On through the cold days we press in a windowless meeting room of tarnished walls, practicing sales scenarios in front of the class, learning how to close, how to sell extended warranty, how to summon help when a sale is slipping away. Always, however, packaged in with the dark alchemy of sales secrets, are small parcels of company knowledge. We learn that our competitors are fat and weak, hiring separate staff to clean the store and maintain shelf displays. At Tomorrow Store, we save that cost by doing it ourselves! The class is nearly brought to it's feet cheering when our jovial instructor tells us how it is us who will clean the store and update the merchandise displays, to save the company money. I seem to be the only person who realizes that, as 100% commissioned sales people, we won't be getting paid anything for these activities. We also learn that having business cards to hand out to customers is highly recommended, but we'll have to provide our own, because Tomorrow Store is keeping costs down so they can pass the savings on to the customer. I'm charmed at how generous they are with my money.

Once I'm in the store and selling, I am introduced to all manner of horrors. We shout chants and mantras in the morning to get everyone pumped up. We are expected to exuberantly yell "excellent!" anytime someone asks us how we are doing. Oh yeah, and we aren't allowed to leave when the store closes. I quickly discover that, as soon as the store closes, the doors are locked and the store manager takes a position next to them. Anyone who wants to leave, since there are no customers in the store and they aren't getting paid anything to stay, must ask permission. At this point, the store manager will shout out to the store "Does anyone have anything for Shaggy to do?"

My time in the store wears on, days turn into weeks and the steep-angled hill of atrocities that I experience grows into a mountain.

If there are chores that need taking care of, boxes that need moving, prices that need updating, then I must stay and do them, for free of course. To keep costs down. If the store closes at nine, I typically must stay until between ten and eleven, providing free labour, before I am allowed to leave and go wait for a bus. In my spare time is when I am expected to "shop the competition."

We do that you know. That's right, at Tomorrow Store we shop the competition. And by we, I mean me, us, the damned souls who walk the store's aisles in cheap suits and nametags. In our spare time, on our day off, at night after work, we are expected to go and check prices at competitor's stores.

During sales training we were taught how to shop the competition. We are not being asked to lie, of course. No one is asking anyone to lie. Lying is wrong. But it's advisable to pretend that you're someone else, and make up a convincing story about why you are ready to buy some computer equipment, so that you can get pricing and hear the competition's sales pitch, but no-one would want you to lie. Try to pretend that you're a secret agent. Have fun with it. Never tell them you're from Tomorrow Store. Don't lie. Do it every week and report back. One day, James tries to phone a competitor up from the store, freeing his evening for less accursed activities. He neglects to account for the hovering specter of caller ID and, after being asked if he is calling from Tomorrow Store, shrieks "Screw You!" hangs up, and quickly walks off.

My time in the store wears on, days turn into weeks and the steep-angled hill of atrocities that I experience grows into a mountain. In the dark, winter twilight of my retail experience I am a lost soul, a disembodied spirit, somehow faintly aware of my past but not quite able to recall it or reconcile it to my current purgatorial status. Each day brings fresh torments.