Discount Dream
I was in a German discount supermarket this afternoon. Fluorescent light. Grey floor. Long aisles of repetition.
A young woman passed me. She worked there.
Her face was flawless. Full makeup. Camera-ready. She could have stepped out of Germany’s Next Topmodel. But her body moved on autopilot. Slow. Procedural. Her eyes were empty behind the lashes.
Not laziness. Not confusion.
Disappointment.
Not with the job itself, but with the betrayal behind it.
She grew up inside a promise. Filters. Likes. Easy money. Beautiful people who seemed to live without effort. A world where visibility replaced work and attention replaced gravity. She believed it because everyone did. Parents, teachers, ads, algorithms. Now she is restocking yoghurt under flickering light.
It is not the work that breaks her. It is the contrast.
The distance between the screen and the shelf. Between the life she was shown and the life she got.
Envy used to have borders. You read about success in magazines. You saw the rich on television. They lived far away, in houses you would never enter, cities you would never visit. Their lives were stories, not comparisons. You could close the paper and return to your own.
That distance is gone.
The rich and the lucky now live in your pocket. They wake up with you. You see their breakfast before your own. They smile from your phone and whisper: this could be you.
But it almost never is.