from 6/22/08: First Day Back

I walk into the Store at 8:55am, and the line of customers is down the aisle. I walk in, and I'm already flustered--it's been nearly a year since last I worked at either Store, and here we are. I drop my bag down and start to approach one of the cash racks to start bagging. I'm bleary-eyed, having woken up only twenty minutes ago. What will the customers think of me? Am I the slacker (because I'm supposed to get in at 9am, but the store opens at 8 so they think I actually showed up an hour late instead of 5min early)? I start piling in groceries--heavy stuff on the bottom, light stuff on top--baby food jars creating the first layer on the bottom, blanketed by a package of thin-sliced organic muenster cheese, a handful of black plums, and so forth. I swoop in, pack some bags, and the line inches forward, albeit at a snail pace. Thinking to myself the whole time, please don't leave, please don't discard your items and leave the store. Please don't get so frustrated that you decide to nix this altogether and never come back, and then spread bad news about the store, and then tell all your friends and family to never come back.

The next question that races through my head is: to double bag or not to double bag? This question gives me perpetual anxiety--if I don't double-bag, then some customer will get mad at me because their loaf of Pepperidge Farm oatmeal bread or frozen Amy's burritos or something might break. But if I do double bag, some customers get indignant because you're wasting. So sometimes I have to size them up--if they look a little granola-crunchy, then they're probably into saving the environment, and I don't bother asking if they want another bag. If it's an old indigenous Brooklyn lady, usually of the southern Italian descent, then I just take the trouble to double-bag her toilet paper, lest I want to get my head snapped off.

Maybe no one else bothers thinking about this kind of stuff, but I start to feel the tension in my shoulders, especially as I'm quickly, furiously packing these groceries. How it stresses me out! The weight of making a good impression on our customers--so they don't get unhappy, so they come back to shop at the store, so they spread our good reputation--this stress manifests itself physically, in the tension in my neck and shoulders. I've often told myself that I could be a janitor and still be super stressed out.

So it goes.

Today, nothing all that interesting went on. I mean, lots of moms and baby strollers. I noticed people started bringing their own bags more. The other cashier and I have now taken to asking people, "Would you like a bag for this?" which is great, because it's being both green-friendly, as well as cost-effective. Let's see... among the groceries purchased: kale, gallons of Organic Valley Farms milk, Pink lady apples, lemons, leeks (isn't it too warm for leeks?).

I accidentally punched in $9.99 instead of 99 cents for organic lemons, because the touch screen is so damn slippery! And it kept sticking, and whenever I'd punch in a code, it'd double up the numbers. And it kind of drove me crazy.