Whats on my mind? 09/09/14 - PAPER OR PLASTIC: The Grocery Store Chronicles – After Hell There are Angels Sunday night was Hell. Monday night a woman wept at my register. On Sunday night, the store was closed from 11 p.m. until 7 a.m. It wasn’t because of the heavy rain. It was the quarterly cleaning. The floor is stripped and waxed. Everything that can be moved was moved off the main floor and into the lobby (tiled), the back room (cement), or in the few office spaces (carpeted) by time I arrived. A co-worker and I blocked the aisles in an attempt to make the store look nice in the morning. Our hands worked as fast as the feet of a millipede walking across a burning bed of coal. Eventually, the whirl of the stripper and the hum of the applicator forced us to retreat. By 1 a.m., he was gone. Only the store manager and I remained in the store’s back room. He was panicking. A truck with nine pallets of merchandise was coming. The back room (receiving) and hallways were jammed with merchandise. Displays pulled from the floor were everywhere. He pointed to the pallets containing Coke and Pepsi products. “There are six half pallets of Coke products and five of Pepsi. The vendors are only supposed to have three pallets of products each, along this wall. And it can’t be over six feet high. And they like to have access to the various types of products they offer. You have an hour. Make it so.” He left to do other chores in advance of the truck’s arrival. Fortunately, I’m spatially-oriented. I loved playing with building blocks as a kid. I never had a class in architecture, but I designed my home and created the 14-pages of blueprints for the building of it using only MacDraw on a Macintosh back in 1992-1993. I used a lot of tape to paste the 8.5x11 inch printouts together to create the normal-sized blueprints so I could get a printer to make the required number of copies. That’s a story for another day. Consolidating eleven pallets into six within a certain space, while allowing access to the various individual products, was child’s play. (Who knew soda makers had so many ways to rot our teeth and keep dentists in business?) However, those twelve-pack of soda products you get from the store get heavy when you have to move 1,440 of them. The mission was accomplished; however, there was a price to be paid. By 6:30 a.m., when a few customers snuck into the store before the 7 a.m. official re-opening, I could scratch the bottoms of my feet without bending over due to arm stretch. That was a positive thing. I was very tired and didn’t want to bend over to rub my feet. I saw her while I vacuumed the two rugs I do every night. I finished and wrapped up the cord. I walked with the vacuum towards its private quarters near the bathrooms. Before I got out of sight of the registers, I could see her still examining peaches in Produce. I was gone from view for 14-16 seconds. When I returned to the front end, she was at my register. She might have been there, at best, six seconds. I approached. She saw me coming. She stomped toward the front door, muttered something I couldn’t hear, and left her basket with four items on the floor. A vendor had been sitting nearby, checking something on his phone. He looked at me and shook his head. “What did she say?” I asked. “Can’t believe it,” he answered. “She was only there a few seconds. She called you ‘a lazy ass employee.’” I got angry for 1.4 seconds, and then laughed. I picked up her basket to return the items. “She’s mad at someone, but it’s not me.” Flash forward--Monday 11:47 p.m. A woman around forty steps in line. She’s a semi-regular. She’s always very deliberate with what she buys, but is definitely math-challenged. She always puts what she needs into the basket; she puts what she wants in the child seat portion of the cart. I ring up what’s in the basket while a man waits in line behind her. The total is $47.63. Disappointment shows on her face, and she declines the few items in the child seat. She searches her wallet for her credit card. “I’m sorry. I left it in the car. I’ll run and get it.” She apologizes a few more times as she bolts for the door. Clearly, she is embarrassed. I am the night cashier. There are no other cashiers, and the system won’t let me log-on to two registers at the same time. I can wait for her return. Call the night manager to open another register. I could void her entire transaction, take care of the guy in line, and then redo her purchases. At least once a week someone sprints to their car (or for home) for their forgotten money. Before I decide what to do, the man approaches the card reader. “I’ve got this.” He swipes his card. For 1.4 seconds, I’m confused. Then, I get it. “That’s very generous of you.” My words are an understatement. He shrugs. “Paying it forward.” Transaction complete, I ring up his $12.87 order. He pays. Just as he’s stepping away from the register, the woman returns. “Robin Hood’s been here and paid for your order,” I tell her and point in his direction. She looks confused. He says, “My treat,” and walks away. She is too stunned to go after the man to thank him, but I think her reaction is all the thanks he needs. She starts crying. “You don’t know what this means to me.” No, I don’t, but I’ve been there, on the edge a few times in my life, and I can appreciate the man’s gesture as I ring up her items in the car seat portion of the cart, the things she didn’t need, but wanted, because we all have wants. It totals $16.32. She pays. She leaves still wiping away tears of gratitude, and I hope she enjoys those wanted things: a second bag of flour, several cans of soup, a box of rice, two frozen cans of juice, and a chicken.
Posted on: Tue, 09 Sep 2014 19:18:54 +0000
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