The closest I can offer isn’t quite the same, as I wasn’t working retail and it wasn’t on Black Friday, though it was directly related to the Thanksgiving holiday.

I used to work in a high-volume call center for the local transit authority, booking rides on the curb-to-curb paratransit service. We only book trips for the following day, but since we’re only open weekdays we have to book for Saturday, Sunday, and Monday on Friday.

Even on slow days we get around 200 calls per agent per day, and Fridays are even worse. 3-day weekends are a notch above that, since now we also have to book for Tuesday. But the granddaddy of call-center gauntlets is the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, since we’re booking Thursday through Monday. It’s a 12-hour shift, calls from wall to wall from 7 am to 7 pm.

As I mentioned on another post on here, I have a guide dog. I have had 3 over the course of my adult life, and the time this story takes place I was 1 year in with guide dog 2. Guide dog 1 was retired and living with other family members.

So I wake up at 4 AM and catch the bus to work, dreading another pre-Thanksgiving soul grinder. I’m sitting at my desk. I glance down, not without a hint of envy, at guide dog 2 sleeping blissfully under my desk, then turn my attention to the Sisyphean torment that awaits me. My mouse hovers over the start button on the Cisco agent desktop, as I glare at the clock in the corner of the screen. I’m determined to start this living hell no earlier than necessary.

Just before I left-click, the phone in my pocket starts ringing. I’m pretty introverted and rarely get (relevant) unprompted calls on my phone, and anyone who would call me knew where I was, so I figured this was important. The caller ID says it’s my dad. Now I know this is important.

Dad: “Early_riser, guide dog 1 passed away this morning.”

I had to process that for a second. We had a pet dog, a positively ancient lab mix who managed to hang on another year or so after this, and thought he was referring to her. After clearing that up I ran into the conference room off of the main cube farm and started balling like a baby giving my body’s moisture to the dead. My supervisor heard me and came in to check.

Now guide dog 1 had accompanied me to that job for a good year before she retired, so my supervisor and coworkers had seen, known, and interacted with guide dog 1. She wasn’t just “some dog” to them, and I believe that served to make my situation more real for that supervisor. She actually asked if I wanted to go home, on this the busiest most grueling day of the year, to say goodbye to my dog.

Of course I said yes, and me and guide dog 2 took the elevator downstairs to catch the bus back home. Because of the time I couldn’t take the express, so I caught the longer local route that would take about an hour and a half. As it happens, a friend of mine, a fellow commuter who often sat near me on the ride into work, got on the same bus. She had also seen and interacted with guide dog 1 on the regular, so I told her what was going on and she offered her condolences.

We talked about other stuff until we arrived at my stop. I said my goodbyes and waited to get picked up to go to the vet. We arrived ahead of guide dog 1, so I went in and paid for her cremation. When my dad arrived with guide dog 1’s body, we all spent a few minutes saying goodbye.

At the particular place that gave me this dog, on the day you meet the dog you’re sat down alone in your room and the trainers go from room to room introducing the new dog, then they leave you alone for an hour to get to know each other. It’s a scary and exciting time, the wait before the reveal, seeing the creature that will keep you alive for the next 10 years. I had wanted a german shepherd, but ended up with a little golden retriever. My initial disappointment melted away after I spent some time rubbing her belly, and I caught myself humming a song my parents sang for me when I was a baby.

“You are my sunshine, my only sunshine. You make me happy when skies are gray. You’ll never know, dear, how much I love you. Please don’t take my sunshine away.”

Right then and there I had a thought. “She’s going to die someday. This little furry ball of oxytocin with deep brown eyes will be gone someday, and you’ll think back to this moment, sitting on the waxed tile floor of your room at this guide dog school, petting this dog you just met. And you’ll remember singing her the same song you were sung when you were little. And you’ll sing it again, in front of her lifeless body, with tears streaming down your face.”

And so I did.

This may sound heartless, but I’m happy she died when she did, in the way she did. I was terrified of having to make the decision to end her life, having to decide whether I could afford to keep her comfortable, having to put a dollar amount on our friendship. If it came down to it I would do what was best for her, but I wouldn’t feel good about it. That’s part of why I gave her to someone else (well that and I lived in an apartment at the time and couldn’t take care of two dogs). So I was relieved to hear she passed on her own, peacefully in her sleep.

I was also miserable at that job. The lady next to me in the cube farm had been working the same sort of call center job for over 20 years, and just imagining that as a career made my skin crawl. Now I’m sure this is a coincidence. Guide dog 1 couldn’t have timed her death like that, but I like to think she knew I’d get the day off, so chose the perfect time to go. It was her last gift to me, sparing me from 12 straight hours of screaming customers.