Some Lessons Learned at the Cash Register

The best job I ever loved was at a small local drug and sundries store in downtown St. Louis in the 70’s. The community was extremely diverse, and that was part of its charm. The clientele ranged from upper level white-shirted executives who filled the surrounding office buildings, to poor, struggling people trying to stretch their welfare checks, to the addicts who slept in recessed doorways and marked their territory with urine and discarded Mad Dog bottles.

The bus lines brought families from outlying parts of the city, and with them, some poignant early lessons for me about the ravages of being poor.

For instance, if she had been a wealthy woman, the lady with a face decorated with tumors might have been able to have them removed. The tumors looked like in-shell pecans hanging from thin pieces of skin on her face and they swung back and forth as she turned her head. They were like Christmas tree ornaments, but weren’t festive at all.

The woman whose right eye was greatly enlarged, dead, hooded, and located where her cheekbone should have been might have also had some help, if she had had some money.

With poverty also comes ignorance quite a lot of the time, and as a dedicated employee, the onus was on me to provide simple, kind answers to some customer questions that defied reason with their stupidity, but originated from a place where the customer simply could not help himself.

One such event was very telling. My boss, Mr. L. was a wonderful guy with an outgoing, sanguine temperament and a loyalty to his employees that I wish I could have enjoyed in one or two jobs I’ve had since.

An angry woman confronted him one day. She was bringing back a punch bowl she had purchased. Her objection was that the punch bowl came with only six drinking cups when she believed it was supposed to have eight. She was adamant. Mr. L pointed out that the box listed the contents as one large punch bowl, six drinking cups and a ladle.

She didn’t care. She had gotten the box home and opened it and found that the packaging was such that there was room for two more cups, but they weren’t there. A cup rested in each of the four corners of the box on two levels, so her confusion was somewhat justified. There were two empty spaces, but the box was clearly labeled.

Repeated reminders that only six cups were promised on the box was to no avail. At last he refunded her money and she stormed out, furious that it took such a fight to get her money for a product that was obviously defective.

I didn’t understand. The box clearly said six, and the picture on the box showed six cups. Why on earth could she not be made to understand?

Mr. L understood. He had been at this a few years and explained it to me: the woman had never learned to read. The contents list on the box meant nothing to her, and having suffered for years with this particular handicap, she had grown accustomed to being cheated, and had learned to be distrustful. So, my anger washed away, and my heart went out to her. She became an object lesson to me in the value of literacy and culture.

There were many object lessons for me in that drug store. I was a college student when I took the job, and I often wonder if it was college or the drug store that provided the richest education.

A teenager was hired after I had been there a year or two. Her name was Angie, but we’ll call her “Dipshit,” at least for purposes of this narrative. She was moderately pretty, but lacking in savvy. Her behavior soon began to manifest a terrible self esteem, and a knack for self destruction.

So when regular customer, Louis the Pimp found her stocking the toothpaste aisle, he asked her for a date. He was 25 years older than she, lived down the street in a flea bag hotel, and was well known for selling girls whom he drugged regularly to keep them compliant. Knowing this was not enough to dissuade Dipshit from spending the night with him. And it took all of a ten-minute conversation for Louis to make the arrangement.

The next day, Louis came by the store again. He came in regularly to buy cough syrup which he was rumored to combine with some other drug as a cocktail for his girls. He told Helen, who managed the tobacco department, that he was throwing Dipshit back in the water. She was too inexperienced to make him any money.

I was pretty sure that Dipshit didn’t even know that her night of passion was actually a test drive. But the fact that he never spoke to her again didn’t seem to bother her.

She didn’t stay with the company long. Her lack of common sense, I suspect, was her career’s undoing.

The object lesson to me that time was visceral. I, too, was young and inexperienced. But I learned a lot that day about the value of thinking well of oneself. And how ugly some men are to women.

And I came away from that lesson feeling a bit charmed. Louis the Pimp was, after all, routinely very nice to me. He never offered such a suggestion, but he did buy me Cokes and candy bars. When I asked him frankly about his line of work, he would say, “Oh, baby, don’t make me lie to you.”

There were some ugly women, too. One of them was hired about the same time as Dipshit. The pejorative nickname I gave this new employee was “The Dysentery Kid.” This, because she was filthy and smelled like a urinal whenever she came to work.

She seemed like a nice enough person, but ravaged by poverty like so many in that community, and I wondered if she had working plumbing at her home. Surely her personal hygiene, or lack thereof, would not be a personal choice. And I liked her, but from a safe distance.

She wore garish make up, wildly teased hair, and ill-fitting thrift store clothes. Dysentery was hired to take the places of various workers who had scheduled vacation time including, unfortunately, Rose, the pharmacy technician.

On Dysentery’s first day in the pharmacy, she arrived at work wearing her white uniform, flaming blue eyeshadow and a huge Dolly Parton blonde wig.

Mr. L. was embarrassed and felt that such a get-up would compromise the credibility of the pharmacy department.

I kept my mouth shut. I believed that someone who smells so unclean and looks so unwashed will compromise the credibility of the entire store no matter what department she worked in. But I wasn’t in charge.

He sent her home to change.

So, given Dysentery’s odor, appearance, and over all lack of good taste, it was a great surprise to me when she announced once at the lunch table that she was with child. I honestly wondered what kind of man would DO that, but, as I said, I was young and inexperienced.

The lunch break at the store was a great chance to socialize and develop the close friendships that I cherished during my tenure at there. There was, of course, the sense of community and team spirit that happens on a lot of jobs. Plus, there were the shared goals of servicing such an eclectic clientele while we all sought to keep our sense of humor.

For the few months following Dysentery’s announcement, the lunch crowd was regaled with stories about her pregnancy. We heard about the morning sickness, the kicking fetus, the frequent trips to the girls room, and the shopping for baby clothes in second hand stores. While this was not her first child, nothing was said about the father, so we didn’t know if he was in the picture. None of her other kids appeared to have fathers in the picture.

The stupid thing I said occurred one week when Dysentery was back in the pharmacy. She was wearing that white uniform to work again, and had it on when she arrived and stopped at my counter on her way to the locker room. I was in the cosmetics department that day, and that was where employee purchases occurred. She set down a box of tampons on the counter, but wouldn’t look at me while I rang them up and calculated her discount.

The stupid thing I said was, “I thought you were off these things for a few more months.”

She looked at me and her expression was one of pain, loathing and contempt. She grabbed her purchase and marched away from me. As she did, I noticed that the backside of her white uniform was soaked in blood.

She had miscarried on the bus.

My education continued as this drug store offered a comprehensive tour into the nuances of race relations.

On the good side, there was Gene. Gene was an elderly black man who sold newspapers at a stand across the street. He shopped with us regularly, and always talked to me in his gentle, homespun way. He delighted me frequently when he paid me for his package of cigars. He would reach across my counter and touch my lily-white earlobe with his finger. Then he would put the finger in his mouth, smile, and say, “Mmmm, good! Vanilla!” Something about that gesture warmed me to my toes. It still does.

But not all of my attempts at race relations were as joyful. One regular customer, a dark-skinned lady, came through my check out line one afternoon. She presented a large leather bag, black, with a zipper top. She unzipped it and began pulling out the items she had to purchase.

Now, I don’t believe that what I said to her should have been a cause for so much anger, but she sure did, and that’s where my education took a leap forward.

“Mrs. Johnson, you know, we have shopping baskets for you to use. I’m afraid that if you are seen putting items into a container like that, there might be an misunderstanding with the security guard.”

She went off. She hurled accusations at me that, at the core, suggested that I assumed that since she is black, she must therefore be stealing.

Now, it was true that there was a lot of pilferage at that store, and it was also true that we had a large black clientele. And I dare say it was true that many of the shoplifters who were stopped at the door were of African descent. And all of those facts were admittedly in my mind when I made the remark. But I merely meant to express that Mrs. Johnson was borrowing trouble for herself.

One important lesson here, as I furthered my education, is that racism can appear very quietly. It can be a hidden enemy lurking surreptitiously in the heart and can jump out unexpectedly and without intention.

And, to mix a metaphor, it isn’t always black and white. There are shades of grey. On the bad side, I may have assumed that Mrs. Johnson was at higher risk of being misunderstood because of her race. On the good side, the side where I defend myself, I was just giving her a heads up. But in my heart, the lines were blurred.

Another important lesson for me here is one that was repeated for years. To wit: black folks, especially poor ones, are often poised and ready to be angry. Many of them have been put upon for so much of their lives by white people with white assumptions, innuendos, and fears that it often takes very little to trigger the pent up rage. Mrs. Johnson was no child. She had been a victim before.

For my part, as a rather sheltered, white 19-year-old, I just wanted to be fair-minded, and to not do anything wrong or cause any trouble. I felt horrible. My understanding of her anger was very limited at that time. It was wholly theoretical. Over the years, and especially following my marriage to a black man, I began to build a knack for walking in black people’s moccasins, as much as that can be done. But at 19, my sheltered upbringing rendered me clueless.

And speaking of our security guard, his name was Bill Bailey. No kidding. He was a large, jolly man with a huge laugh and a high-pitched voice that belied his size. I liked him a lot.

One day I was taking my break in the cafeteria next door and Bill was taking his at the same time. The topic turned to Dysentery, and I expressed some bewilderment about who would care to impregnate a woman with her personal hygiene issues.

(Okay, I was catty. All right, I was VERY catty.)

Bill, who was also kind of catty, explained that Dysentery was a “two-bagger.” It was my first exposure to the term. He explained that with her handicap, it wasn’t enough to put a bag over her head in bed. He’d have to put a bag over his own, just in case hers slipped off.

Yes, it was catty, but I laughed.

Bill was part of a most memorable tale about my employment. A man approached me one day as I was stocking the stationary aisle. He had some sort of deformities. His wire-rimmed eyeglasses had one lens blackened out over the outer half with a felt marker. He was wearing a back pack and also a strap around his neck that held an electronic device that contained a keyboard. The keyboard was cushioned all around it. As he walked, he lurched very dramatically from one side to the other so that the keyboard banged against his rib cage violently. Hence, the cushion.

He brought to me a package of black tape. It was the kind that loads into a label maker. Your message is pressed into the tape and it comes out the other end of the label maker. There is an adhesive backing that peels off.

This gentleman was unable to speak. He pointed at the tape, then pointed at the blackened out half of his glasses lens, and grunted with an upturned sound as if he was asking me a question.

I said, “Sure, that should work. You want to stick the tape on your glasses? Yes, I believe the adhesive should hold.”

He gave me a huge, toothy grin. He lurched backwards three or four steps and pushed two buttons on the keyboard around his neck.

The mechanism said, “THANK YOU” in a deep, electronic voice that was not at all human-sounding. Then the man lurched away, machinery banging against him.

I stood there for a moment, motionless.

Bill came up behind me, and with an astonishing intuition, read my mind, and said to me, “In case you were wondering, you didn’t imagine that. It happened. I saw it, too.”

Ten years passed, and I encounterd that man again with the unusual handicap and the technology to thwart it. He was in a quick copy store making photocopies of the newspaper article that had been written about him.