I learned the hard way that Spirit is much, much more enjoyable to visit than it is to work there. I thought it would be fun because I love Halloween, too, but it was legitimately the worst job I've ever had. To give you an idea of how bad, I currently work a monotonous production line at a plastic factory in swelteringly hot conditions, and getting through the day at Spirit was harder. It wasn't bad because of the general duties of stocking, but because of the hostile work environment I had to deal with. It could be because my store was horribly mismanaged, but my coworkers were all extremely mean to each other and no one ever wanted to do their jobs. It got to the point where management had to post a sign in the back room telling people to "stop treating their job like high school." Someone got fired for using hard drugs on the clock. Someone else got fired for regularly hiding in the costume racks in the back room and sleeping in them. But one of my coworkers was best friends with the manager, and apparently it was okay for her to use the store as her personal daycare for her 7 kids under the age of 9. Stocking shelves while trying to avoid screaming, visibly dirty children is really something else. Add that to the animatronic monsters being triggered constantly, and the store atmosphere was RELENTLESS SCREAMING. I used to compare it to working at the daycare in hell. The noise was so bad that I came home with migraines after each shift.

One of the customers yelled at me for not being able to magically conjure Wolverine claws from the back room. Some old people got mad at me because the store didn't stock fog juice in the exact quantity they wanted. There's something cosmically absurd about being publicly yelled at over things like fake crime scene tape, plastic skeletons, and zombie face paint. I'm not good with customer service and people wear me out. I don't know if you're the same way, but as a fellow autistic person, bending over backwards to fulfill the shifting whims of the public is far more exhausting to me than physical labor. At least I know exactly what to expect at the plastic factory. At Spirit, life was like a box of chocolates, but every other piece was filled with poop and you didn't know which was which.

PS: The Halloween masks at Spirit are FUCKING GROSS because everyone and their grandma tries them on at the store. They also throw them all over the floor in piles. If you buy one, you better clean it out REAL GOOD, because who even knows what kind of bacteria cultures are growing inside them.

PPS: I was the only person working there who actually liked Halloween. There was no end to the madness