Who Are All These Shiftless Human Beings?

Since graduating from business school last June, I’ve basically been living the life of a suburban housewife, minus the husband and kids. I spend my days sipping café au laits, picking up dry cleaning, grocery shopping, doing laundry, unloading the dishwasher, attending yuppie exercise classes at yuppie suburban gyms, and on very rare occasions preparing elaborate meals. I have yet to pick up the habit of watching bad daytime TV, but if I really applied myself, I’m sure I could make it happen.

Of course, I haven’t fully caught onto the concept. I’m fairly certain that most suburban housewives do not take conference calls on speaker phone while driving to the gym, nor do they obsessively check their BlackBerries while in line at the grocery store. That being said, my flexible Monday-Friday schedule more closely resembles that of a suburban housewife than that of a young professional.

I was in the middle of a rather typical weekday morning when all of a sudden, it occurred to me to wonder why all these other people were meandering about Target at 11am on a Wednesday? I will make the blanket assumption that all the women with children in tow are stay-at-home moms, but what about everyone else?

Who are all these shiftless human beings? Like you, the 40 year old man picking up a bag of dog food. And you, the 25 year old woman perusing the greeting cards.

I have come up with several theories:

1) Like me, perhaps these other people have just finished school and they are in the middle of a slow transition back to the real world.

2) Maybe everyone else is unemployed. I mean, we are in the middle of a nasty recession.

3) Wait no – all of these people are on vacation. But if you’re on vacation, why in the world would you be in a Target in the northwest suburbs of Chicago? Shouldn’t you be on a beach drinking something with an umbrella in it or navigating a foreign city while getting into hilarious language barrier related hijinks? Perhaps because of budget concerns, they’re on one of those super lame staycations, in which case I would argue that you could come up with better things to do on your precious time off. Why not hop a train into the city and hit up a museum on a free day or explore Millennium Park or do one of the many other things in the city that are completely gratis?

4) I suppose that these people could simply work jobs that aren’t the typical 9-5. Maybe they work in retail? Or they trade during European hours? Perhaps they are reporters who have to be ready to cover breaking news at any hour of the day? Or they are teachers enjoying summer break? Maybe they are nurses who work the night shift? Or trust fund babies? (Although once again, why in the world would someone with a sizeable trust fund be hanging out in the suburbs of Chicago? Have we learned nothing from Gossip Girl? Lucky rich girls and boys prance around Manhattan and Paris, not the Midwest.) Most likely, they work for the CIA and are protecting national security by patrolling the aisles of Target.