Women with more than three kids buy quite a lot. They tend to tip well, too. Sometimes they press creased, overly folded five-dollar bills into our hands after we\u2019ve once more packed full their identical, imitation wood paneled station wagons. One of them has four small children, three boys and the baby, a girl. They are all hopelessly feral. The boys should have never been given paintball guns for their birthdays. We were told that until the time came to repaint the damage, which was an expensive endeavor, the driver\u2019s side door was irregularly splattered with beet-red paint.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Hard currency is always welcome. It is never suspected to be counterfeit, never examined suspiciously\u2014never held up to the light and scrutinized for watermarks\u2014the way the twenties, fifties, and hundreds are supposed to be. Cashiers, nearly all of whom are female, lustily pine away for our mobility. They get tired of being behind identical, claustrophobic stations for hours at a time. We sackers are part of a male-dominated industry, know it, and enjoy it.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Our official job title is courtesy clerk<\/em>, but this is clearly a ridiculous term made up by someone in marketing and advertising. No one really uses it. It says so on our paystubs and on the series of training videos we are forced to watch prior to hire, but nowhere else. When the company made the change, half of us threatened to walk off the job because of this slight, speaking out with growing, enthusiastic rage. This oppression will not stand.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n We are won over after at least three hours of sober deliberation by management, who dangle the promise at least two cold beers. We always were suckers for free beer. In addition, shop stewards are offered free initiation into the nearby freemasons\u2019 lodge, the one right up the road. It\u2019s the same physical address that doubles as a nail salon during daylight hours. In time, we are told, we\u2019ll have the same opportunity ourselves to meet in silence and, in time-honored tradition, complain to each other about nothing much in particular.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n On long Saturday shifts, especially during the summer, we try to look past the hours of tedium, envisioning the bills tucked and folded and stuffed into jean pockets\u2014we imagine how they\u2019ll look when we are finally free to spend them.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Shift concluded, we take a trip by the record store and purchase vinyl LPs for our high-fidelity systems, concluding amongst ourselves that cassette tapes really can\u2019t be that bad. At least they are more reliable than eight-tracks, which tend to fall apart with time. Because we have not very much money beyond that which we make in tips, our car stereos are beyond cheap. They look like a Cub Scout\u2019s unassisted entry into the Pinewood Derby or, should that metaphor not suffice, a very bad science fair project.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n We have purchased this sound system from a stereotypically carbuncular, reclusive, genius kid who lives two houses down. He is an electronics whiz, a person who, in adulthood (well, really, in less than three years, if you want to get technical about it) will make far more money than we can even imagine. He\u2019ll develop computer graphics software and, as is true with all significant scientific discoveries, he\u2019ll get the chance to name his creation himself, the precise way he\u2019d like it to be. The device we purchase, however, is merely an early prototype. A magnum opus will follow, and this ain\u2019t it.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Being not an automatic, nor particularly intuitive machine, we must eject the tape completely (the system is not<\/em> easy to use) at the end of side one, turn it upside down, and then reinsert the cartridge until it firmly clicks into place\u2014all of this to listen to side two. Magnetic tape must always face east. We have a fast-forward button, but not a rewind option. We adjust our thinking to compensate. With time, we get pretty good at guessing how long we\u2019ll need to keep the tiny reel-to-reel spooling, provided we don\u2019t want to listen to a particular song. Sometimes it\u2019s best to just let the damn thing play.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n After punching out for the day, we re-insert our timecard into its usual slot, which looks like a metallic combination of a vest and a venetian blind. The device, which also reveals the progression of time by way of a highly visible, very analogue clockface makes a reassuring noise as the day\u2019s timestamps are recorded for the benefit of payroll. As we do so, we pull out a wad of mostly one-dollar bills in our right hand, then begin to count them silently in our head as we would if we were working out someone else\u2019s change. Twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three.<\/em> Washington\u2019s portrait always faces east. They must all be in order, in sequence.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Covington County isn\u2019t exactly Yoknapatawpha, but it\u2019s close enough. It\u2019s a good place to find a hitman for hire (no foolin\u2019!), meth cookers, forty-year-old women who look sixty, and a surfeit of dogs in blatant violation of leash laws. Flagrant violators of the bonds of holy matrimony may find themselves confronted by unforgiving husbands bearing firearms. Renewed vows, undertaken by those with reasonably successful marriages may be taken again. Found with slightly greater frequency is the ritual of repeat baptisms.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n No one willingly admits that they grew up there. Residents of nearby counties and towns that border Covington take great offense should anyone mistakenly believe otherwise. Such information is never willingly volunteered. But, for better or for worse, it\u2019s our home. I mean, at least we have a chain sit-down pizza parlor and a roller-skating rink. Lots of places don\u2019t even have that much.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Collectively turned loose on a lazy, hot, mid-summer day, we grocery sackers have a couple of hours before the chain record store closes. Being that it is not Christmas time yet, we do not fight for quart-sized containers of surplus eggnog. When it is eggnog season, the product in question arrives in yellow carboard containers\u2014usually, like clockwork, ten calendar days before Thanksgiving. Eggnog Wars are around for a limited time only.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n As such, when it comes back around again, we put together the collective perfect mixtape playlist for the approaching holiday season. The task took us all night. Unfortunately, no one else cares much to listen to our labor of love. The night manager with the blonde mustache has heard us, in chorus, singing along to one of the songs. He thinks we shouldn\u2019t quit our day job quite yet. Regardless of what we might wish to the contrary, our labor of love will never be played all over the store for the benefit of the customers, not the employees.<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n What will be heard instead is wall-to-wall Manheim Steamroller, on a loop, because the company is run by cheapskate executives with matching unibrows who believe, foolishly, that they\u2019ll be the only game in town forever. Low prices for the customers and low rates of pay for us. Those of us who have traveled the country, even a little, know of other chains who do things very differently.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n We sackers can be coerced into solidarity when needs be. But few of us really care much for actual organizing. Forming a picket line takes patience and time, as does working up enough hostility on a combination of strike pay and instant coffee\u2014the perfect combo\u2014to spit on scabs. We\u2019re just not committed enough, frankly.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Unions are weak in Covington. They always have been and likely always will be. Our fathers held nothing but scorn for men who held at least one of two vocations\u2014union organizer and criminal defense attorney.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Instead, we haggle amongst ourselves, as we usually do, for the out-of-date alcohol, which in this case is truly rotgut wine. Beer is much too obvious a target and would instantly cost us our jobs if we were caught stealing it. No one is ever supposed to pour the cold storage alcohol out, but the same cannot be said for many other products on display for sale on refrigerated shelves. As a result, our diet is heavily skewed towards dairy because we\u2019re the only weirdos who want to regularly tote home gallon after gallon of homogenized whole milk.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The guys who stock the freezers or work nights restocking don\u2019t participate in any of this. They usually don\u2019t have much to say, even in the best of times. They avoid eye contact altogether and don\u2019t strike up a conversation with anyone. Invariably, at least one of them has a dual diagnosis of antisocial personality disorder and some sort of chemical dependency. You\u2019ll find them on break smoking two cigarettes at once, both fully lit, one casually stuck between the index digit and the middle finger of the right hand\u2014the other stuck between the ring finger and pinkie. Out of habit, with every fresh puff, their left-hand tucks long strands of greasy hair behind the left earlobe.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Taking a quick drag, regardless of its positioning, they then quietly, contemplatively purse lips together, blowing smoke upward towards the ceiling. When finished with both smokes, cigarettes are regrettably crushed into submission. Breaktime is almost over. Sighing audibly, their plain red golf shirts are tucked into dirty jeans, first making sure that nametags are prominently displayed to their right, which is to say, your left.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n We\u2019ve never understood why it matters. It\u2019s unnatural for complete strangers, even good customers, no less, to be on a first name basis with us. No one cared much to know who were or what we were called during the whole of childhood and adolescence. But here at work, suddenly, we\u2019re a reminder of fond high school memories long past. We coax gauzy, narrative accounts of the ones who never left for the city, or the university\u2014the ones who stayed behind to manage lawn care services or to put aluminum siding in place.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n In any case, we casually flick our ash into the clay-molded, glazed squarish tray that must be older, combined, than any of us in the room. It looks for all the world like someone\u2019s discarded art project\u2014one thrown together in haste without much thought behind it. Whomever crafted it at least intended for it to be used regularly. That much is true. Like pockets on a pool table, smokers can park their butts in one of at least six different, strategic locations without disturbing anyone else\u2019s nicotine fix.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n We all smoke and so the tray must be emptied several times a day, usually by us. This Sisyphean task is merely bad karma returned. In elementary school art class, we were the kind of kids who deliberately and mischievously didn\u2019t squeeze out enough air bubbles in our own work when it came time to put the combined efforts of the whole class in the kiln. It was always our fault when everyone else\u2019s ash trays exploded due to our own lax, but, in our own defense, hardly sinister ways. We were practical jokers, goofs, class clowns.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Once, that same year, we put tacks in the chairs of our classmates. We did not do a good job of it. For that offense we spent three hours in time out, essentially in solitary confinement, albeit with sympathetic jailers, without lunch. That was punishment in and of itself. In those days, believe it or not, cafeteria food was good\u2014good enough, in fact, that the firefighters at the engine house across the street usually ate with us. In my time in elementary school, the firefighters would enter our classroom, teaching us the Heimlich maneuver with solemn gravitas. No one ever thought they\u2019d have to use it until one kid choked on a salad.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The procedure was a success. For their heroism, it was decided that we\u2019d all celebrate. In keeping with cake and ice cream, the firemen shared with us a VHS tape showcasing their most heroic rescue effort to date. It involved a fire that started on the roof of the Masonic lodge but did not make its way down to the nail salon. We were never told who recorded the slightly grainy footage.<\/p>\n In those days, meal tickets, dispensed to each student, were made of blue flimsy cardboard. I\u2019m not sure who felt that this means of distribution was sufficient and acceptable for teachers and students alike\u2014teachers who had to keep up with thirty ink-smeared, individual cards, perpetually sticky and germ infested, especially. Should a ticket get sopping wet, it was never the same.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Each lunch, the lunch lady who worked the register punched out proof that we students had indeed consumed each meal in the plan. She worked methodically, from child to child. Punch. Punch.<\/em> At the end of thirty punches, which equaled thirty lunches, it was time for a new card, one that didn\u2019t look like it had been chewed on by a dog.<\/p>\n _________<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Those were much happier times. Today, we\u2019re in high school, and our lives inside the four walls of the classroom could not be more different than our working world, especially on weekends, when there are no dismissal bells to compete for our focus. These days, most of our energies are primarily spent simply surviving from 8 am to 3 pm. We totally wilt in the middle of anxious individual science group presentations. We\u2019re the archetypical nervous kid stumbling out of the gate, (basically, we say the word basically a lot<\/em>) when we must address the class for any reason.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Our science teacher, freshman year, does not last very long. She has devised a system (with her husband, as primary confidante) to force the hand of student participation. Every member of the class must raise their hand at least eight times a semester. It\u2019s introvert torture and almost as bad on those who are more socially adaptable, but nevertheless we\u2019re stuck in the middle of puberty. In time, the teacher herself breaks down into tears in front of us. It appears that she\u2019s kept her phone number unlisted for emergencies and has been prank called by multiple kids on numerous instances.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Quietly attentive.<\/em> That\u2019s what our progress reports all say. Painfully slow dot-matrix printers attached to equally lethargic mainframes reveal our final grades. In time, numeric grades include a one-sentence description of who we are and how engaged we are with our studies. This is the work of some highly-paid official at the brain trust command center across town\u2014likely predicated upon highly refined educational theory.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n There, we are not in control. Therefore, it\u2019s easy, for the duration, to put all those school fears aside, to squarely focus our thoughts only on the latest goods that are currently teetering\u2014not quite resting\u2014by the back door of the supermarket. All that has been trucked in overnight amounts to dry goods, mainly. Each is elevated a few inches off the concrete floor, stacked on refurbished wooden pallets.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n One can tell that the pallets are not brand new. Many of five or so horizontal slats are made at different lengths, widths, and from very different types of lumber. Skilled labor it is not.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n What will be soon placed on shelves or inside coolers is wrapped in layers of thick cellophane\u2014partially translucent film that must be first hacked away at like stubborn underbrush, then finally shredded into a sticky, squeaky shroud. The remains are stuffed, in great haste, into large-mouthed grey plastic garbage cans and thought of no more.<\/p>\n We never see waste disposal. They never see us, either. At the end of my shift, we make our way into the morning sun as waste disposal are on their way out to us. The rats crawl out, the rats crawl in.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Our trusty box cutters are our best friend. Though we always seem to somehow lose ours after every day\u2019s shift, we always steal them back from the night staff for my private usage. One dude always leaves his in a particularly consistent location in the break room. We have no qualms at all in taking advantage of his carelessness. The shielded, silver blade is used to slice open massive brown-paper wrapped parcels that the night staff has loaded and stacked for us to dispense to customers.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n A truck delivery brings in item after item, positioned one on top of the other\u2014all the way to the very ceiling itself, twenty-five feet high. The layout of groceries is often vastly different from store to store. Having sliced through the cellophane, we are next responsible for lining up which product goes on what aisle. We don\u2019t particularly enjoy this next part.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n It\u2019s easier to manage the brown paper bags. Each parcel contains maybe a hundred folded, sturdy bags, each with the pleasant bright red logo of the company standing out well against the yellow brown of the fibers.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Middle-aged women who work the registers commandeer rarely purchased car leather polish from the automotive section shelves, spraying frequently to keep the ancient conveyor belts glossy and spit polished. Taken to extremes, too much polish can reduce friction enough so that the heavy bottles of soda that customers regularly purchase topple over like ninepins. But not enough lubrication, in great contrast, destroys electric motors and stifles the expected progression of goods in its tracks.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n We receive few complaints. Most of our customers in line are simply too busy thinking four moves ahead, as many of us do while inside supermarkets, or huge enclosed spaces. Queen\u2019s pawn opening.<\/em> As it is, we pick up on all the peculiarities most people wouldn\u2019t. We understand why Italian ladies arrive every day and what they talk about when they arrive. We know that lard does make the best biscuits.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Assuming business is moderate, we\u2019ll have enough sacks up front to last us at least an hour. In the middle of a rush, however, all bets are off. If we\u2019re gone from the front\u2014for example, if it\u2019s just past Christmas\u2014we are likely in the back refrigerator, clandestinely drinking our fill of eggnog only a day or so past date. Unsellable. Flavorful, though. Showing up in front of supervisors with Season\u2019s Greetings on our breath could cost us our jobs. Eventually.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n One of our numerous responsibilities is to examine the expiration dates of dairy products. Night shift knows how to move in fresher shipments to the back cooler, but it often gets lazy with what never got sold and now needs to get tossed. Sometimes we use the box cutter to shred the cardboard sides of almost-spoiled milk cartons. These bleed out into the sink drain, usually. We wash away the evidence with a rubber hose.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Many glass wine bottles are left there too, crowded together into a filthy fiberglass sink, and somehow, most of them end up in the back of our cars by the close of day.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The buzz helps, as soon as we\u2019re decompressing at home with our feet up, watching television. On an eight-hour shift, we get two fifteen-minute breaks and a thirty-minute lunch, but they aren\u2019t enough to distract us from perpetually aching legs and feet. Comfortable shoes are never enough.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n It beats school, though. We remember sitting on the bleachers in the gym, listening to an assistant superintendent preach on and on, emoting no enthusiasm whatsoever. We remember the humiliation of sweaty, unwashed gym clothes. We know what happens when a tetherball becomes a deadly weapon. We were always told such matters were only temporary. No one can ever make us go back. We don\u2019t.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Kevin Camp Women with more than three kids buy quite a lot. They tend to tip well, too. Sometimes they press creased, overly folded five-dollar bills into our hands after we\u2019ve once more packed full their identical, imitation wood paneled station wagons. One of them has four small children, three boys and the baby, a girl. They are all hopelessly feral. The boys should have never been given paintball guns for their birthdays. We were told that until the time came to repaint the damage, which was an expensive endeavor, the driver\u2019s side door was irregularly splattered with beet-red paint….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":65,"featured_media":0,"parent":96,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-692","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/18-1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/692","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/18-1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/18-1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/18-1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/65"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/18-1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=692"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/18-1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/692\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":693,"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/18-1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/692\/revisions\/693"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/18-1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/96"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/18-1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=692"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}