Village Corner Comments
By Micah Holmquist
September 15, 1999
Since as long as I can remember I have loved comic books. One of my favorite places to buy comics was an odd and funky party store in Ann Arbor, MI called the Village Corner (VC). Not only did the VC have a wide selection and charge less than the cover price but they also got the comics substantially sooner than I could get them in my hometown. For these reasons visiting Ann Arbor usually meant picking up a few comics from the VC.
I still remember buying a slew of Uncanny X-Men and X-Factor comics there in the summer of 1991. At the time these were my favorite titles and the issues that I got there were completing a very pivotal story line. I lovingly recall riding home with my parents that night and reading those comics. Eventually I realized that it was quickly becoming dark outside and that I had two more issues left. Could I finish both issues that night? Certainly not if I savored both of them and read them at the leisurely pace they deserved. So I read one and wound up squinting my eyes to finish it. The next morning I promptly woke up and finished the last comic. It was great experience.
I could have bought those comics anywhere but I didn’t. I bought them at the VC in Ann Arbor and for that reason the store had a special place in my heart. In the fall of 1996 I moved to Ann Arbor in order to attend the University of Michigan and by that time I was not regularly reading comics. Nor was the VC selling them. The expansion of the direct market comic shop —a trend that would not last- meant that a small party store could not really compete in selling comics. I believe that it was slightly before I moved to Ann Arbor that the store ceased carrying comics. Nonetheless there remained a special place in my heart for the VC.
About one year ago, in the fall of 1998 specifically September 16, I began working at the VC. (I started referring to the store as the VC shortly after I started working there, as that is common term amongst employees.)
My initial training session covered working the register but quickly after that I started working almost exclusively at stocking groceries during the day on Thursdays and the beverage cooler at night. This pattern may have been a groove and it may have been a rut but it did not seem all that bad at first. I enjoyed going to work on Thursdays, carting groceries into the store, and then pricing them. I also enjoyed stocking the cooler with beer, pop, and other drinks. It was fun to be able to dress up in warm clothes no matter what and I really got into the whole beverage industry. Although I was nothing more than an entry-level person, I took a great deal of pride in my work and strived to do a good job. In that sense the job was often satisfying. Furthermore virtually all of the other employees were cool and, while the pay was by no means high, I was getting regular raises. All in all it was good job that I liked doing.
There was a downside, however. Or perhaps it would be more correct to say that were several negatives about the job that became increasingly apparent as I continued to work there. One was that I often had to work late at night. The store closed at 1 a.m. Sunday through Thursday and at 2 a.m. on Friday and Saturday. At first this made it difficult for me to get up and around the following morning. With time this problem began to ease but working late till took a toll on me. More important was the simple fact that neither beverages nor groceries are my area of expertise or even particular interest. There were several times that I said or thought to myself that I needed to get a new job. During a phone call with my mother I even remember once saying "I needed to find a job where I can respect myself." That comment was certainly far too strong both in terms of the reality of the situation and my own state of mind. That said it did reflect my desire to get a job that was better suited to my interests and talents. To that end I applied at some book and cd shops but to no avail.
This disappointed me but not all that much. In many ways I was relatively content with my job, as there were fun moments. I remember one guy coming into the store this past July and asking what the best local brewed beers were. When I mentioned that we only carried one, he was quite surprised. From there he mentioned that Milwaukee, his hometown, had many microbreweries. Then we started talking his job as an instructor for the Harley Davidson motorcycle company. Eventually he invited me to go take a look at his bike and I did. Experiences like this made me feel good about my job and that I was not just a cog in the machine.
That said, around this time I was becoming increasingly frustrated and disenchanted with the VC. Starting in May, when I was no longer taking classes and thus could work a greater number of hours, I made a deliberate decision to request to work relatively more hours on the counter. The goal was to force me to become more social, not something that I am very good at when left to my own devices. Despite my request, the person in charge of scheduling only assigned me to work on the counter one night a week. Then after a couple of weeks I was put back in the cooler on even that night in order to arrange schedules because someone had quit. These things upset me but I stayed silent about this matter to everyone that I worked with and kept on believing that things would eventually turn around.
This situation would probably have continued indefinitely if not for the actions of a coworker named Ian. I do not know much about Ian. He fashions himself as being part of the "hardcore" music scene and I will assume that he is. Ian works at the VC around 40 hours a week and certainly enjoys drinking. He also often works the cooler and has the attitude that he is better at it than just about anyone else, especially me. Sometime in July —I don’t remember the date or even the part of the month- Ian publicly complained about the work that I did in the cooler. Ian said that he was tired of coming in with a hangover and having to work for a couple of hours. He was addressing me but others were clearly within earshot and he was speaking louder than usual. I can only assume that neither of these elements were an accident and that both were designed to draw attention to his complaints and make sure everyone knew that he did a better job that I did in the cooler.
I did not respond then nor did I respond when he did similar things in the future. This was probably for the best. What could I have said? It made no sense to deny the things that he was saying, as they may very well have been true. That, however, is not the point. The point is that even if everything he said was true, it was still not that big of deal or even out of the ordinary. I could point out equal if not greater problems in the work that he does. Furthermore I did not see why it was such a big deal that he had to do a couple of hours of work in the morning. Every time I worked in the cooler I spent a couple of hours arranging things. I considered it part of my job and something that needed to be done. Saying any of this would not have done any good though. So in response I only said that I was having trouble understanding how I could improve because he was not being very specific. I asked if he could be a bit more precise or make a list of the particular problems that he saw. Ian would never to commit to doing this. Despite my frustration, the situation did not worry me. I thought what I had done was the smartest move and that eventually the situation would just blow over. It wouldn’t.
In mid-August I left Ann Arbor for a couple of weeks because my lease had run out at my old apartment, my new lease had not begun, and I needed a break from the town. I of course took this time off from work as well and figured that everything was cool. Leading up to my vacation, Ian had continued to make pointed jabs at me in public but I shrugged them off figuring that it was all just about to end. One of the first things that I did after returning to Ann Arbor on September 6 was to go to the VC to check on my schedule. I saw the head manager, a woman named Amy, and she seemed genuinely glad to see me. Two days later when I went into the store to pick up a paper Amy informed me that I needed to come in either that night or the next night from 7 to 1 in order to be retrained. Although Amy did not explicitly say so, it was strongly implied that if I was not retrained that I would no longer work in the cooler. Ian would be the one to retrain me. Because I had a ticket to see Bruce Springsteen that night and another commitment for the next night, I initially hesitated but finally compromised and said that I could be in between 9 to 1 the following evening. That seemed to work out and I left smiling. I was furious.
Ian likes to think that he does the best job in the cooler but the truth of the matter is that he does a fast job by doing the easy things and ignoring everything else. It appears though that his speed does impress other people including managers. As I left the store that day my immediate and pressing thoughts were how could I convey this aspect of Ian’s work to others without looking petty and vindictive. Shortly after talking with Amy, I called my father who reminded me that I did not owe anything to the store or the people who work there. I began to think that maybe I should just quit the job. Not find another job and then quit but just quit. I would never be able to respond to Ian’s accusations.
As I said I had a ticket to see Springsteen that night and it was a great show. Springsteen and his band —that is the legendary E-Street Band- performed an exhilarating show that was just what I needed. During the concert Springsteen said that "I can’t promise you life everlasting, but I can promise you life right now" and that was exactly what he delivered. During the virtually non-stop three hours of music my mind never turned to the work situation. The energy and excitement captured me and kept me with in its firm grasp.
After the concert however my thoughts immediately turned back to my problems at the VC, but out of enlightenment not negativity. There has always been a tension in Springsteen’s music between the ugliness of everyday life and the dream of something better. Songs like "Thunder Road" and "Two Hearts" are powerful anthems for going fulfilling those dreams or at least finding meaning in the struggle to do so. For me, at this point in my life that meant quitting my job and, like I said, quitting it immediately.
Quitting a part-time job that a person has while attending college might not seem like all that big of a deal but I have rarely ever taken control of my life. Instead I have usually let others control my life. The key word there is "let" because rarely, if ever, have others deliberately sought to control me. Rather I have made decisions based on how I though others would act. I have given them the power to dictate what I should and shouldn’t do. Guilt has entered my head whenever I did anything else. This has become so much a trend that I have internalized this whole process and expect to act this way. And so in the back of my mind I kept thinking, yes it would be nice if I quit but I’m not really going to.
Further complicating the matter was my fond memories of buying comic books at the VC and how much I loved reading them. I felt that if I left that job that I would somehow invalidate those experiences. I also feared that somehow I would be spitting on all the good times and fun experiences that I did have while working at the VC by quitting. What would the people that I worked with think? Would I lose all of whatever contact I did have thus making the entire experience a wash. Obviously this is not a rational way of looking at the world but it was the perspective that I was coming from.
The following morning I had to be to work by nine. It was the day to stock and price groceries. I tried to be as pleasant and as happy as I could be while doing the job but I couldn’t stop thinking that I should really quit. Countless Springsteen songs about the drudgery of work and the joy of something new filled my head. It seemed clear that I should quit for the present and future but the tugs of my past would not give up. At around two p.m. or so I finished the shift and went about my business. Basically I felt that I would just put up with the situation because that is what I always do.
Around seven or so that night I began to have second thoughts. Due to an unrelated problem I did not attend my other engagement and so I had time to think. The thought of being retrained by Ian infuriated me and so I decided to go in early —around 8:30 or so- and say that I was unable to get out of my previous engagement. I did this, only to be pressed again as to whether I could come in later just to train for a little bit. I relented to this and also decided to ask Ian straight up what problems he saw with my work. Ian responded by rattling off the usual list of petty and unspecific details. Frustrated I responded by saying that I really did not know what separated any of these things from what he and other people did. I then mentioned a specific beverage that numerous times he had failed to stock numerous times on the shift before mine. To that his words literally were "What does that have to do with anything?" I shook my head in disbelief and said that I would be back in a couple of hours. Although more infuriated that usual, I was still in the mindset of defeat. I wanted to quit and a decision to do so seemed especially urgent but just could not bring myself to get fully behind the idea. I wanted to do it but did not feel that I could. Trapped is the word that perfectly described my feelings. It seemed virtually certain that here, like many other times, I would back down and take the easy, albeit more painful, way out. This time was different however.
It would be both fitting and corny to say that a Springsteen lyric convinced me to break out of my "cage." After all the lyrics to one particularly moving Springsteen song go:
You shot through my anger and rage
To show me my prison was just an open cage
There were no keys no guards
Just one frightened man and some old shadows for bars
It was not those lyrics at all, however, that caused me to face my fears. Rather it was a conversation with someone that I have known for about three years but have never been close friends with. That night while weighing my options and trying to convince myself to quit I talked to two friends and asked them what I should do. Both gave answers that basically boiled down to, you should quit if you want to. That’s not what I wanted or needed to hear. The third person, Abby, is someone that I met in the winter of 1996 while touring the University of Michigan and seeing whether I wanted to go to school there. Abby was a friend of someone that I knew from high school. I ran into Abby that night and we did the usual chatter about what was going on in each other’s lives. Because I could not get the job issue out of my head, I asked her what I should do. She responded quite plainly that I should quit. Abby did not say why I should do this nor do I really think she meant it to be a profound statement. Yet something inside of me clicked the instant that she said that. It became clear that I no longer wanted to work at the VC. This -not the particulars of the situation with Ian- was why I should quit. My period of employment at the VC ended that night. It ceased in my mind the instant I realized I no longer wanted to work there and then it ended officially later that night when I called and told Amy. Quitting in my mind was far more important than telling Amy because this was fundamentally about me. It was about no longer holding myself back.
A desire to protect the past and a fear of the future were fencing me in. Reality was not doing it. Responsibility was not doing it. Pride or feelings of self-worth were not doing it —this entire experience with Ian had pretty much chopped both of those traits off at the waist. I was holding myself back. Nothing was holding me back except my fear of the past and how others would react to me in the future.
I can not control the past. It has already happened. This is bad so far I want to correct past mistakes but, conversely, it is nice to know that I really can’t lose those good memories unless I decide that I no longer want them. Reading Uncanny X-Men and X-Factor comics in the summer of 1991 is something that I will never do again but that is fine. It was and that's what counts. That was life and it was and is one wonderful experience.
Nor can I control how others react. Making friends, establishing lasting friendships, and avoid needless conflict are all important but they lose their meaning when they are divorced from life itself and put on the pedestal of goals for their own sake. When I am older I want to be able to look back and remember my contacts with others but only because those contacts were with me, an actual person. It is impossible to make everyone happy or even please everyone that you interact with and care about. People can’t do this because we are incapable of ever understanding what exactly it is that others want from us. No person even knows what exactly it is that he or she wants form others. I may not fully know what I want out of life but I am able to synthesize and process all of the data available on the question. The best that I can ever hope to accomplish therefore is live according to the values and dreams that come from me.
They are. Life is.
(Just so that it is clear that there are no hard feelings, I decided to include a link to the VC's web site Just click on the mouse.
O.k. the real reason that I am doing this is that I want to rip off the cool mouse gif that the site has. The mouse is also prominently featured on the bricks and mortar store. Throughout my tenure I kept asking poeple when I would get to meet the mouse. Nobody really seemed to think that was funny. I would still like to meet him sometime so mouse if you are reading this -and I sincerly hope that you are- please send me a message at micahth@umich.edu . And I suppose that everyone else can use that address too.)