You know the economic times are tough when it hurts me

This may sound a little like something that I have written on this blog before, an article entitled 'A place so much fun it deserves its own planet' primarily because I took the inspiration for it from here. This is the editorial that you will find from me in the March issue of the Torch, which comes out next Friday.
My job is troublingly akin to a carny’s; slumped atop a precariously placed barstool, I sit every Sunday afternoon, watching six bumper cars circle a track. I hold a big, yellow controller with two buttons labeled ‘START’ and ‘STOP’; it’s a ride so simple a sleep-deprived chimp could probably run it.
Nevertheless, my manager comes around every hour and reminds me of the importance of my position while correcting me on button-pushing technique. I try to remind him that I have been working in this minimum wage hell they like to call Planet X for the longest eight months of my life, but he looks confused and walks away, the words “Thank God you don’t work at Hy-Vee, you’d never make it there!” hanging from his lips.
Our neighbor Hy-Vee, the great money-making giant, is strangely resented around there. They don’t have to dress up their walls with tacky NASCAR posters and it never smells like puke in there. Hy-Vee isn’t overrun by sugar-rushed first graders and they can afford more than 15 employees. But most of all, they are important.
My managers have only recently come to begrudgingly accept the fact that people need to eat, but not necessarily to play laser tag. They walk over to the grocery store from time to time, attempting to sway busy moms away from the produce section and bribe children with the lure of mini golf (although I warn them of anti-creeper laws prohibiting this) because, when it comes down to it, Planet X-onomics show that the more parents are paying for broccoli, the less they are spending on fun.
Iowa’s economy has been, as of yet, in a virtual bubble; primarily cushioned from the nation’s recession, but as the Planet X-ers will tell you, our entertainment (if that’s what you really want to call us) industry is beginning to feel the pinch, along with everyone else. Now I’m not about to pretend like I know anything about the economy, like some of the Torch staffers do, because, truth be told, I am clueless. However, I can say that as the strains of the recession begin to reach the lowest end of the totem pole, the teenage worker, it is time to buck up and face the times.
It is no secret around Planet X that I don’t place much importance on my job, in fact, I often seem as though I am legitimately trying to get myself fired. However, now as talk has shifted at work, from whose turn it is to sleep in the games to potential layoffs and price cuts, the fact that paychecks are constant has become a selling point for many applicants. So, I guess I can count my lucky stars that I actually have a job in these tough times, no matter how pointless it is, because as the economy tightens around us, even the role of a glorified carny has become sacred to me.