Playing Store — Fruitcake Enterprises

I was spot sweeping in aisle 2 of the PCC Columbia City store today, and from behind me I heard, in a mock-nasal voice: "Matthew McQuilkin." It's almost a pavlovian response for me now; I immediately responded in the same mock-nasal tone: "Jeff Cox."

He's the Beer and Wine Merchandiser at PCC. And as long as I have worked there, he has always been. And this common exchange between us goes back to before 2004, when Harvey left. This used to be a thing between the two of them, only with them they would say each other's names as a greeting in a mock-deep voice: "Harvey Varga." "Jeff Cox." And then one day when Jeff tried to do the same with me and he said my name in that mock-deep voice, like a bad attempt at baritone, I deliberately changed my greeting back—"Jeff Cox."—to a higher, nasaly tone. It made him laugh, and a tradition that has been alive for more than fifteen years was born.

Except this time, it was not at the office. It was at a store. Jeff continued walking past me, chuckled, and said, "Playing store?" Yep.

So to recap. Another longstanding tradition at PCC has been for as many office staff as possible to fan out across all stores to offer help working on the floor the two days before Thanksgiving, when the stores are slammed. I studiously avoided it for many, many years. When Jennifer was still working there as Kibby's, Shauna's and my boss, even she said at least one of us should be at the office to offer POS support. I guess that's not as much of a concern now. Although to be fair, today at least, when I left just after 11 a.m., Steven was still there. For all I know, he worked at the office all day today. I never did turn my out of office on, though, so any Grocery issues that may have come up after 11:00 this morning got ignored.

It probably is relevant, though, that when I started in 2002, we had only seven stores. We now have thirteen, the most recent three within the past year or so alone; the most recent two within the past two months. It's certainly also relevant that I have a different boss now, even different, as of this year, from Scott, technically speaking—and Scott never once, in the many years I have worked with him, pressured me into volunteering to staff a store on Thanksgiving week. A big part of my getting out of it the years around a decade ago when it was said that they try to get everyone at the office to participate on at least one day, was the aforementioned rationale that POS support is needed. And then that push to get everyone to participate receded. Not even Stephanie, my boss before she left PCC and then Scott took her position, ever asked me to do this.

It would not be fair to say that Eric pressured me, either. It would be fair to say he made himself pretty clear, given that, instead of asking if I would, he just forwarded me the sign-up document and said, "Is there a store you’re familiar with helping out at? Could you take a look at the sheet and pick some times that work for you?" (No, there isn't. I guess, now I have to.) My being a baby about it now would not reflect well on me, so, here goes!

I even told Eric that I had successfully avoided this for seventeen years and we had a fairly good natured exchange about it. But, did tell him I signed up for the noon-to-4 shift at Columbia City both Tuesday and Wednesday, saying I preferred still to be available to POS at least part of the day, and he agreed.

So how was it, then? It was . . . fine. I had to leave the office nearly an hour before the shift at the store was to start, so I could catch the Rapid Ride D bus downtown and then catch Light Rail to Columbia City, and that was the store for which transit was easiest. (When Rainier Square opens downtown next year, that will be exponentially easier.) And what time I had there this morning as it was, was already cut short, because it just so happened I had an 8:00 dental cleaning this morning. It went shockingly quickly, though, getting called back a few minutes before 8:00 and finishing up right around 8:30. So, it was around 9:00 by the time I did get to the office, so I had two hours there instead of just the one I thought I would have. Tomorrow I'll get three and a half hours in at the office before leaving.

I never got especially nervous, but I did get just slightly anxious once I arrived at the store. As has long been typical, far more people remember me than I can remember, and at least two staff members I did not necessarily recognize said hi to me once I came in. I asked where Scott (different Scott, the Store Director) was, and I was directed to the office up a staircase I had never even noticed at that store before.

So I met Scott in his office, and he told me I could leave my jacket and my bag there. He asked if I had watched the bagging training video, and I had (I had to email IT though because I kept getting an error when clicking the link; they fixed it). He gave me a couple of updates about sustainability practices, such as we now only wrap meat packages in extra plastic if a customer asks for it, we don't offer anymore as the training video suggests. Stuff like that.

But, guess what. I never did any bagging today at all! Scott took me back downstairs after giving me a PCC apron to wear—this was the second time in seventeen years I had occasion to wear my staff name tag (the first being that one POS shift I worked in 2004)—and he introduced me to Amy. She had been one of the ones to say hi to me when I had arrived, and apparently she used to join Stephanie and me counting ballots for board elections several years back. I don't remember her from that at all, but that's only because my memory is fucked. Tomorrow I want to look her up on the store staff list to find out what her title is.

Anyway, she basically gave me three tasks to start, and said she would call me if they needed an extra bagger. That never happened, so for four hours I scanned the floor for places that needed to be swept (the bulk aisle constantly needed it; I became slightly obsesed with keeping that from getting too out of hand from sloppy customers), checking the food station for dirty dishes that needed to be taken back to the dishwashers in the back of the Deli section; and bringing shopping carts up from the garage in the elevator. Amy showed me how she takes the larger carts three at a time, puts to sets into the elevator, and then adds one set of three of the smaller carts, to bring up nine total carts at a time.

I spent well over the first hour just finding places to sweep, while also answering customer questions, which I got a surprising lot of. It occurred to me that I actually was literally useful just wandering around the store; I know personally how frustrating it can be to have question for staff and not be able to find someone. I deliberaly spent some time learning what types of products were in which aisles—a process that really made the whole store feel smaller in my mind, as not knowing the lay of a land makes a place seem bigger. No fewer than three people asked me where they could find marshmallows. I can now tell you with absolute precision where the marshmallows are.

Amy walked past me at one point and even remarked, "Isn't it amazing how much customer service you can give just walking through the store?"

I also ran across the one other office person volunteering at Columbia City today, a woman named Rachael who works in the Sustainability & Environmental Responsibility department. We commiserated on feeling a little out of our depth; this was her first time working at a store too. She had taken the 10-2 shift so we only had two hours that overlapped. At one point, both of us got paged, I think by Amy herself: "Matthew or Rachel, please bring up shopping carts." I went down to fetch some and there were none to fetch; Rachael was actually just bringing some back just as we got paged.

My second half there was the most interesting. Before Rachael left, the store honestly felt overstaffed. Rachael had found her owm broom and dustbin, and there was already regular store staff at least one step ahead of me for a few minutes there: I would go to the food station, another staffer would already be checking it. I would go to the shopping carts, someone else was already taking care of it. Oddly, I never once saw anyone else sweep the bulk aisle, and at one point late in my shift I asked Scott where I could find another dustbin.

He had told me when I first arrived that I could take a break after about two hours, and he was pretty on it about that: I had cosidering first working through to 2:30 before taking a break, but only a couple minutes after 2:00 he caught up with me and suggested I take a break. "There's doughtnuts up there!" Okay, fine. I had a Krispy Kreme doughnut.

Laurie, the POS person at that store, had a pricing question for me once my break was over. Even though I could not even investigate it without being at the office, she seemed to think it was very cool that I was there. "I love having you here at the store. Can we just keep you here?"

I went back down onto the floor, and commenced with sweeping. Near the end of Rachael's shift, she actually got called to do some bagging, and I chatted with her during my break as she gathered her things to go. She said the bagging went fine, although she was slightly thrown for a loop when a customer asked to fit a bunch of groceries into small bags they would be taking on a bike. I never did get called to bag, though.

I did spent an inordinate amount of time the rest of my shift fetching shopping carts from the garage. The store got kind of slammed at maybe 3:00 or so, to the point where nearly all the shopping carts were in use at once. I would bring up to nine carts back up from the garage, and within two minutes they would all be in use again. And in that time, over and over, when I went back down to the garage there would be more to grab. Sometimes there would only be two or three when I went down, but I would not wait to bring them up because they were so low at the entrance where the carts usually are. And, there was not a lot of other staff to do this because they were all bagging,

The crowd ebbed and flowed a bit over the next hour or so, and the returned carts grew in larger numbers by the time my own shift was ending. I ended up working until about 4:20, after sweeping the bulk aisle one last time, more to kill time than anything. Now it was time to go over to Gabriel's for a visit, but I knew he would not be home for another ninety minutes or so.

When I went back to Scott's office to get my things, he said, "How did it go?" I said, "It was fine." He replied, "Now what you'd want to do every day?" Nope. But, not exactly terrifying either. I'd bet money I will wind up bagging groceries tomorrow, as there is little doubt tomorrow, the day before Thanksgiving, is going to be nuts.

So then I texted Lea to make sure she was home and if it was all right if I came by even though I knew Gabriel wouldn't be home for a bit. She said she'd come down and let me in; the entrance to the three second-story apartments in that building is in the alleyway about a block and a half from the PCC.

I had just bought two bread items with my buy-one-get-one local bread coupon (which is getting far higher redemption rates than predicted, apparently; stores were selling out, but I was there after some extra deliveries). When I got into the apartment, I set the bag on the kitchen counter and said to Lea, "This is mine, it's not a gift."

Then Lea proceeded to have a very nice, very intellectually stimulating conversation about all sorts of shit, from the movie JoJo Rabbit and its problematic elements to relatives who are Trump supporters (and lots of other things). It was so pleasant talking to her that the time flew and before I knew it, Gabriel was home. Proably around 6, I suppose? Maybe later.

And then I visited with both of them for the next couple of hours. At one point I had to say, "So should I go home or are you going to feed me?" They had no interest in cooking anything since they will be spending the next two days preparing food, which I totally understand. They suggested going out to eat somewhere but I am too over budget at the moment to spend money. Indecisiveness about how to approach dinner lasted long enough that it made the most sense for me just to go home. This was truly okay with me, but I could not resist as I was heading out at around 8:45, and I said, "Bye, thanks for not feeding me!" Gabriel laughed but later actually texted me an apology for not having any food for me, which was truly unnecessary. I wrote back, "Get over it! 😀" and then, "I like your girlfriend, she's smart." He seemed to enjoy that.

Anyway, I wanted to get home at least around the same time Shobhit did from work. He wound up being about 20 minutes behind schedule because of how many people were at his store. He worked Total Wine today, which I'm sure was a lot busier than Big 5 Sporting Goods was today.

When I had my break I actually texted Shobhit, My legs already hurt. I don't know how you do this every day.

I won't have nearly as much time for it because I also have movie plans with Evan at 7:15, but I will stop by Gabriel and Lea's after work again tomorrow. This apparently will give Gabriel a chance to cut short the promised day with Tess at the dreaded Gameworks downtown. He actually doesn't work tomorrow, so I won't have to wait ninety minutes for him to get home. I already figured out I'll need to leave his place by 5:40 or so, so I can get home to feed the cats before meeting Evan for the movie.

So there you have it. All in all not a bad day. I even found time for a selfie in my PCC apron in the elevator with shopping carts.

[posted 11:01 pm]