There’s a lot of coverage in the news these days about the recognition that the women and men working in our grocery stores deserve these days.
I do not think this can be overstated.
Yesterday, while finishing up my shopping at Vons, I took the time to donate a few bucks at the end of the purchase to those in need of food. The cashier, a slightly older woman, thanked me (it was the least I could do and honestly, I don’t feel like I’m doing enough) and in turn, I thanked her for the service during these very strange days.
She took a long sigh and said something to the effect of “Thank you. Some people don’t seem to get it. This afternoon, I asked a man to wait before putting his groceries down and he purposefully started coughing on my screen. I should have called the police.”
She wasn’t frazzled, she was understandably just irritated, dumbfounded and likely worn down not only by the disrespect/ignorance of the earlier shopper, but likely by the simple fact that an already tough job, just got infinitely harder.
I wish I could say I was surprised.
But the fact is, having spent many hours behind a cash register in my earlier years, I can say with 100% confidence that in the world or retail/customer service, asshats overfloweth.
My first flurry into the retail space was when the Miramar Stables turned me down, at the age of 16, for a Summer job shoveling horseshit during 90-degree days. Apparently, the stable manager didn’t think that a 16-year old had the grit to shovel manure for 8 hours a day, Monday through Friday. In hindsight, I’d say that was a wise managerial move.
So, with my equestrian turd dreams shattered, I fell into the next best thing: Junior Bagger at the Naval Air Station Miramar Commissary.
Here, my job was pretty straightforward: Show up at 7 AM, check in with Evelyn (head bagger) and wait for hours on end until my number was called. Typically, this wouldn’t happen until 4 P.M. or so, because the senior baggers had first dibs at prime shopping hours. As such, I’d spend my downtime in the lounge playing Pai Gow, fine-tuning my arsenal of Tagalog profanities (most of the baggers were Filipino and embraced me) and generally, just waiting around.
When the time did come to work, you were either paired with another bagger or given solo duty. The pay, back then, was based on one thing: Tips only. And each night, we’d fold a brown paper bag into a makeshift tip jar.
If you got paired with another bagger, you could tackle huge military family carts of food pretty easily, but your money was split at the end of the night and there were no guarantees that you’d be tipped well that evening. If you got put on a register by yourself, there was a better potential for cash in your pocket, but you also risked “Getting slammed.”
“Getting slammed,” as we liked to call it, was when someone came through with a full cart or two of food and you simply couldn’t keep up. The result was an avalanche of groceries in front of you, a cashier staring bullets through your chest (because they can’t scan if the food is piled up like cars on the 405) and a customer getting pissed off because god forbid you delay them for five minutes from smoking a Virginia Slim and “beatin’ Billy’s ass” once they get to the car.
For every good-natured customer, there was one that swore that the Orange Juice for $2.50 was actually $2.25 based upon their recollection and when the price check and subsequent sprint up the aisle - by yours truly, proved them wrong, you’d have thought they just lost a high stakes poker tournament with an unexpected straight flush from Phil Ivey.
I wouldn’t characterize those days as fulfilling work. But temper tantrums ignited by twenty-five cent differentials were a good first glimpse at the many varying degrees of human nature.
Eventually, I moved on from bagging and graduated to life behind a cash register at such prestigious institutions such as K-Mart, Sportsmart, Linens & Motherfucking Things and the Messiah of Khakis, Eddie Bauer.
Each of those jobs was a further head-first dive into the good, bad and ugly of humanity.
Patient people.
Angry people.
People who lost their shit when I wouldn’t accept Canadian currency.
Customers who acknowledged someone had been an asshole and quietly said “Don’t let it get to you.” I always appreciated them.
Point is, anyone who is working at grocery store these days is well-accustomed to dealing with bullshit and the challenging personalities that stream through the checkout line.
That’s just part of the deal and it’s a well-understood requirement of the job.
What’s not part of the deal, is showing up for an eight-hour/leg-grueling shift each day with the threat of potentially catching a life-threatening illness.
The pay doesn’t equate to the risk. An already patience-trying job is now exponentially more stressful. And sadly, for every good person that roles through, there’s probably an asshole that is only thinking about one thing: Themselves.
I can tell you, had I been faced with a pandemic whilst at K-Mart, Associate 885’s punk ass would have taken a trip to the snack bar, grabbed a giant Blueberry Icee, heated up some nachos and a soft pretzel and turned in my notice.
The people working our local grocery stores are indeed quite brave and unsung heroes, by all definitions of the word.
I wish a tip-bag existed like it did when I was bagging.
God knows, they deserve it.
In its absence, I can tell you that patience, a smile and acknowledgement of their service is the least we can all offer.
After all, kindness doesn’t cost a dime.