Taking Stock

by Scott Bartlett

  “All right.”

  “No offense, Sheldon, but you’re already pretty paranoid. You don’t need pot.”

  “All right, Sam.”

  “Okay.”

  I sigh. “Can I ask you a question?”

  “Shoot.”

  “Why didn’t you want me to mention your name to anyone at Spend Easy?”

  He doesn’t answer for a couple seconds. “Let’s just say the person I know at Spend Easy would prefer my name didn’t come up.”

  “Is it a client of yours?”

  “You know I don’t discuss that.”

  I want to tell him about seeing Eric and Joshua near the trash compactor—about Joshua’s ruined nose.

  But clearly Sam stresses out about me enough, as it is. And anyway, I’m probably being dumb. The security cameras can see where they were standing. If Eric had done something to Joshua, there’d be a record of it.

  We play a few more rounds of Mario Kart, but I’m not really in the mood for it anymore. I tell Sam good night and walk around the house to my place.

  *

  Tonight I’m fronting with Brent, who spends most of his time in the warehouse. Meaning I need to move twice as fast if I’m going to front the whole store. I’m not worried, though. I’m getting pretty quick at it. Plus, there’s something calming about looking back at a wall of product you’ve assembled—a temporary bulwark against entropy.

  Ernie finds me in Aisle Two and asks if I’ve seen his nametag anywhere. “It keeps going missing,” he says.

  “Maybe you shouldn’t leave it lying around.”

  “I guess. Hey, are you free to hang tomorrow night?”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “What about Saturday?” He’s holding a white coffee cup, and as he sips from it he peers at me over the lid.

  “No.”

  “Well, maybe Sunday, then. I’ll have to see if I’m working. I think Ralph is posting the schedule tomorrow.”

  “Yeah, Ernie. You’ll definitely have to get back to me about that.”

  “I’m really glad we got the chance to spend time together, Sheldon. When we were in high school, I used to sometimes think you didn’t like me. Every now and then, I even got the feeling you looked down on me.”

  “Don’t be silly.”

  “Well I’m glad to learn it isn’t true. At least, if it was true then, it certainly shouldn’t be now. You have no reason to look down on me.”

  “You mean, other than being taller than you?”

  Ernie takes another sip, and then raises his coffee a few inches into the air. “This looks disposable, doesn’t it? It looks like your everyday disposable cup.”

  “Sure.”

  “It’s not, though.” He taps on the side of the cup with his fingernail. “It’s made of porcelain, and it’s reusable. My mug looks disposable, but, in actual fact, it’s saving the planet.”

  “That’s—”

  “Why were you wearing Velcro sneakers on your first shift? And why haven’t you worn them since?”

  The tightness in my chest returns. I didn’t realize it was gone.

  “Well?” Ernie says.

  “I hate shoelaces,” I say at last.

  Ernie grunts. “The carts need to be brought in,” he says. “Gilbert and Brent already called ‘not it’, and I’m on break. Wanna go do that for me?” He turns and struts in the direction of the warehouse.

  I don’t know when Ernie discovered environmentalism. Sometime between high school and now, I guess. He’s made it his mission to make sure every cardboard box gets broken down and put in the cardboard compactor, where it’ll get recycled, instead of in the trash compactor, where it won’t.

  Earlier tonight, he tried to prevent Gilbert from wasting cardboard by locking up the garbage chute. Gilbert grinned, and 20 minutes later the padlock had disappeared. Ernie confronted him.

  “What did you do with the lock?” he said, his face getting red. “Our species doesn’t own this planet, Gilbert. We’ve only borrowed it. You need to recycle. We all need to.”

  Gilbert laughed. “Let me tell you about recycling, Ernest, you waste of ejaculate. Unless 100 percent of everything gets recycled—and it doesn’t—resources will run out. You can reduce and reuse all you want. Society depends on several key resources, and when just one of those is gone, there goes society.”

  Saturday comes, and I’m working then, too—6:00 to 10:00. Just as I’m beginning to wonder who’s helping me front, Tommy shows up, wearing a uniform. Without speaking, he reaches into the shelf for a bottle of dish detergent. He doesn’t make it, though. His hand drops to his side. He sighs.

  “I thought you quit,” I say.

  “My parents wouldn’t let me. They called Ralph and told him to ignore my resignation.” He runs a hand through his sparse hair. “I don’t want to die fronting.”

  “You don’t have to worry yet. The supernova’s not till after Christmas, right?”

  He nods. “174 days.”

  *

  The psych ward was plastered all over with inspirational messages.

  “If a window of opportunity appears, don’t pull down the shade.”

  “He who seeks rest finds boredom. He who seeks work finds rest.”

  “The only job where you start at the top is digging a hole.”

  One afternoon, Sam made up his own: “It’s better to lead a life filled with failure than one filled with apathy.”

  When I felt over-inspired, I sat in the TV room. There weren’t any inspirational messages in there. This particular evening, there was a patient I hadn’t seen before. He was sitting cross-legged, and bouncing up and down. He met my glance with a wide smile. “Hi.”

  “Hi.”

  He looked back at the TV, still bouncing. I tried not to stare, but it was hard to avoid looking out the corner of my eyes. He caught me, and said, “Can I help you?”

  “Um, I don’t mean to be rude, but why are you bouncing like that?”

  His smile didn’t change. “Why not bounce? Life is too short. There should be more bouncing.” Continuing to bounce, he picked up the remote control from a nearby table and changed the channel. America’s Next Top Model was on. “Those people want to be models,” he said.

  “Yep.”

  “Have they made reality TV out of your dream yet?”

  “Sorry?”

  “I always wanted to be a chef. Then they made a reality TV show about becoming a successful one, and now I don’t want to do it anymore. What do you want to be?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Come on. If you could be anything.”

  “A writer, I guess. I don’t think they’ve made one about that.”

  “They will. Soon. You’ll watch aspiring writers do treacherous things to each other, and endure unspeakable humiliation on national television, in order to achieve their dreams. You’ll realize you aren’t willing to do any of those things. Then you’ll just give up.”

  He changed the channel, still bouncing. “When you’re insane, everything makes such perfect sense. Would you agree?”

  “Oh, I don’t—I’m not—”

  “Everything seems to just add up, you know? Little things you never even thought about before you were nuts, they all seem to fit together. Do you want to be alive?”

  “I—”

  “Sane people want to survive. Humans are hardwired to survive. If everything upstairs is ticking along smoothly, you want to be alive. But it’s funny, you know. The most successful people are risk takers. When you take a risk, you jeopardize your security—your finances, your relationships, your personal safety. It’s downright suicidal. But the most successful people take risks. It’s insane. Know what else is funny? In order to be really good at something—in order to be a truly world class whatever—you have to be obsessive about it. You have to want to do it all the time. You have to be a little insane.”

  He changed the channel. He bounced.

  The Professor walked in. He said, “Global w
arming is like finding out the entire human race has terminal cancer.”

  I couldn’t handle them. Not both of them. I got up and left.

  *

  One of the challenges of working around food is wanting to eat all of it. Case in point: as I’m fronting rice chips, I get an acute craving for rice chips, which is followed by the realization that now would be a fine time for my break. I grab the rice chips and bring them to the cash registers.

  On my way through the warehouse to the break room, I’m accosted by Eric, who puts out an arm to block my path. “Hey there, vegan. What are we eating, today?”

  “Rice chips. Do you want to read the ingredients?”

  He doesn’t lower his arm. It’s pressed against my chest. I stay where I am.

  “I need to get by,” I say. “My break is running out.”

  “Don’t whine, vegan. Tell me, do you think you’re better than me?”

  “What?”

  “The way you act, when I’m around—I’m starting to get the impression you think you’re better than me.”

  “Why would—”

  “I had command of a unit in Afghanistan, you know. And I had a soldier, once, who thought he was better than me. In fact, he thought he was better than everybody. It made him insubordinate, and so I had to discipline him. Now, I could have gone through the chain of command to do this. They would have given him a slap on the wrist, and probably he’d have continued behaving the exact same way. But I didn’t do that. Do you know what I did?”

  I don’t want to know what Eric did. I want to take my rice chips up to the break room and eat them. I try to maintain a bored expression.

  “I took him out behind the barracks,” Eric says, “where no one else could see. And I dealt with him. I dealt with him in much the same way alpha lions are known to settle disputes. We didn’t have any issues, after that.”

  “Will you let me pass, now?”

  He lowers his arm. “Sure, vegan. Enjoy your rice chips.”

  Gilbert and Brent are already in the break room, sitting across from Jack, the assistant manager of Produce. Jack is observing Gilbert and Brent sternly—though, as I understand it, that’s how he does most of his observing. Even while on break, he’s still wearing the black cap Produce guys wear, red curls sticking out underneath.

  “Look, Jack,” Gilbert says. “Sheldon’s here. Now we outnumber you.”

  “You outnumbered me before he came. Idiot.”

  “Right, sorry. I suck at math. I guess that’s why I’ve been working in a grocery store for eight years.”

  “You’ve only worked here two years.”

  “Damn. Right again. You’re the one who’s been here eight years.”

  I sit at the end of the table with my rice chips.

  “Do you have a receipt for those?” Jack says.

  “Yeah,” I say. “Hold on, I’ll—”

  “He’s not talking to you,” Gilbert says. “He’s asking about my Ringolos. And yes, Jack, I do have a receipt.”

  “Where is it?”

  “Up your ass.”

  Jack stands up, glaring at Gilbert. “Your eyes are bloodshot. Yours too, Brent. Are you stoned?”

  “No, dude,” Brent says.

  Jack stares at them a few seconds longer, and for a moment I expect him to spit on the floor. But he just leaves.

  Brent’s phone rings, and he fishes it from his pocket.

  “Hello,” he says. “What? Who is this? Oh. All right. Um, sorry.”

  He puts it back in his pocket.

  “Who was it?” Gilbert says.

  “Frank.”

  “Really? What did he say?”

  “He said employees aren’t supposed to have their phones on at work.”

  They look at each other, and burst out laughing.

  *

  Some kid threw a tantrum, tossing a pack of crackers on the floor and stomping on them. I’m the one cleaning up the aftermath. To make matters worse, I’m pretty sure the kid got whatever he was screaming for.

  As I sweep, Gilbert happens by, and takes a can of coffee from the shelf. “See this?” he says. “This container can hold a pound of coffee, and one time it did. But they slowly reduced the amount, and now it’s just 11 ounces. They also shrunk the text that tells you that. The only thing that has increased is the price.” He puts the can back on the shelf. “It’s not just coffee. Grocery stores are full of rip-offs. Diluted bleach. Chicken plumped with salt water. Fruit juice with only 10 percent actual fruit juice. Crab cakes with zero crab.”

  I shrug. “Pretty dishonest.”

  “It’s theft. Plain and simple.” He’s twisting the gold ring he wears.

  They have other techniques for manipulating people, Gilbert tells me. They put candy and sugary cereal at kids’ eye level. Also, the sole reason to have a bakery, he says, is to create the aroma of baking bread, to make customers hungrier. “What else is freshly made, in-store? It’s not like they can’t get enough bread from suppliers. They’re crafty.” He taps the side of his head.

  I return to Aisle One and continue fronting where I left off. Every now and then Casey rockets past with his cart. The third time I see him, he yells for me to move out of the way. I back up six feet or so, and he tears open a case of laundry detergent, packing the bottles onto the shelf.

  Tommy’s supposed to be fronting, too. Tonight’s order turned out to be bigger than expected, though, and Casey recruited him to help out with it. When I walk through the warehouse on my way to the washroom, Tommy is sitting on a box of strawberry jam, bent over his tabloid. He has a bald spot on the top of his head.

  On my way back out, I find Casey standing over him.

  “What are you doing?” Casey says.

  “Reading,” Tommy says.

  “There’s work to do.”

  “Calm down, Casey. Have another coffee.”

  “There are five pallets left, and it’s almost 6:00.”

  Tommy looks up, his eyes getting wide, like they always do when he’s about to start prophesying. “You’re a fool. You assume your corporate masters are the ones you should be pleasing, when really you should be on your knees, praying for—”

  Casey grabs Tommy by the front of his shirt, pulls him to a standing position, and slams him against a pallet of product nearby. “You work in a Grocery store. You tried to quit, but your Mommy wouldn’t let you. Remember?” He lets go. “Get to fucking work.”

  Tommy quickly exits the warehouse.

  Casey walks to Ralph’s desk, picks up a large coffee, and sips from it noisily. He puts it down and faces me. “I need you on the order.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Gilbert’s nowhere to be found, as usual. If it’s just me and Tommy, we won’t come close to getting it put out.”

  “There is one minor detail.”

  “What?”

  “I haven’t worked here three months—I’m not supposed to work orders yet. Oh, and I don’t have a box cutter.”

  “I don’t care when you were hired. There’s an extra box cutter in the desk. Put it back at the end of the night.”

  He begins sorting through the order, pulling out products that go in Aisles Two, Three, and Four. Soon, he’s stacked my cart as precariously as he stacks his own, with at least 20 cases piled on.

  The store intercom beeps, and Gilbert’s voice comes out. “Attention shoppers. You are all mindless drones—victims of instant gratification. You buy your groceries, you slither back to houses you can’t afford, and you stuff your wobbling maws. The thrill of the hunt has been robbed from you. You disgust me. Have a nice day.”

  Casey and I look at each other. “Just go,” he says.

  I push the cart out onto the sales floor. God, it’s heavy.

  *

  I’m tired of eating crackers and salads and carrot sticks on every break, so Sam takes it upon himself to tutor me in the art of cooking delicious vegetarian meals.

  “Remember my lasagna?”

  “Ye
ah,” I say. “It was legendary.”

  “You can be legendary, too. You can make big batches of lasagna, or spaghetti, or whatever, and freeze it in portions. Then you can take it to work and heat it up in the microwave. You’ll never eat carrot sticks again.”

  He gives me a stuffed green pepper wrapped in tin foil to eat on tonight’s shift. There’s a mini fridge in the break room, and when I arrive I stick it there for safekeeping.

  Later, as I’m fronting syrups in Aisle Four, some guy walks up and says, “Have you heard the Good News?”

  “Toilet paper’s on for half price?” I say.

  “Not that. I’m talking about God, and his son, Jesus. He died on the cross, so that no man need go to hell.”

  “What about women?”

  “Them neither.”

  Behind him, Gilbert is walking toward us, eating a bag of Cheezies.

  “Is he applying for a job, Sheldon?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “He’s holding a résumé in his hand.”

  I look down. It’s true. The guy is holding some stapled-together papers that very much resemble a résumé.

  He faces Gilbert and holds out the hand that isn’t holding papers. “My name’s Donovan. I’d like a job in Grocery.”

  Gilbert pops a Cheezie into his mouth. “Frank doesn’t accept applications for specific departments. You have to apply and hope for the best.”

  Donovan’s hand drops to his side. “I’m applying for a Grocery position. I’ve prayed about it—that’s where I’m needed.”

  “You take orders from God? Heavy.”

  “Indeed.”

  “Does he have email now, or is he still rocking the whole angelic messenger thing?”

  “The Lord’s servants are no strangers to mockery. I don’t need you to take me seriously. I just need you to give this to your manager.” He hands his résumé to Gilbert. “God bless.”

  He walks toward the front of the store. Then he stops. “I’m about to smoke a joint in the parking lot. Would either of you care to join me?”