I locked the shop and sat on the floor for five minutes

Dear Delyara, I work in retail, and tonight when I turned the sign to CLOSED and locked the door, I didn’t go straight home. I sat down on the floor behind the till and just stayed there. My feet were burning. My back hurt. One customer had shouted at me over something that wasn’t my fault. Another one clicked their fingers at me like I was not a person with a face and a life. I had smiled all day in the exact way the job requires — polite, bright enough, never fully real. The floor was cold. It felt wonderful. No one was asking for help. No one was telling me they were “in a rush.” No one was returning something they had clearly broken themselves and expecting me to apologise for the inconvenience of their own carelessness. I sat there and realised how much of service work is emotional swallowing. You swallow irritation, humiliation, tiredness, hunger, disrespect, and then go home and are expected to speak normally to the people you love as if nothing sharp happened to you all day.