to help their boss profit off their own hard work. But nice bosses exploit their subordinates twice as much as mean bosses do, as they hide their exploitative intentions behind a friendly smile and a pride flag. The friendlier your boss is, the more they are hiding from you. That’s why I hate every single pride flag in my workplace with every bone in my body and I will not fall victim to rainbow capitalism. At least normal capitalism is the perfect breeding ground for a revolution—Karl Marx was right. The machine of capitalism will destroy itself if left to its own means, but the process will be slowed if attempts are made to better this corrupt, evil system. Rainbow capitalism is doomed to collapse, but it is no fuel for revolution; hence why its collapse will take infinitely longer. But its collapse is desperately needed now, what with human rights being torn away around the world as we speak. I just wish my coworker understood this so they could finally quit and pursue their real dreams instead of becoming another brainwashed corporate slave. Sorry, what was your question? Oh yes, how did I get the cut on my finger? Well, long story short, it was by chopping bread.