*****
We wore clip on ties with white shirts or blue dress shirts. We helped ourselves to chocolate milk, soda pop, bread from the bakery, packs of lunchmeat, candy bars and other grocery items. Boys braver than I helped themselves to whole cases of beer or more and loaded them up into the trunks of their cars on the sly with clever strategies on a par with D. D. Eisenhower. We burned copious amounts of cardboard in the huge trash burner out back. We couldn't believe our good fortune when our dirty-minded store manager hired another beautiful young woman to be a checker.
More important, we bagged and carried out groceries for customers. We stocked and faced shelves. We mopped floors. We cleaned up messes.
We were the boxboys at Kellogg's Stein Brother's IGA.
I loved this job.
My most memorable day working at Stien's was one evening after the store had closed. It was stock day when the big Roundup semi-truck came very early in the morning from Spokane and brought the store its week of goods.
This was a particularly trying day, every week, at the store. It was the day displays were built for whatever sale we were running. Often the displays were canned vegetables or canned fruit juices or something like Hi-C so the hauling of these boxes of canned goods out of the truck into to store was hard work, primarily for our store managers.
During the school year, we box boys didn't arrive on stock day until about 4 in the afternoon and a lot of work remained for us to do. Unopened boxes of brown sugar, Post cereals, Kipper snacks, chopped olives, catsup and mustard, and scores of other items needed to be shelved.
Stock day stressed us all. We had to leave our shelving work often to go up front and bag and carry out groceries. It was frustrating to get momentum going with shelving a case of French cut green beans and have to leave it to help a customer.
We almost always had to work on stock day past the store's closing hour.
One night must have been especially stressful for our store manager. About seven or clock or so he began drinking beer out of the cooler. Kellogg was such an open container kind of town that no one tought much of him doing his work in the store while pouring Heidleberg beers down the hatch.
When we got done stocking the shelves around 9:30 or so one particular night, our store manager said he wanted to see us all before we left and told us to each grab a pop. Maybe some of the older boxboys grabbed a beer. I'm not sure.
Expecting our store manager to thank us for our hard work, instead he started talking to us about sex.
In particular, he began to tell us about his sexual conquests in his own house, how he would satisfy himself with his wife in the living room, the kitchen, the bathroom, the bedroom, dining room, against walls, on top of her, behind her, with her sitting on counters, in sinks. I waited for him to tell us they both stood on their heads. His wife was buxom and he told us about how wonderful her breasts felt in his hands.
I was in the 10th grade. I was shocked and uncomfortable. I did not want to hear the drunken sex stories of my store manager. I don't know what the other boxboys thought. I just wanted to get out of there, but we had to wait until he was finished.
It was as if my place of employment had become a high school boy's locker room. It was one thing to hear stories like this in the locker room. It didn't fit at work.
Finally, our store manager dismissed us. I walked home, about four or five blocks. I felt dizzy. I had been forced into a world of story telling I didn't really want to enter.
I got home. Mom asked me how things were at work. I told her that our store manager had told us stories about him and his wife having sex.
I've been grateful ever since that night that my mom said that was wrong of him. She didn't say anything about me quitting and she didn't say anything like she was going to complain on my behalf to one of the Stein Brothers. I am, to this day, grateful for that. But, Mom had outrage in her voice and that outrage communicated to me that the feelings of nausea I had were fitting for the situation.
I was never able to feel quite as trusting around the store manager again after that evening. I took my orders. I never wanted to be alone with him in the break room. I heard he made passes at some of those beautiful checkers he hired. I don't know if that was true.
But I do know that I didn't like having a man in his forties talk to me like he was in high school.
I also know that I always felt weird when his wife came in the store.
I had too much information.
More important, we bagged and carried out groceries for customers. We stocked and faced shelves. We mopped floors. We cleaned up messes.
We were the boxboys at Kellogg's Stein Brother's IGA.
I loved this job.
My most memorable day working at Stien's was one evening after the store had closed. It was stock day when the big Roundup semi-truck came very early in the morning from Spokane and brought the store its week of goods.
This was a particularly trying day, every week, at the store. It was the day displays were built for whatever sale we were running. Often the displays were canned vegetables or canned fruit juices or something like Hi-C so the hauling of these boxes of canned goods out of the truck into to store was hard work, primarily for our store managers.
During the school year, we box boys didn't arrive on stock day until about 4 in the afternoon and a lot of work remained for us to do. Unopened boxes of brown sugar, Post cereals, Kipper snacks, chopped olives, catsup and mustard, and scores of other items needed to be shelved.
Stock day stressed us all. We had to leave our shelving work often to go up front and bag and carry out groceries. It was frustrating to get momentum going with shelving a case of French cut green beans and have to leave it to help a customer.
We almost always had to work on stock day past the store's closing hour.
One night must have been especially stressful for our store manager. About seven or clock or so he began drinking beer out of the cooler. Kellogg was such an open container kind of town that no one tought much of him doing his work in the store while pouring Heidleberg beers down the hatch.
When we got done stocking the shelves around 9:30 or so one particular night, our store manager said he wanted to see us all before we left and told us to each grab a pop. Maybe some of the older boxboys grabbed a beer. I'm not sure.
Expecting our store manager to thank us for our hard work, instead he started talking to us about sex.
In particular, he began to tell us about his sexual conquests in his own house, how he would satisfy himself with his wife in the living room, the kitchen, the bathroom, the bedroom, dining room, against walls, on top of her, behind her, with her sitting on counters, in sinks. I waited for him to tell us they both stood on their heads. His wife was buxom and he told us about how wonderful her breasts felt in his hands.
I was in the 10th grade. I was shocked and uncomfortable. I did not want to hear the drunken sex stories of my store manager. I don't know what the other boxboys thought. I just wanted to get out of there, but we had to wait until he was finished.
It was as if my place of employment had become a high school boy's locker room. It was one thing to hear stories like this in the locker room. It didn't fit at work.
Finally, our store manager dismissed us. I walked home, about four or five blocks. I felt dizzy. I had been forced into a world of story telling I didn't really want to enter.
I got home. Mom asked me how things were at work. I told her that our store manager had told us stories about him and his wife having sex.
I've been grateful ever since that night that my mom said that was wrong of him. She didn't say anything about me quitting and she didn't say anything like she was going to complain on my behalf to one of the Stein Brothers. I am, to this day, grateful for that. But, Mom had outrage in her voice and that outrage communicated to me that the feelings of nausea I had were fitting for the situation.
I was never able to feel quite as trusting around the store manager again after that evening. I took my orders. I never wanted to be alone with him in the break room. I heard he made passes at some of those beautiful checkers he hired. I don't know if that was true.
But I do know that I didn't like having a man in his forties talk to me like he was in high school.
I also know that I always felt weird when his wife came in the store.
I had too much information.
1 comment:
Ah, you've inspired me to write about my first job, now. We started our careers on the same path.
I have a question: Worst clean-up ever?
Post a Comment