Hey, SummerSalt here from Philadelphia, PA. I come up to this corner of New England frequently, too frequently in some people’s opinions. It’s automatically assumed when we have a break in the school year that I’m flying up here. So, hello from my aunt’s house with my 23-month-old cousin. Side note: 2 things I wonder about babies. A. Why do people baby proof? It’s extremely obnoxious. Seriously, I struggled with a gate for like 10 minutes the other day before I figured out how it worked. Does this rate my intelligence on the same level as a toddler? B. How long do people go by the age as a month thing? It’s like, okay I’m sixteen and a half now, so should my parents introduce me as 198 months old? Gross. That’s a lot of months. I swear; parents need to start using the whole “year” thing a lot earlier.
Now that I have my little tangent/rant thing out of the way, I’ll explain what this whole article’s actually about. So, in Philadelphia on the street my aunt lives on, there’s a co-op. For those of you who don’t know, a co-op is like a teeny tiny grocery store market thing with all local and/or organic foods. It has a miniscule staff, and patrons can become members, meaning you get a discount. The catch is that to compensate for the discount and meager number of employees, members have to work six hours per year to maintain membership. Why does this involve me, you might ask? Well, because my aunt and uncle joined the program a few years ago and were subsequently kicked out for like… the past 10 years. So, they recently joined again and now I’m the lucky earner of 12 co-op hours for the two of them. So not complaining. They do a ton of work, plus I’m mooching off them for 3 weeks this summer and eating all their food and stuff. Plus, as it turns out, co-ops give plenty of good writing material.
Shift one: My first shift is a little farther away, in the co-op’s other location. My uncle drives me in his dilapidated VW bus, which you occasionally have to use a Little Miss Sunshine jumpstart on, complete with running alongside open doors down a slight incline and jumping in at the last second. Seriously. I have flower duty, so after some standard disinfecting of buckets and watering outside, I meet Ginger. Ginger’s a pretty impressive specimen. She has absolutely no wrinkles, but you can tell she’s older. She has gingery (no kidding) hair pulled up in the back, and a lank frame. So we talk about the standard root of conversation for kids my age. Where do I want to go to school? She asks if I’m thinking about the northeast. I tell her the winter would be hard. Then Ginger talks about her childhood, going to college in Virginia, and then moving to New York to work. For a flower girl at a co-op, this is pretty interesting news. So (naturally) I ask her what she did. Ginger was a model in New York for about 15 years. She was signed with an agency and did commercials and catalogues, the whole shebang. Like, whoa! Then she met her husband to be. Jokingly I ask if he was a model, too. She laughs and says when he found out her profession he wanted nothing to do with her, and of course Ginger couldn’t resist a challenge. That was my first interesting character of the day.
Shift two: So my next shift (incidentally on the exact same day), I have to ride my bike to the other location. I’m not from the area, so I’m scared out of my wits to try to figure out my way, even with the written instructions. I make it safe and sound, though, so no worries. This time I work on the floor. Do you have any idea how much work goes on behind stocking shelves? I have to “rotate” foods. Which means you pull all the stuff already on the shelf off, set it on the floor, and put the newer stuff you just unpacked back on that shelf and put the older things in front of the newer unboxed stuff. This is so the oldest ones with more imminent expiration dates are taken first. It’s a pretty lengthy job. Also, I’m not the most muscular person in the world, so unloading boxes of 12 olive oils is a yikes.
So, intro new interesting character: Erin. She has a light airy voice fit for an adorable child, and a smooth, round face to match. We talk, and she asks how old I am. When I say I’m 16, she tells me about her son who just graduated from high school. I’m stunned. Nosy me, I tell her that she doesn’t look nearly old enough to have an 18-year-old son. She just smiles and tells me she isn’t. She had her son when she was my age. And she doesn’t recommend it. She turns out to be pretty maternal. She takes the boxes that are significantly heavier off the cart to pack away herself and save my weak limbs from strain.
Shift three: The co-op is a whole microcosm you never get to see. Keith works in the back. When I’m packing cookies (which believe you me, I was more than a little tempted to nibble on), a young butcher comes back and looks at the cart Keith is stacking with bagged espresso grounds. The butcher spazzes with an expletive. “Dude! I didn’t know we had these!” His enthusiasm crashes him into the cart, tossing bags in the air. He apologizes in a half-hearted way, telling Keith he hopes they weren’t in any particular perfectly sorted order. Keith says they were, but he’s jesting, and throws an espresso sack at the butcher’s head. Why do we overlook these people working in grocery stores on a day-to-day basis? They have interesting stories, they brought up a child as a single teen, and they have a world of jokes and laughter that we so rarely witness. There’s so much we take for granted, and we tend to look at, but not really see. So look harder, ask questions. You might be surprised and discover some absolutely true untold stories yourself.
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