A Walgreens Employee Joseph M. Vieitez

In my eyes, your life is just that, your life. You must lead yourself and steer life in the direction that you want to go. If you don’t, then what are you but a no-name employee at your local Walgreens?

Now, I won’t be so quick to knock down Walgreens. After all, I do work there. When I do take the role of that no-name Walgreens employee, I do it with a sense of leadership. This is the difference between spending the day chatting with co-workers and impressing your boss by organizing the stock room. It’s the difference between telling a customer you are on a break and going that extra step to get them the very last bag of sugar that fell behind a shelf in the back corner of the stock room. I refuse to conform to every other employee and just put in the bare minimum. I want to choose the way I live life and not follow the examples of others.

When I walk into work, I’m not always in the best mood. I’ve probably just finished sitting in 25 minutes of traffic on Route 4 after an eight-hour school day filled with double lab periods and AP classes. By the time I punch my code into the time clock at work, I have already been awake for almost 12 hours. I see a coworker slouching at the register and reading a magazine, and another...