I work at the register of a high-end department store. I scan items and I bag things and I smile. Every single day. Every day. My parents moved across an ocean so I could have a "career" but here I am at thirty-two holding a plastic scanner. I am a high-functioning machine. I have a degree in biochemistry but the market is a vacuum and my mother sends me links to medical school applications every Sunday. Every Sunday (without fail). She thinks I am just resting between successes. This woman came in today. She smelled like expensive jasmine and looked like she had never scrubbed a floor in her life. She had a return and an expired coupon. The coupon ended in 2023. I told her the system blocks the override for promotional items. I explained the protocol. I used my "customer service voice" which is really just a mask to hide the dissociation. I stayed calm. I was perfectly calm. She didn't like the answer. She looked at my name tag and then at my face and asked if I even understood English. I was born here. I speak three languages fluently. She started talking slower, like I had some kind of cognitive deficit or a developmental delay. She called me "simple." She told the person behind her that this is why they shouldn't hire "these people" because we can't follow basic logic. LOGIC. She used that word while trying to use a dead piece of paper to save eight dollars she clearly didn't need. I felt a physiological shift. My heart rate stayed flat—bradycardia almost—but my hands were cold. I didn't get angry. I didn't feel rage. I felt a total lack of affect. It was like I was watching a movie of a clerk being insulted by a woman in a fur vest. I just kept repeating the policy. I repeated it four times. Four times in a row. "The system will not accept expired promotional materials." (I sounded like a recording). I thought about my father. If he saw me standing there while a stranger called me stupid, he would be ashamed. Not of the woman. Of me. He would say I lacked the dignity to move up. In our house, you endure. You endure everything until you are the one in charge. But I am thirty-two and I am not in charge of anything. I am in charge of a metal drawer full of nickels and dimes. I hate the smell of coins on my skin. She eventually threw the coupon at my chest and paid the full balance. She made sure to drop the credit card on the counter instead of my hand. It was an act of social signaling. A way to remind me of the hierarchy. I watched her walk away and I realized I wasn't even upset. That is the part that I cannot categorize. I should be angry. I should want to scream. Instead, I just looked at the next person in line and said "Hello, did you find everything okay?" Every single time. Every time. It is 2am and I am staring at the ceiling. I keep thinking about the word "simple." Am I simple? I followed the rules. I followed the rules to the letter. Rules are the only thing that make sense when everything else is chaotic. But if I was smart, I wouldn't be there. I am stuck in this loop of recursive thoughts. I am a first-generation failure who is excellent at folding sweaters. I feel like a ghost in my own skin. I don't know why I'm typing this on a forum for strangers. I don't feel better. I just feel heavy. Like my bones are made of lead. Tomorrow I have to go back and do it again. I will scan the items. I will bag the things. I will smile. I will be the polite, invisible person everyone expects me to be. Every day. Every single day. I'm just waiting for something to break, but I think I'm already broken and I just don't have the diagnostic tools to name the fracture.