They’re a marvel
to any person from a third world country, a miracle, a mystery. They’re
excessively ordinary, a place to buy food. Every walk of life enters them, and
they hold miniature examples of all that happens in life. I shop at them. I
could start naming the ones everyone knows: Wal-Mart, spreading all over the
US, Sam’s Club’s blue letters welcoming large families (or Southern moms who
feed armies, like mine), but there is one that holds a special interest for me.
I work at one, my neighborhood Hy-Vee grocery store. I know its rules, rhythms,
commands, and resulting sales. I know the actions, human streams, ebbs and
flows of action that it will always have.
Working at one, the
way I see things changed. It started simply, straightforwardly, an awareness of
other workers, no matter the store. I would start thanking cashiers by name,
looking them in the eyes and seeing them. I tried to make them laugh, giving
them a moment of real personal interaction in hours that dragged on. Or perhaps
I stayed quiet, not forcing them to chat, watching the speed of their hands, as
fast as concentration could make them. I would help bag my family’s groceries
if the sacker was busy (I was fourteen then). I would bring a cart or two in if
they were in arms reach, especially in the heat of the Iowan summer. Little
bits of effort, unexpected kindness, things that can change an attitude, that can
make a whole day better.
I became familiar
with my store’s contents, in the carts or on the shelves. I knew the people by
heart, the four-year-old hand grasping a cookie from the bakery, clinging with the
other hand to the rolling metal carts, taking a firmer grasp when it slows as
the shopper reaches on the top shelf for something. There are fathers, stopping
on the way home to pick up milk (at $3.62 a gallon), watching a miniature,
younger version of him buying a candy bar, though his choice might have
switched from the orange Reeses to the dark Snickers. From the old men buying
coffee and newspapers to the little girls buying Ring-Pops, the grocery stores
are familiar, similar; I know them, their unchanging outlines.
The pace in a
grocery store changes, however. I have been there at six-thirty in the morning,
wide awake and hurrying through silent, florescent isles with canned pie
filling, and I have been there at ten-thirty at night, the customers happy and
excited while I drag myself through the door to go home (I’m a morning person,
and they are most definitely not).
But the pace—the pace changes. The morning is a silent, steady walk, as the
boxes carrying what the shelves won’t hold are put back in back, and the
shoppers know exactly what they want—and that’s to get in and get out. I try
not to chatter in the morning, for it’s not welcome, except at the inside Starbuck’s,
its green sign always glowing above a line. Next to it the inside café is busy,
the booths’ cushioned benches nearly filled, while the tables hold stacks of empty
plates covered in syrupy remains.
The pace changes
as eight o’clock nears, and I watch every person in the Starbuck’s line check the
time, from the lady in the business suit to the man with the over-gelled hair.
Work is nearing, and coffee is needed for the hard workday; time is now
precious, and impatience is apparent—and too often audible—among the customers
in line. From my station in Customer Service, yards away, I wince for the barista,
her green apron stained and her ears filled with complaints; can’t they see
she’s doing her best? She has the longest line. My customers only want
newspapers and a smile, while the people in the checkout lines narrow their choices
to a can of orange juice and a small breakfast substitute, a granola bar or crispy
doughnut. They’re not hungry, only aware of the need they’ll have for energy.
Am I the only one who loves mornings, who tastes being alive?
Bored by my lack
of companions, my absence from the work and energy, I watch the checkers. They
work at the registers, the domain known as “the front.” They aren’t worried
yet, that won’t come till nine. Nine is when a rush comes, nine is when every
checker wants a sacker so they needn’t do two jobs at once. (Why nine? Perhaps
because all the non-morning people are up; perhaps because all the moms have
dropped their kids off at school.) Nine is when I ache to leave my slow post
and go up there, where the action is, where I can help people, my slim fingers
seizing, dropping, grabbing handles and setting firmly in the cart. But I
cannot leave my post at nine; 9 might turn out to be some whimsical customer
who wants a carton of cigarettes. I’m not allowed to keep them waiting.
But the busiest
time of day is 4-4:45 (except Wine and Spirits—then it’s after five—or Fridays).
Everyone gets off work; everyone wants to get their grocery shopping done
before they get home. No one likes
going out again after finally getting home, so the grocery store is a stop
along the way—an hour-long stop at times, as the grocery list gets longer and
the checkbook gets thinner. Carts roll to the checkouts, overflowing carts—often
with a bright yellow Cheerio box sliding off the top of the pile. The sacker in
his teal-green apron from produce, the health-market, or stocking the freezer, coming
to help with the rush, groans inwardly as he smiles pleasantly at the customer,
for he has to pack it all back in the cart again. I watch sympathetically, when
I can. I’m busy too. My line is long, for once I’m not cleaning behind my
counter. But at the front there’s so much to do—and they’ll probably want help
out to their cars. The sackers disappear into the parking lot to help them, the
lines get longer, and the checkers are bombarded with the never-ceasing beep as
food slides over scanners.
But that’s on a
normal day.
Then—there are
sales days. They’re generally on Thursday and Friday, or Friday and Saturday; they
always come in pairs. On sales days there are no rushes, no pauses, no breaks. There
are only cashier’s fingers flying over the touch-screen keyboard, unending hums
from every register for the unpredictable collection of items endlessly moved
and scanned (Marshmallow Cream, rubbing alcohol, and Camel Wide Pack
cigarettes? Really?). There is always a line, always a customer, never enough
time. A smile, brief “How are you doing? Did you find everything?” (questions I
still repeat in my sleep from my first days up front) are all there is time
for. There are only people, items, and speed, speed, speed. We come, we work,
we breath, we find it’s time for break, then it’s time to leave.
That’s how it is
up front, at least. Behind Customer Service is slightly different. There I sell
paper and cardboard lottery, fancy event tickets, and green city recycling
stickers; I help customers electronically pay bills (MidAmerica’s my favorite),
send and weigh mail, return perfectly packaged unopened items from complaining
clients, recycle nasty, smelly beer bottles and hug, blue, 5-gallon water jugs…I
do a lot. Plus sell newspapers. I run, and run, and run, the length of the long
counter, back and forth, dancing through our machines to get what the customer
wants. In between the mad dances that go in circles at the music’s fast-paced
beat I restock plastic bags and put pretty blue-and-white postal boxes in their
designated areas. I clean fanatically; I’m one of the few that do back there. I
descend weekly on the accumulated dust with unshakable intent. I keep myself
busy, not bored, and my pace, sales days or not, encompasses more feet than the
checkers’; I love it that way.
But there was one
Saturday, one sales Saturday, where someone wasn’t following the invisible, inaudible,
undeniable beat. There was one Saturday where a single moment changed my point
of view. The front, the customers, checkers, and courtesy were frantically
filling sacks or unloading carts. Behind Customer Service, I hung up the black,
professional wall-phone and saw him. He was an old man in a dark blue shirt,
walking with a cane. The cane was a dark, quiet brown, and it slowed him down
as he walked across the chaotic front. Sadness slowed my motions for a moment,
sadness for him—to be restrained to such a pace in such a place. I know one day
I’ll be forced to keep the same slow pace, to have chores to do, to watch
everyone else doing them and getting them done while knowing that I’d be the
slow one. I’d be the one in the way, I’d be the one that was to be pitied. I
winced away from the thought.
And then he
stopped. There, dead enter, in front of the express registers but out of their
way, he stopped and looked around. And then I saw him differently, my view
turned on its head, because he didn’t stop to rest. He didn’t lean on his cane,
didn’t make a face or grumble. He stopped to see.
He was not
restrained, not forced to a slow pace—it was his choice to stop. It was not an
arrogant, deliberate choice—it was a serene, inquiring one. He walked with his
eyes open to items, colors, people, chaos. He stopped to take a deeper look at
the rest of us, rushing around, because he was calmly curious. He looked at his
surroundings, moving his head from one side to another slowly, once, taking it
in. We had chores and speed; he had an interest in life. But that interest in
life was not frantic, not craving success and love and life to the fullest, not
a deep desire to be filled, but a still interest that allowed him to take in
what life was and enjoy it without the rush that hid so much discontent in the
lives of everyone around him. We were chaos; he was calm.
I yank myself back
from my staring and realized a customer was standing at the counter. Wait,
there were more behind her. I’m still employed, paid to dance to a tune I’d
forgotten to a moment. I suddenly didn’t want to join. But the customers are
lined up, I call over the intercom for help between one breath and the next,
and my fingers dance the 7069 to ring up Powerball again and again and again
(the pot was 63 million that day). I did not see the gentleman again; and then
it was time to leave.
As I walk out the
door I wondered, of course, if I imagined it, if he was nothing more than an
older person stopping to rest on his cane and stare mindlessly at skidding,
crashing cans and cradled fruit. I wonder if I had seen what wasn’t there. But
even if he stopped to rest—that is a gift that none of us possessed, to stop
and rest in a grocery store. And I paused for a moment that morning, and suddenly
saw a different life, a different perspective, a different pace. That moment
captured me and stopped. I remember I loved the concept of life, the way this
wonder was embodied in the nonbreathing, trembling tulip petals of a flower to
the unborn baby learning to think. I loved the way life is influenced by
nonliving rumbles of sound in the skies, connected by non-living electric
pulses between machines that moved but didn’t live, and continued through
invisible relationships that shape life itself. I remember my first reaction, my
pity and sorrow, and then my second. I had pitied a man who lived, who
redefined life as stillness as well as energy. I walked out the door to my car
and hoped to remember him. To remember life.
And I have. Sometimes,
when the dance lets up, usually very early in the morning, I stop and see, for
a moment, what he did. Breath and rest—remember that contentment is not
efficient accomplishment. I look at the milk and remember what it tastes like,
what it is to taste instead of eat and run simultaneously. I look at the child
holding the cart and imagine what it’s like to have one foot riding in the air
above the floor. I look at the customer who wearily brings me his MidAmerica
bill and attempt to make him smile. The moments don’t take long, but change
everything. I enjoy the dance still, but I also remember that sometimes,
watching the dance is as alive as joining it. I remember to enjoy sight and
sound as much as energy, the slower pace as much as the faster.
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