If you had walked up to me in 2018 and told me “Hey, you’re going to be working in a grocery store in the next year!” I would have looked at you like you were smoking crack. I don’t even like grocery shopping and you’re telling me I’m going to spend 8 hours a day inside of a grocery store? Nah, brah.
Except life happened. I quit the hotel from hell because it was awful and riding a bus for over an hour a day to and from something miserable or having Dan drive me to and from work wasn’t financially sensible. We had just moved to Los Osos and I wanted a job I could walk to.
Enter the Grocery Store.
Two years ago this month I walked in and had an interview. And I got provisionally hired on the spot to work in bakery or deli. I just had to pass the background check. It took forever because of Thanksgiving, but I passed and I was going to be working in the service deli.
Man if you’ve never done food service or food prep, let me tell you right now you need to bow down and thank the next chef or prep cook you see. It’s brutal, hard work. Everything is bloody and heavy or leaky and heavy or stinky and heavy or greasy and heavy or hot as fuck and really really heavy… you get the idea. You’re basically juggling scalding hot grease covered food with ovens that hate you and the floor is wet and your non slip shoes still slip and you’re supposed to be smiling and talking to customers at the same time. Everything in the kitchen wants you dead and you’re over there trying to make food that won’t kill people.
It’s super fun.
And then a couple of months into my grocery journey we got the extra bonus surprise of COVID. Fuck. Thanks! I need this too. Now I have to juggle 220 degree roasted chickens with a mask on and sanitize everything every 15 minutes. Sure, why not?
COVID was actually one of the greatest gifts to my grocery store journey as being an essential worker and being there for my customers and becoming someone they trusted to tell them if we had food or not or to do some shopping for them when I got off work gave me a sense of purpose during the early days of the pandemic, it made going to work feel important and it’s how I fell in love with the grocery business.
Grocery stores are all about making people happy. Happy was rare in the early stages of the pandemic. It was damn near impossible. We were afraid too, abused by people who didn’t believe in the pandemic and we were scared of getting sick. Some of us did get sick.
Grocery workers are charged with this one goal though, make you happy and. We have to make decisions on the fly that will help make you happy.
There is a reason that in grocery stores the sales floor is sometimes referred to as The Stage and anything in the back is called Backstage. We still have cameras on us back there but we can yell “fuck,” or ask our coworkers to toss us in the baler and turn it on for a few seconds before we step back out on that Stage and get back to work.
I’ve met some of my best local friends through working at the grocery store. I’m always there and I always see a friendly face.
I left the deli after 1 1/2 years back there because of health issues and they put me up front and that’s where the real action is. I see every customer and greet them with a smile and ask after their kids, dogs, husbands, whatever because each customer becomes my friend if I can make that happen. I’m constantly ON at the store.
My favorite thing at the store is going “shopping,” with my customers when they can’t find something. Can’t find it? Shit, let’s go! And we go walk and find it or something similar to it and I get to chat with my friend or neighbor while we look.
You never say “I don’t know.” You only say “I’m not sure but let’s go see and if I can’t find it, I’ll find someone who can!” Or “Let’s check the phone app and see if it will point us in the right direction.”
100% though, if I can’t find it for you, we don’t have it. But I can find you something else you might like, so come get me, let’s wander!
You want help out to your car? Heck yes! Let’s get them groceries in your car! Tell me about your new job while we’re walking out!
When I was sick last year I got hit with some medical bills I wasn’t expecting and my customers put together a Go Fund Me for me and kept me alive financially. My customers bring me treats, they bring me animals to pet in the parking lot on my break, they buy me lunch randomly, they come to my house to give me rides to doctors appointments, work or just into SLO if I don’t want to take the bus. My customers offer to bring me rain gear when it’s rainy and I have parking lot duty. They leave mysterious gifts for me on my doorstep if they know where I live and a fair share of them do, but that’s because it’s Los Osos.
(No seriously on Halloween this year The Goat Lady aka Joelle brought a goat in costume to visit me.)
My customers being happy is a major thing to me. Grocery work is just as personal as hotel work was, this is a human need, food and supplies. Might as well get your food from your friend, right?
If you had told me two years ago that working in a grocery store would be neck and neck in feeding my soul as doing radio was, I would have looked at you like you were on all the drugs, but when I finish at night and high five my coworkers and know that the potatoes have been put to sleep and the grocery store is ready to fire up again in the morning and that I get to go back in and see all my customers aka my friends and I get paid for it?
It’s worth it.