according to the IRS, i started working on my fifteenth birthday. i was a grocery bagger at h.g.hills food store, the one in green hills that doesn’t exist anymore. what should have been a routine, character building but rather boring summer/weekend gig turned into a playground of mischief when a few of my friends got grocery bagging jobs there, too. the following is a short and quite incomplete list of the important questions that were answered those couple of years before the last of us got fired:
1) can you get away with sleeping in public view while on the job? depending on conditions, you can get around twelve minutes of sleep in the grassy island next to the shopping cart return before you have to start apologizing to someone. usually that person was brenda. we thought that brenda secretly thought we were hilarious. brenda hated us.
2) a) is there a DIY solution to pavement? yes, three litres of “orange drink” and a bag of cat litter WILL pave most of aisle four.
b) if so, is this solution roadworthy? no, soda/catlitter paving does not hold up to grocery shopping traffic conditions.
3) will justin get fired if he “shows it” to that nice cashier who’s only mistake was allowing him to talk to her in the first place? yes, justin will get fired for “showing it” to that girl.
4) will anyone find it suspicious if the same jerky teenagers keep asking to re-stock only the cartons of cigarettes and nothing else? apparently not.
5) can anyone successfully push fifty carts into the store without causing damage said store and/or customers’ cars? no. they cannot