what is real after death? after love? after life?
a real-time hyperfiction experiment

This may be your lucky day in hell. – the eels

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What’s not working? Job. Money. Relationship. Life.

What is working?  Creativity. Performing with a dance company. Writing music for movies, plays, and modern dance performances. How about collaborating with a dancer and choreographer on a new, original, modern dance performance? I’ve had dreams of this before. A play/dance/musical from my past “B@ck to my Madne$s.” It was never performed. It launched after I watched a retrospective performance of my future friend’s dance company, Johnson-Long Dance Company.

I fell in love with a dancer, duh. I think that’s part of the allure of modern dance: bodies. Young and strong bodies moving in unexpected and beautiful or difficult ways. I sang Bobby Darren’s Down By the Sea. It was a hit. Performers and patrons alike came up and congratulated my friend, the choreographer, and those of us in the performance. It was thrilling.

Even more thrilling, to be honest, was the hive of activity back stage, in the green room and spilling out into all available space and bathrooms. Tons of dancers (men and women) of all shapes and sizes, doing their thing.

It’s just the body. I like to move it. We can move it together in unexpected ways. Let’s show you something fun, something to rile up your mind and body, perhaps. Some of it, I admit, I don’t get. Some of it is jarring and difficult to watch. Some of it is magical. Often during a performance, I pick a cast member on stage to fall in love with. Usually, a woman dancer. A crush. Apparently the women also do the same thing, swoon over young male dancers.

If it’s offensive to you, modern dance may not be for you.

Our performance went swimmingly. I was part of a dance team. A crew member. A supporter and a dancer.

“All of us are dancers,” said the director of the Austin Dance Festival, Natashia Small. “I hope some of tonight’s performances spark a conversation for you.”

In the green room a bag of sour patch kids (“I like the big one’s said Christopher, the stage hand) some cheese and crackers. A few bottles of water. And a lot of hustle and bustle. Before the second show, after our performance, I chatted with two flamboyant men on the couch. Fun and energetic conversation. Then they came and danced a ballet-style flaminco dance off, where both of these men, in flaming red blouses, like pirates, dualed in dance, for the hand of a vixen in dark lingerie and black dark smoky eyes. It was both thrilling, suprising, and mystical. For several moments the dancers were in a triangle. Then the men began dualing with ballet prowess and moves. Their runs across the stage changed everyone’s perspective of the men. There were claps and shouts from the audience with each artistic pass. It was ballet, just reimagined as theater.

It’s about the bodies.

I remembered that about one minute into the opening performance. A young and very small but buff woman in a loose green t-shirt. She made the t-shirt into a dance partner, a prison, a character, an animal, a prop, a t-shirt. She elecrtified all of us watching with her commitment to the dysphoria of the dance. She was confrontational. Broken. And ascends at the close to be herself again, in a baggy green t-shirt. The audience, however, would be forever changed. I’m still talking about that performance. It was so good, the director had her perform as the first act and the last act of the late show. It was that good.

Watching it a second time, was a bit more like watching a magician repeat a trick. I was not surprised by what she was doing, but more evaluative rather than in awe. I didn’t get bored. But I was not as rapt as I had been for the intial run. I gave her a copy of my AI book as we were talking, her and the two ballet fellows and me.

The day outside is cool and humid. The rainstorms have finished replenishing our aquifer.

I guess the job market is not working for anyone. AI is mucking up the entries and applicants. AI is screening the applications and resumes. And no one is getting hired. It’s a hard time for businesses. Hard time for humans. Even humans, like me, making a living using and driving AI.

Except, I understand that AI is the enemy. AI has zero comprehension or intelligence about a single word. It does not comprehend a word or a poem. AI can repeat a pattern. Can summarize a book or article. (or this chapter, for example, coming soon) AI cannot write like a human. There is no context, no filter of imagination or currency. AI makes stuff up in the name of “generative art.” AI is not art. AI might be graphic design.

In my world, the best writer I know, in marketing and advertising, is now selling cars at a local dealership. He’s not able to find a next job, nor able to find enough freelance work to keep his family of four afloat at this time. A lot of us are in that situation. It sucks. It’s killing creative humans. We are actually training the AI to take over our jobs. Then companies like Meta, Google, Oracle, WFM, and Amazon are laying off thousands of humans and training an additional 66,000 robots. (That’s an Amazon number.) I was working at Whole Foods Market at the time.

They were having trouble keeping the hand-reading robot system up and running. More than half the time of my nine months, the handreader didn’t work. Just last month, they pulled them all. The robots didn’t work. The self-checkout humans were still required for slow individuals, the elderly or inexperienced, and the hurried. “How can I help you?” “Can I see you ID for the alcohol?” That one made some humans very mad.

“I’m sorry, I’d have to card myself,” I say. I have grey hair just like them.

Mostly, the role is mindless and painful. Standing for 8 hours, staring into the moving river of beautiful people, the rich, the fit, the entitiled. That’s who shops and Whole Foods these days. Know also as Whole Paycheck, for the high prices. Organic food comes at a premium. Mr. Bezos has run the company down to it’s bare metal. In our store the popular bar area, the Bee Hive, was closed. No reason was given. No reuse of the space was initiated. It’s still just empty. The coffee counter is never open. They can’t staff it. And the turn over is harsh and stupid.

Well, let me be more clear, there is no internal store leadership at the Whole Foods Market. The corporate office dictates the promotions, the closing of bars, and the seasonal merchandising. There is no longer any connection between the local community and the Whole Foods store. None. Before the pandemic, most organic grocery stores also had small corners for a massage therapist. $30 for 30-minutes. That’s a good deal. The hospitality areas have been removed from all Whole Foods Markets in Austin, Texas, where the stores began a few blocks from my first house, near South Lamar.

It’s a different world. The leader of our store liked to encourage us, “I started here as a dishwasher, over fifteen years ago.” The problem is, he’s still a dishwasher. He has no leadership style. I’d like to ask him a typical management interview question, “What is your team management style?” Yeah, this would not compute to him. And under poor leaders, they often hire other poorly trained, followers. Someone to just do the job and not ask questions about the job.

In the first few weeks as I was establishing myself as a reliable and fun cashier [See: The Happy Cashier on Amazon (for now)] I mentioned to the store leader about the problem with the coffee shop from the perspective of a coffee lover and customer. Over nine months they never had the store open for more than a few days at a time. In talking with customers, frustrated by the failure of the store to provide hot coffee to go with their array of pastries and cookies. Same story, three months later, I was there a few days ago, the coffee bar was not open. The bar upstars, also not open. What is he doing to grow or enhance the store performance?

Well, according to Whole Foods leadership it’s all about the profit. Fuck the people. There’s a little wrinkle in their control and command system, called Unpaid Time Off. In general, this is like sick leave, with one glaring difference. It renews at like one hour of UPT per week at job. Then, if you do have an emergency, like I did, for a medical issue, the entire UPT system breaks down.

The company has hired an outside HR firm to manage the work and UPT issues. Not one person at the store, three managers and the store leader could help me at all with the process. One of the managers fired me as I arrived on a Monday morning, for being 3 hours under UPT. “Did you look at Sedwick?” I asked the Ukrainian woman with a chip on her shoulder. “I’ll be right back,” she said, not showing any signs of embarrassment. “Okay,” she said with spit, “You have twenty-four hours to fix it.”

Yeah, I can’t fix anything in your HR and leadership systems. She never once apologized for her error. Nor did anyone in leadership. Um, they wrongfully terminated me and no one says, “I’m sorry.” Okay. I rolled with the punches, continue writing my Happy Cashier book and producing the spiritual podcasts of each chapter, and soldiered on. My health issue had one more milestone, and I missed 14 hours of work. Again with Sedwick and UPT, I filed all the correct forms. The system and teams called me back a lot, sent me a lot of snail mail. And at the close of December, 2025, the store leader fired me for being 2 hrs under UPT.

“I have 14 hours coming back,” I said.

“No, the Sedwick case is closed… You’re done.”

“I have a certified letter from Sedwick awarding me 14 hours back. I also have 56 hours of paid vacation time.”

“I don’t have time for this. I want you out of my store.”

“Don’t you want my feedback of what happened?”

“No! Justin, see him out of the store.” And he left.

The EEOC is now awaiting a hearing on this issue. I have the receipts, the internal hours document of my time. Guess what? The store never applied ANY OF MY UPT back to my account. I asked all the managers. I tried to sign up for a “mentor” as that appears like a part of WFM’s system. No go. No manager wanted a mentor. And the guy who accepted, already had a mentor and wouldn’t be able to work with me for another four weeks.

Nothing moves fast.

Still, the failure of leadership to correct the mistake from my initial firing, is an eggregious error. Firing me again, two months later, for the exact same error is malice. Perhaps the angry Ukranin with pie on her face was none-to-happy to have me fired.

Why doesn’t any member of leadership at a Whole Foods Market have an understanding and ideas to support staff dealing with Sedwick. Nope. Even the “trainer” had no idea how to deal with my issue.

Awarding back UPT to an employee’s account should not be hard. It should not be weaponized to eliminate someone. A month after my hasty firing, a friend said her manager came with a strange message to the team. “There is no limit on UPT. UPT is unlimited.”

Um, is it? Is this the fix for my failure? How might that decision helped me? Is anyone taking responsibility for my firing and the obvious problem with Sedwick and UPT, at least in my store?

But all is not lost. I have written a book about surviving a low-wage retail job, The Happy Cashier. I am writing more and more and starving less and less. I still need a good job, but am applying at other retail stores. REI, Whole Earth Provisions, etc.

Oh, and I am fighting now to keep my house. I’m only one payment behind on my mortgage, but it’s a great rate, so I’ve got to see a kidney to keep the roof over my head. Meanwhile my kid is spazing out into drugs and crime. Again!

All is well today in my world. Things are not as I would like them to be. That’s how life works. It is my approach to that dychotomy. What I want, deserve and have earned, vs. what I have, what I do, how I am willing to work for food and shelter.

It’s okay here, in hell. A bit humid. A bit anxious. I just found $20 in quarters going round my house with a cup. So, that’s good.

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