My first job involved unpacking boxes at the local Certified, which was about two blocks from our house. I stamped the cans with their purple prices, then arranged them neatly on the shelves. I was about 12 and had been hired by Mrs. Stretton out of her own pocket because the owner, Mr. Salerno, was notoriously stingy and wouldn’t hire extra help. But he didn’t come in on Sundays and I suspect that he didn’t know about his extra employee who was so proud of her job. I loved everything about it, especially when the cans wouldn’t fit in the designated space and the entire shelf had to be rearranged to make it look good.
Mr. Salerno mostly stayed in the mysterious back. You could catch glimpses of him sitting on a stool in his bloody apron, ready at any moment to terrify young children by either growling at them or hacking his monumental cough. Sometimes, though, he worked the cash register, a sight that made my heart sink if I had been sent to get milk or some other errand. One time I had brought some bottles to return, but he wouldn’t take them because I hadn’t known you were supposed to drop them off on the way in. I was outraged: what did he think? That I had drunk four big bottles of soda while shopping? That I was a liar?
Usually the kindly Mrs. Wilson ran the cash register as she had done since time immemorial. She joyfully greeted everyone who entered by name and continued working there until she was 92, when the store closed. I wonder how long she would have worked if they hadn’t gone out of business. By that time, Mrs. Stretton and Mrs. Wilson had been joined by Mrs. Jacquat, a Swiss neighbor with five children who was a great friend of my mother’s. The three ladies ran the store, despite only receiving minimum wage. Mr. Salerno’s stinginess was the subject of much outrage in discussions between my mother and Mrs. Jacquat.
“Discussions” is a generous description of their conversations, since often each woman talked about a different topic, interrupting each other periodically to continue the previous thread. My grandmother once said that Mrs. Jacquat had “practical intelligence.” In almost any situation I ever saw her in, she could effortlessly figure out what to do to make places look better, to make people feel better. She never arrived empty handed when she came to visit my grandmother (which was often), and usually left everyone in a better mood than when she arrived. Thirty years later when my mother had the cancer that killed her, there was Mrs. Jacquat, giving rides when needed, bringing flowers and just doing about a hundred little tiny things whenever she came over. All those little things made everything just slightly better. When she started working at Certified, the store’s appearance changed for the better and was certainly quite a bit livelier.
I was going to write today about my own jobs, but it seemed more relevant to write about my fellow employees at this important neighborhood establishment.
(not my photo: this is the expired Certified Grocers trademark from the trademark database)
Wonderful story that made me think of my first job -- dusting shelves for a nickel a shelf at my father's pharmacy, and I was about 10 years old, I think.
Practical intelligence is a great description and one no-one could use for me. I'm good at test taking and creating elaborate novels but in everyday situations I find myself turning slow and feeling dull witted
September 19th, 2014
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