Yesterday I was reminiscing about the grocery business with ‘Travolta,’ an old friend who did a few tours in Washington D.C. area Giant Food stores. Below are some soiled memories of his.

"Travolta began back in 1979, in a store that was not too terrible, and worked with a traumatized Vietnam Vet I will call Jack. Jack was a famously anti-management union guy in an industry where the unions sold out to management a long time ago. He had been a tunnel rat, and people feared him. He once killed and ate a crawling insect while a manager was speaking to him—end of conversation. Once, when a customer asked him for a firmer head of cabbage, he wrapped a coconut in cabbage leaves and gave her that, twirled up in a plastic bag.

"On another occasion management—who liked giving him dirty jobs and sending him to work in the worst stores—directed him to deliver a dozen roses to an address, without first inquiring the nature of his vehicle. It was a motorcycle of course. He placed the first rose in his mouth, drove across town, delivered the rose, and returned to the store for the next rose. On it continued in this fashion until he had delivered all 12 roses.

“We worked together in produce, so naturally spoke with one another often. On discovering that I had some intelligence, he said, ‘Travolta never let management know how smart you are or they will make your life hell.’ How right he was about the cutthroat character of retail food management.”

“Good God, what a place! It was surrounded by the dregs of the world: poor Koreans, poor Russians, poor blacks, poor Jews. A supermarket reflects the neighborhood. You go to an upscale supermarket, it is wonderful. You go into a low income store, God help you. We were in a shopping center that had a K-Mart. If you want to know what it was like back then listen to the song ‘Christmas in K-Mart’ by Root Boy Slim.

“My first day there the security guard tackles a shoplifter, puts him in an arm lock, and says, “Stop, or I’m gonna break it. He repeats this. The shoplifter continues to struggle, and he snaps the arm. You could hear it pop! Then he handcuffs the shoplifter to the railing in the doorway until the cops get there. In the meantime customers are navigating their carts around this shoplifter with the broken arm.

“I’m working on the night crew. It is three a.m., when these three heroin addicts come in and start raking stuff off the shelves—just trashing the place! The security guard is unarmed. The night captain runs for the phone outside the courtesy booth to call the police. One of the addicts throws a glass jar of citrus slices at him and shatters the phone. One addict begins yelling that he is going to go to his car and get a gun and kill everyone. Eventually the police got there to arrest two of them—the other having disappeared, I think. In the meantime the security guard grabbed a fire extinguisher and beat one of them senseless with it. The cops told us later that one of the addicts had a gangrenous foot that had to be amputated at the hospital. Just disgusting!”

“Store Thirty was the worst. We called it Dirty Thirty. I got transferred there and I notice I’m driving past this street where someone is found shot to death on the news daily. One day there was a flaming Mercedes Benz on the lot! The security personnel were armed. The first thing they would do when they came in was strip down their pistols and load them! The neighborhood was so bad the store was not open twenty-four hours, and they still had an armed guard in the store at night!

“You know how they have manager trainees, for the front end. We had this new manager trainee who was left in charge on a slow night, to get that crucial practice closing down a store after business. This customer comes up front that night and approaches her at the courtesy, telling her that she should check the men’s room. She walks back to the men’s room. Mind you, this is in a food store, and this is where the employees sanitize their hands for work before they handle your food.

“There is a man shaving at the sink.

“Another man is taking a dump.

“And, between those two is a jon, who has this prostitute bent over and is ass-fucking her!

“She walked up front, set her keys down, and walked out, never to be seen again.”

Mamma, don’t let your babies grow up to be retail food clerks.