Thanks to recent teacher layoffs and the miserable job market, I’ve gone from substitute high-school teacher to Walmart associate.

Teaching gave me weekends off for more pleasurable activities like annoying the roommate’s cat or plucking my nipple hair. But this Sunday, I spent eight hours playing Avoid the Customer. It’s a challenging game in which, at the end of the day, I reward myself by not committing suicide.

The national unemployment rate is at 9.6 percent, with 15 million Americans looking for work. I guess working at Walmart is better than nothing.

But working for low pay is about as rewarding as stabbing out your own eyeballs with a stale baguette. Fourteen billion dollars in profits last year bumped Walmart back on top of the Fortune 500 list, and the company keeps up those profits partly by paying associates as little as (legally) possible. Walmart wages are not only well below living wage, we’re paid significantly less than comparable jobs at other retailers.

When it comes to our jobs, we have no voice. Walmart is America’s largest private employer, yet the 1 million workers who put on that red, white, and blue nametag each week have zero collective bargaining power when it comes to our pay, benefits, or working conditions. …

By John Olympic via the Good Men Project/AlterNet. READ THE FULL STORY