jrangermachine-blog

[jrangermachine-blog]

Tales From the Checkout Line

TALES FROM THE CHECK OUT LINE

By JR

 Chapter 1:

This Job was an Escape Hatch…It Led to Another Trap

           Two years ago, I hated my job. I had a genius idea: quit it and go work my old grocery store gig from college. At the time looked at the experience as a fond return. I didn’t like internet marketing much either and in my mind I was leaving the corporate world to return to my youth and perhaps find my roots. I’d worked at this grocery store while I was in college (though at a different college, not the one near the store) and it had been wonderful….or perhaps that was how I remembered it. I liked the physical labor and I’d enjoyed my regulars the people who always came in. The store wasn’t far from a section 8 building and I found the customers who walked to the store from there were interesting and funny and made an otherwise mundane experience, relatively enjoyable. These were some of the realest people I knew during my time there.

           So, when I returned in the summer of 2017 I was looking forward to more of the same. My situation was such that I  could work part time and concentrate on my fiction writing. I foresaw a magical rebirth of past experiences, old memories coming alive again. It was summertime and I would be happy again. Everything would be different in the warm weather. The time would be slower, and the pace of the city could be more conducive to the pace my mind runs at. I could stock bags and ring up people in exchange for this.

           There were good people when I first came back. I enjoyed being there. I wouldn’t say they were the most productive group of people, but they were great to be around. There was Frank in the deli. He was this hilarious guy who always wore a comb in his hair and used to sing rap songs while we were closing. There was Sara, this heavyset tall woman with long black hair. She worked in the deli too and occasionally did some work in the back room.

           I remember there was this one night when Frank had a hip hop show in town and I went to it. Afterwards we all went out for drinks in the city and just shot the shit for several hours. At this point, I didn’t even feel like I was at work. I only came in a few days a week. It was great.

           Then about a year ago I had a genius idea to start working 5 days a week there….well 6 days initially. I made A LOT more money and become  A HELL OF A LOT more miserable. There was a direct correlation between the hours I worked and the unhappiness I felt.

           I’ve been doing this for about a year now. I don’t enjoy it and I’m actively looking for a  new job right now….these are my observations about working here over the years.

 Chapter 2:

The Illogical Cash Register Policy

           One of the things that drives me nuts about working here is the non-committal approach to EVERYTHING. Our policies are one thing on Tuesday and something completely different by Friday. There’s no reason to it. One of the areas I notice this is at the cash register.

           During the day, it’s essentially a non-issue  because there isn’t as much business as there is at night. We only need one cashier to handle the traffic at that time. Occasionally there might be a long line but provided something crazy isn’t going on in the back room, we can usually have a person open up to cover the spill over traffic.

           At night though…that’s when shit becomes infuriating, specifically on Friday night. So, the thing is it’s a family owned grocery store. The owner only works during the day and at night he’s at home. He’s at home, but that isn’t to say he isn’t watching things. About a year ago, they had cameras and microphones installed in the store so they could spy on the employees. Nico, the manager who I work with day to day, claimed they were for security. The point he stressed was that these cameras would be vital to everyone’s safety. I’ve got issues with this claim and with surveillance in general, but ignoring that, I think everyone knew that the installation of cameras would implicitly give them the ability to spy on anything and anyone at any time…and who’s in the store longer and more often than the employees?

           So, cut back to Friday nights at the store. Statistically, it’s a busy time for us. It’s the time when we do the most sales and it makes sense. It’s the weekend and these college kids want to get drunk. We supply the beer and they come buy it. So, the store wants us up by the registers most of the time when this is going on. They specifically want two cashiers if there is a line of more than two people. Gretchen, an older lady who works a second job, more or less sits on the primary register. She stays up front. As the back up cashier, my job is to maintain the aisles and stock/fix shelves if they become depleted. In the event that there’s a line I’m expected to open up immediately. The assumption is always that the owner could be watching at any time. Of course, he could be sitting outside enjoying the sunset or appreciating the life that his 50 plus years in the business have afforded him. But, he chooses to log in to his computer and watch what we do. So, if anything is going on that he doesn’t like, he’s not the least bit shy about calling his son Nico and asking him to bitch at us. So, I have to operate with the expectation that any moment this man is watching the camera and may be displeased.

           As part of my shelf facing/store maintenance duties that I do in addition to running the register, I also need to check dates on things sometimes. When things expire it puts us at risk just as much as it does the people who might by them. If a health inspector comes in and sees something out of date we could get in trouble. Checking the dates on these things is important and I believe in doing right so I take my time, I pull things out from the shelf completely to make sure nothing with a different date is hiding in the back. Unbeknownst to me, a line might be building in the front and all of the sudden I’m needed. I have no idea that this is happening and now I have to stop whatever I’m doing and go take care of these people, even if I’m right in the middle of it. Sometimes, I take care of the customers for like 20 minutes and then I’ll go back to what I was doing and find that one of the managers has put all the items back on the shelf! So, I need to start all over again! This has happened multiple times AND IT’S INFURIATING!

           As an added treat to my Friday routine, the owner of the store will sometimes be watching the surveillance cameras from his house. If he happens to see there’s a line by the register and that I’m not there IMMEDIAETLY, he calls the store to complain about it. So more or less, I have to remain by the register in order to satisfy his desire that nobody waits ever.

           So, what follows is the owner and his son Nico come in the next day, Saturday now, and they’re upset that the shelves weren’t faced as much or they’re mad because a bunch of things expired. The thing is you can’t have it both ways. They completely overlook the fact that for most of the evening I was covering the register and collecting cash for them. It leaves me feeling rather frustrated. If you’re going to have someone find things that are expired and face the shelves well then hire another person or ask someone else to fill in on the shift to augment the staff.

           In fairness to them, it’s a small store. They aren’t a chain or anything. Its family run and they’ve only got so much money. They’ve got competition from people who buy online and at bigger stores in the area which are chains. It makes sense that there isn’t a pool full of money waiting around to be poured into. BUT, they’ve done a lot of work to renovate the store and make changes to it. They should have planned for that expense instead of banking on people to simply tolerate these kinds of working conditions. I’ve been at good companies and bad companies and the places that do the best work generally had happier employees who cared about the store. It’s leaderships responsibility to set the pace of how things will go. If you work in a company where the leaders are realistic and are prepared to take care of their employees and make the place a good environment, you get a really good company where people do good work. If you get shitty, entitled leaders who don’t understand the challenges their employees face fully, you can expect lousy results.

           95% of the reason I don’t want to be here anymore, is because of how I feel about the people who own the store. I guess I thought that would change magically because I’m an adult and no longer a teenager…or maybe I just told myself it would be worth it because there were other aspects of the job I enjoyed….only…….what are those other aspects again?

  Chapter 3:

The Dreaded Section 8 People and How Their Petty Theft is What’s Secretly Killing Our Business. (Duhn Duhn Duhn!)

           As I’ve mentioned previously, our store isn’t far from Section 8 housing. The building is used to house the disabled and old people. Some of them have mental and financial issues and they don’t always conduct themselves in a way that the pretty white people of this rich college town would like. Sometimes they come into the store drunk or high. Some of them yell or curse for no reason. Occasionally some of them steal things.

           About six months ago I got a text in the morning from Nico, my boss. I wasn’t due at work for another four hours, but he decided it couldn’t wait. It was a video clip of a guy walking into the store and stealing a can of beer out of the cooler. He tucked it in his jacket and walked out of the store. I recognized the man in the video. He’d stolen from us once before and my boss had made quite the show of it.

           I came into the store later on that day and my boss called me back into the office.

           “I want you to see something,” he said.

He hadn’t looked at me yet. He was gazing at the computer and fondling the mouse. He clicked open to the video, but this time it was at a different angle. At this angle, you could see that I was in the shot. The video was from the previous night. In the video, you could see I was hunched over some products trying to pull them forward. The guy was in the same aisle as me, maybe ten feet down. He looked at me to see if I was watching, stuck the beer in his pocket and walked out.

“How does that happen?” Nico said.  “How does he feel comfortable enough that he can just take the beer can and walk out with it….you weren’t watching him.”

“I was facing your shelves,” I said.

“Well it doesn’t matter we need to…”

What followed was a speech about how I need to play security guard and profile people based on how they look and whether or not I can read their mind and determine they’re about to steal something.

“I hate to say it JR, but we need to start profiling people…” he said.

“I don’t think that guy who stole you from…” I started to say.

“That NIGGER. You mean that nigger that just stole from me?”

I was quiet after that because some things you just don’t have a response to.

           Let’s leave the racism aside for a moment, although it’s difficult to do that since the people who own and run this business tie almost everything wrong with the store back to race stereotypes. Now granted, I don’t condone stealing. It’s wrong and the business owners have every right to be upset. After all, they paid money for the products and when people take them it’s not good thing. Theoretically, it could cut into our profits if it happened enough. I get that.

           But let’s do some math here, since at the end of the day that’s all determining your profits is about, doing math. We probably get 50 boxes at least of perishable items like produce  twice a week. Each case is probably worth $20 low end. So that’s $1,000 twice a week. So, $2,000 on produce right there. Of those 50 boxes we probably have to throw out or not use 5 of them each week. So, $100 a week are just thrown out or not used. 52 weeks in a year, that’s $5,200 thrown in the fucking trash.

           Flip side, we’ve got the occasional theft. Let’s allow that it happens, I don’t know three times a month, I’m being generous here, I don’t think it happens even that much. Let’s say it’s a $10 loss each time. So, $30 a month gone. That’s $360 a year.

           $360 a year lost to theft versus $5,200 a year lost because the owner doesn’t want to eliminate some of the produce….and the $5,200 was only for the produce, that’s not counting the boxes of cookies and crackers and cartons of yogurt and milk that expire. So, even when I’m liberal with the amount of money people steal and conservative with the amount of money we lose of our own accord, the difference is still staggering.

           So, given this, why has my boss spent an hour talking to the police on multiple occasions, to stop a $30 a month problem, but he hasn’t spent time trying to figure out which grocery products he should eliminate. How does he rationalize this fixation on the petty theft by homeless and mentally disabled people?

           Ah, and now we can bring race in. The most frequent claim by my bosses is that it’s the blacks who are stealing. They’ve actually had me, or my coworkers stop what we’re doing and spy on black people, which is extremely uncomfortable and also a monumental waste of time. I’ve paid attention to who steals, and the common denominator isn’t race at all. It’s social and financial circumstances. It’s the people who live in that building who are poor and whose brains work differently than the average person’s. These aren’t black people specifically. These are desperate people with disabilities.

So, when my boss says to me things like “JR, we need to start profiling people,”  what I want say in response is “How? How do you read somebody’s mind and tell they’re desperate? Do you want me to go up to everyone in the store with slightly baggy clothing and a tan and accost them?” Hmmm, as a matter of fact, I think that’s  EXACTLY what they want me to do!

I’m not asking the store owners to finance people’s criminal activities. I’m not suggesting they shouldn’t confront people who ACTUALLY steal. But I think they should be realistic about it. It’s not exclusively black people and the frequency with which it happens doesn’t even begin to justify the energy we exhaust chasing people down these blind alleys. We have more vital things to focus on. The other day I was working at the register and I saw two of my coworkers carrying out 30 boxes of these weird off brand cookies that never sell. The boss had purchased them hoping they would. They were expired, every last one.

The next time they ask me to spy on a black person I’m tying my fucking shoelaces…