Every weekend, I leave white collar America behind and check items at a large retailer that I fondly refer to as Big Box Mart. I don't save lives. I don't develop new drugs. I don't build buildings. Most of my customers pay no attention to me at all. I'm a mere blip in their day after all, all I do is scan the item and plop it in a bag. Some of my customers never stop talking on their phone through the process or they read a magazine or shush screaming children and barely give me eye contact and that is fine. But, the work that I do there is far from meaningless and no matter what job we do, we serve the community and our fellow man. Every weekend, I assist at least one elderly patron with the credit card machine. As they come from the age of cash, using that machine is daunting for some of them and they nervously run the card through while trying not to look stupid. I help them along and they smile gratefully. Small potatoes? Maybe not. They retain some dignity in an ever changing world. On one occasion, a woman ran 350 dollars worth of items on the belt. For no reason at all, she told me these items were for her adult daughter whose son had committed suicide 3 weeks before. She was hoping the retail therapy would help ease the depression. This woman and I had a 10 minute conversation about her grandson and about the suicide. For some reason, she felt I was a safe ear to speak with. Small potatoes? Not at all. For 10 minutes, I comforted the grieving. This past weekend, an elderly lady shared with me that she had just moved to the Chicago area from Tucson. I was surprised. Usually, people move down there from Chicago. My father did. She told me it was to be closer to family. She had just been diagnosed with breast cancer and she needed the family's support to get through treatment. As I am currently dealing with cancer right now, we had a few minute conversation about cancer. This was her third battle. She had beaten Melanoma and cervical cancer. "I'll beat this too!" she said. "Yes, you will I said" She reached across the counter and firmly shook my hand. At that moment, I was her support. Often, an elderly man comes to our store. He walks every aisle and knows everyone who works in the store by name and we know his. He is 90 years old and his two hour trip to our store is the only contact he has with another human on that day. He buys an item to chat with the cashiers and for those two hours, we are his family. In the scope of a 10 minute interaction, my customers have shared info about their children, hobbies, hopes, dreams, engagements, pregnancies, diseases, loss, grief, gardening tips, and hosts of other topics to someone who is merely a blip on the radar to most of us on every given day. There are no menial tasks, no jobs that serve better than others. The Dr. and the cashier are one.