Terry pressed his face against the glass and peered in at us.

“Look,” he said, loud enough to carry through the window. “Smokers. In their natural habitat.”

The smoking section at the Cape Girardeau Walmart was a windowed room inside the breakroom, three panes of glass and a massive metal door with a tiny one-foot-square window, separating the smokers from everyone else eating their lunch. The door was so heavy I often wondered if anyone had broken a finger in it, as fast as it closed. Like the reptile cages at the St. Louis Zoo, we were an exhibit, puffing away while those in the breakroom ate their Hot Pockets, Lean Cuisines, and homemade turkey sandwiches on whole wheat bread. Nobody spoke, but the exhaust fan was working overtime, evacuating the smoke-filled room. Tired, overworked faces, black bags under your eyes. That was the free badge given to all Walmart employees. Along with name tags worn on our blue vests.

A week or so later, Terry was inside the cage with us, lighting up a Marlboro Light 100, asking if anyone had seen Clerks.

The walls of our habitat were stained yellowish from years of nicotine and tar. Nobody seemed to mind. Including me.

Clint worked at the vision center. Nothing about his life was private or hidden, including his choice of dating guys. Selma, an older, reddish blonde, had worked the layaway and customer service desk long enough to have seen everything. At least twice. Dave from automotive sat with his bushy beard, his bootheel accent, and an unbuttoned automotive uniform shirt showing off arms and a chest covered in dark hair. He looked like he’d been lifting truck parts since junior high. Or maybe hay bales. Missouri was still new to this West Coast man.

This was 1999. I still hadn’t seen it. Not yet, anyway.

Clerks is the first of Kevin Smith’s GenX movies, shot in black and white on a maxed-out everyone’s credit card shoestring budget. Smith gambled everything on a movie about two convenience store clerks going nowhere fast, and it worked. Clerks premiered at Sundance on January 22, 1994, my 23rd birthday, where it won the Filmmaker’s Trophy. It screened at Cannes that May, winning the Youth Award for Best Foreign Language Picture. But the dialogue is unrealistic. No twentysomething talked like that. Not even GenXers like me, Terry, and Kevin Smith. The one thing Smith totally nailed? The view from behind the counter.

Terry was in his twenties. Jet black hair. Sharp. Well-read and well-versed in all things comic, movie, or television related. He’d told anyone who was listening that he was bipolar the way some people tell you their coffee order. Matter of fact. Zero apology. His tenure at Walmart was ten months, give or take.

“You know,” Terry pointed at me with his smoke. “I agree with Randal. He’s right.” Terry said it between drags. “The video store would be a great place to work if not for the customers.” He laughed, leaning against the yellowish walls in his blue Walmart vest, all while exhaling a thin ribbon of bluish smoke. “I’m not even supposed to be here today!”

Clint chuckled. Selma smiled. Dave said, “Man. I don’t get it. I ain’t never seen that movie. ‘Course I ain’t never seen those Star Wars movies, neither.”

Terry and I gasped.

I agreed with Terry.

And I didn’t.

I was 28, a father of three, working as a cashier at a Walmart register. From the day I started, I asked Kathy, the HR manager, about the customer service position. When I was told I couldn’t have it because I hadn’t worked there long enough, I said I’d show up every day until Kathy gave it to me. I was doing the math. Telling myself it would add up if I only showed up. Kathy didn’t believe me.

Our Baby Boomer parents told us to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps. Kinda hard when your paycheck barely covers living expenses. Then work two jobs, they said. The Silent Generation fixed it for the Boomers. Built them a ladder. Helped them build their savings and buy new cars. Meanwhile, we kept waiting for someone to build us a ladder, too.

The analytical part of my brain in 1999 still believed the math would work out. Businesses need customers to make payroll. Without the cash flow, Randal doesn’t have a job to complain about. But it only works for people who showed up and did the work.

Only it didn’t. Not for us. GenXers got sold a story about bootstraps and trickle-down and the dignity of hard work, and what trickled down was mostly somebody else’s profit. Terry was learning this. Not from a think piece. Not from a movie. From ten months on the floor. Behind a cash register, looking at the world through medication.

He took one last drag, stubbed it out, and headed back to the front end.

“Back to the customers,” he said. He paused at the door and looked back.

“I’m not even supposed to be here today.”