Stuck in a job you can't get out of

Today we worked from 10am to 9pm, and it was pretty hectic around breakfast time, lunch time, and dinner time. I liked being busy, but not so much the working-for-11-hours-straight part. That... was kind of long.

And as I looked around the food court, I realized I see the exact same faces every single day. The two asian females working at the Chinese stir fry store, the asian guy and girl manning the Japanese sushi place, the indian guys working at the Indian food store, the middle eastern-looking guy taking orders at his kebab place... Some workers are pretty young, probably around my age, give or take a few years. So I'm assuming they're working as much as they can during their school holidays to earn money to pay off school loans and stuff. That's fine, we've all done temporary jobs to get by and make ends meet for the time being.

But then I looked at the older workers, and I wondered how long they've been working there and how they got to this point in their lives. Granted, most of them are probably the store owners or something, but then there's also the cleaning ladies, who are such sweethearts, and other cashiers in huge department stores like Kmart or Woolworths. 

And so I thought, how did they end up working at this kind of dead-end job? I mean, I'm pretty sure no kid grows up thinking, hey, I want to be a cleaner one day, or maybe even a food court worker or a cashier.

I guess for most of them it's probably circumstances in their lives that led them here. Maybe they started working here right out of high school or college, and somehow never made it out to find other jobs. Maybe they settled into a pattern of familiarity and comfort after a while and just didn't feel like taking the risk to do something else. Or maybe they're here because the awful economy affected their previous company badly and they're desperate to do anything that can put food on the table for their families.

Whatever the case, I just felt rather bad for them. I'm sure they had dreams and aspirations once upon a time, and they probably held high hopes for their future... only to have it turn out like this. I wonder if they just gave up on their ambitions because it was the easy way out, or if they were pressured into it, or if they just forget about it gradually. Are they truly content with life as it is? If given the chance to turn back time and change things, I wonder if any of them would do things differently.

Life just happens, I guess. 
But it's kind of a scary thought, because no matter how much I appreciate them and respect them for finding pride and joy in their job, I really really really hope to God this doesn't happen to me. I think life is too short to settle for second best, or even fifth best.

Well, like a friend of mine once told me when I was in LA:

"Shit happens. That's the way life is. You just gotta deal with it and move on."