New England Winters, and Where I Work is Spooky (After Dark)

I love New England winters. Sure, they're cold, but the scenery is beautiful and when it snows, you could be any time in history and it would always be just as beautiful.

One thing I hate, though, are New England winters! It gets so dark at such an unreasonably early time, how am I supposed to stay awake throughout the entirety of winter?? It's insanity and I think the world is asking too much of me.

I work in a donation center. Basically, I sit in a big room and wait for people to drop off their donated goods- clothes, household goods, small furniture items, etc. [We have specific dos and don'ts of donation, but those are other posts for other times.] The lovely thing about my job is that it is the perfect slacker job, and I am quite the slacker. Sometimes, there will be hours between donors, and often my interaction with people is limited to two minute increments. This is awesome, since I'm not such a fan of social interaction. Plus I have internet.

A very big downside, especially in the winter, is that the location the DC (donation center) is around the back of the building where we're located.

This means that once all the other stores close, which is around 4:30, I'm the only person left. And I'm around back. And there are no lights back there, there is only a field and darkness and a prime location for a drug deal to go down. [Note: I have yet to witness a drug deal go down out there, but then I can't see further than five feet past the door into the parking lot.] This makes my work very spooky after dark. I'm like a glowing beacon for serial killers, and moths to cling to the glass door. Mostly just the moth thing. But in my mind, serial killers are eminent. That is why I have a baseball bat sitting next to the desk up front. No, seriously. I have a bat. And the spookiness isn't a gradual thing, either. It's not as though I'm sorting through boxes for hours and then I look up and go "Oh my, when did it get so dark?" It's immediate. It is like someone dropped a huge black cloak over the world. I documented the transition to show you.

The front window (from inside), at 3:30pm

At 4:00

 At 4:15

 At 4:30

At 4:45

At 5:00

As you can see, by 5 o'clock, the world is pitch black and I can't see out past the window unless I either turn off all the lights inside (which I can't do because then the monsters will get me) or I squish my face up against the glass and cup my hands around my eyes to block out the light. When a car pulls up, all I see are headlights, and all I can do is hope that it's a customer coming to give me donations and not a serial killer looking to hide from the police and/or chop my limbs off.

I guess the point of this story is to let you know that, if some day I vanish forever, I'm probably hacked to pieces because my place of work is the prime location for a murder scene.