rock and a hard place  

i have been at my job for about 6 months now. it started out great. i hadnt worked in a couple years and had become somewhat of a shut in. getting a job was a very positive step for me. there are not many of them out there so i feel lucky to have one.

what made it better was it was for a music store. not only could i start earning some money and get myself out of the shut in mode, i could rediscover my love for music and my style. now sure they had a small glass case of tobacco pipes and some novelty rolling papers, they even had a small back room with a little xxx stuff in it. no big deal. most of the customers came in for music.

just shortly after i started the owner of the place started getting some new stuff in there to try and boost sales. small shops like his are shutting down left and right in our small town. he has worked hard to keep the doors open. i dont blame him. but the things he is expanding with ("herbal aromatherapy blends" that people are smoking) i just dont feel comfortable with. its bringing in a type of customer that i dont care to deal with on a daily basis. people just dont know how to be cool about it. they have to talk about all kinds of things that we as employees have to stop them from talking about or we have to refuse them service. then they yell and scream at us. call us bad names. its a mess. i am so sad to see this place turn into a head shop.

if i wanted to deal with that kind of stuff i would go to the tanning bed, buy some good make up and a good push up bra and be a cocktail server and BANK, but i just cant handle that type of surroundings.

but now i am feeling stuck. my sister is the manager and she is feeling the same way. and we are so small that if one of us quits the other will have to pick up so many hours. neither one of us feels like we can do anything but stay and work for a stinking head shop that the customers think its ok to cuss us out for not letting them openly talk about drugs and act like fools. we both already have full time hours out there.

i just feel so stuck