The first register was open. Well, almost open; an older woman was swiping her credit card as the cashier bagged her last item.

I walked over and put my items on the belt–some dishwasher detergent, toilet paper and some picture frames. It was a pretty ordinary trip to Target. As the cashier handed the receipt to the woman, I saw his face and was instantly taken back to the year 2000. Back then this Target hadn’t been built yet, but I worked just down the street at a sporting goods store.

I worked there long enough to have dozens of coworkers, most of whom I would never expect to see again. I probably can’t even remember a lot of their names. The Target cashier today was wearing a name tag, but I didn’t need to look at it. I would remember Jim (not his actual name) 20 years from now. There was no reminiscing about our old days, however brief they were, and I am fairly certain he didn’t recognize me.

I can imagine that a lot of people would find it odd to not mention that we used to work together, but the dynamic of our past really says otherwise. At the time I was a 17-year-old kid selling shoes for a little pocket money and to fill some hours of my week. I didn’t necessarily need a job, but it seemed like a good way to spend 20 hours a week. There were other kids there too, some from my high school and a bunch of others who went to other schools around the area. The managers were older, a few of them in college and the rest from the older set who had chosen retail as their long-term career.

And then there were the adults who worked alongside the kids on the sales floor. This wasn’t exactly a novel situation in our store, but rather one you can pick out in just about any retail situation. Everyone has a different reason for being there.

The younger set seems like they are always ascending to something else, usually working their way through school and counting down the days until their retail life is over. The job is a stepping stone, a blip on their career radar.

Those just out of college are there as a stop-gap, a temporary gig to pay the bills while they figure out what to do with the rest of their life. It’s not an ideal situation, but what are you going to do? They are still young enough to totally fit in with their younger coworkers, and can even turn into sage advice-givers for those about to dive into the college world.

Then there’s a huge gap to the next set–those who are at least in their mid 30s (though I have worked with several guys in their 60s). The ones in their 30s are in the toughest spot of all. Their story is always a bit sad, you can see it in their eyes as they give you the quick break-the-ice version the first day. A layoff, a couple of kids, just needed some money to get by for a while. You almost feel bad telling them about what you’re doing in school and which college you plan on attending. You know they understand fullwell that they are doing the same job as a high school kid.

That is how I met Jim.

He looks like a cross between actors Stephen Root and Rainn Wilson. My friend Ryan and I used to work in the women’s shoe department with Jim. Ryan and I felt like we sort of ran the show since we spent two years there and usually dominated the sales. We were hustlers (not in a scammer sort of way) who understood a certain system of getting to as many customers as possible while keeping our section clean. That last part was key to going home at a decent hour.

It was clear early on that we were going to have a problem with Jim. Watching him approach customers was always an adventure. He would quietly sidle up to a woman holding a shoe, head tilted down, eyes aimed at the ground like he wanted no part of the interaction. His standard line was, “You want help with that?” in a tone that lacked any semblance of sincerity. It’s hard to imagine anyone was ever extremely confident they were going to get good service.

Miraculously though, he did help a lot of customers. The byproduct of getting to so many people is that you inevitably have a lot of shoe boxes to put away. We called them “drags,” though I have no idea where that term came from. You bring out a shoe and the customer doesn’t want it, it’s your responsibility to put it back. Ryan and I had handled that volume so many times that we instinctively just put away a few shoes everytime we went to get a new one. That customer had to wait an extra minute, but it meant that we weren’t left with a big stack at the end of the day.

Jim didn’t work that way. He used more of a pile system. He would usually get his customers onto adjacent benches and perform a day-long dance that would look to an outsider like he was trying to build a shoe fort. Every eschewed pair of shoes would go back in its box, and then get stacked on all the others. If we said something to Jim the piles would disappear from the sales floor…only to reappear in the stockroom. By the end of the day there might be 100 boxes that needed to be put away. Each one had Jim’s sales sticker on it. Since we had some sort of teamwork concept, we all had to stay and help put the shoes away. It didn’t matter how many department meetings we had, or private exhortations about the stacks, the same thing happened day after day.

Jim wasn’t a bad guy, he just didn’t get the system. But then again, he had a lot going on in his life. I remember that he also had a part-time job with the county as a snowplow driver whenever we happened to get any snow. There were a few kids in the picture and a wife who seemed to call his cell phone 20 times a day. He wasn’t exactly integrated into the group of kids who went out for a slice of pizza after work.

That was 10 years ago. Just as the kids are always talking about their next move, the guys like Jim have other plans. They seem to know a guy who is going to get them a job doing something in their former field, or at least something better. And so I would have hoped for nothing else for Jim. Even being a retail manager after college wasn’t exactly the highlight of my life, so I can’t imagine having to be an hourly salesman at his stage in life.

That look in their eyes doesn’t disappear with time–it gets deeper. With each day, each month, there’s an increasing feeling of despair you can feel. There’s nothing you can do as the kid to make it go away.

So there I was at Target today, with Jim ringing up my items. He had the look. As much as I would like to know what happened between our sales floor and the Target register, Jim wouldn’t want to tell me. There’s nothing the least bit wrong with any of those jobs, and having been there myself I have the utmost respect. But the look says it’s not what you want, not what you hoped for. Some of the fight is gone from you.

Jim lived through the last 10 years–he doesn’t need to do it again to make small talk with one of the kids.