The first time I got a job, (the very first! what a lazy fuckin' bum, huh? no, I was supposed to study!) Anyway, I was 19, had taken Tiff right before she turned one, and left the first guy that got me pregnant in high school, & first I was stupid and married him, then realized what a true bum he was and left him (after all, he WAS 27 & I was 18...all I can realize now is 'he mustve been really immature!').
So after we left, we moved in with Mom & Dad (for like a week, that's all I could take!). One of my friends brought me an application for the place she worked at, which was the grocery store around the corner, and said they really need more cashiers. Filled it out, took it over, took an honesty test, and got hired right then! I was SO happy!! (it was a ticket out, ya know??).
I worked there, and begged for as many hours as I could get. Remember, this was around 1985..minimum wage was $3.35 an hour...try telling your kids that one!! But Tiff & I did ok, with the exception of the devil-worshiping signs painted on the wall in the attic at our first apartment...that always did tend to creep me out. And my bedroom looked straight out at the door. Luckily, it had a sliding latch/lock on it. I never thought to wonder why till now...hmmm...
I got a babysitter, that was back when they had a gov't program to pay the babysitter on a sliding scale for working moms, & that worked well! (God bless Ronald Reagan!!).
I made lots of friends among the other cashiers there. We had a lot in common (we all hated the boss like poison!). That store was not in the worst part of town, but it just seemed like the worst people shopped there! Not because they were minorities, or on food stamps (for heaven's sake I was too, for a few months!). But because a lot of people that came in had one thing on their mind...THEFT!!! And, of course, it was up to us, as cashiers at the front of the store, to catch any shoplifters!
We had the cartons of cigarettes on a pegboard wall in the front of the store, across the store from where the registers were. This place was a shoplifters dream!! Bags of candy hung from the pegboard on the other side of the cartons of cigarettes. One of the girls I worked with (she's younger than me, and we still call & write all the time!) saw a big black guy crouched down in front of the candy when she went down that aisle, she looked a little closer, and realized that he had his arm sticking all the way through to where the cigarettes were. She walked up behind him, tapped him on the shoulder, and when he jumped & turned around to look, all she did was smile and say, "Can I help you, sir?" He just took off running, and we all just about died laughing!
One evening, we were closing (at 9 pm), and I was walking the aisles with the assistant manager to just try to put back misplaced items to straighten the store, and Doug walked down the aisle next to mine. All of as sudden, he yelled "Eeeww, Libby! C'mere, something stinks, and I can't figure out what it is!". Then I'm getting ready to go around the corner, and he yells "Found it!!". Keep in mind, it was August, and the a/c wasn't really good...he'd pulled a pack of sausage out from behind a box of cereal, and I have no clue how long it had been there, but it stunk SO BAD!!! And it had tons of maggots crawling around all over! This is where being a girl is a HUGE advantage!! I could yell, "I can't touch that!!". HAHA!!
One other time when we were closing, we always turned off every other aisle's lights, so customers got the idea that we were closing (even though there was a huge sign on the door...). This one older lady was just leisurely walking along shopping, studying labels, etc...so one of the stock guys went back to the back room and shut off half of the lights that were still on...all of a sudden that lady actually looked up at the lights questioningly, then opened her purse, and took out a penlite flashlight and went back to reading labels!!
...more later...
BoUnCeS!! LibbY!
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