RE: Trailer Trash 53 pt S (Patreon)

/// Not sure where this will go yet in the finished chapter, but lot of new character arcs are starting with the new year (for them it is just now 1999) and I've been excited to jump into them. This will also be the first section I post from my new home!

Mrs. Moore’s vision swam with pure terror in the unforgiving overhead lights of the supermarket, and simply functioning was already the limit of her abilities. Her mouth kept filling up with saliva and nervous gulps and swallows in case she was suddenly expected to speak had her feeling off-kilter and short of breath.

“Did you get that hon, or you need me to show you again?” Tracy asked, doing a performative slow turn away from the Food Lion register to give Mrs. Moore that unreadable stare again.

Just beyond Tracy in the checkout aisle, a bearded man who was waiting on them to finish the sale and hand over a receipt regarded Mrs. Moore with visible impatience. A gamut of grocery items had already been piled onto their conveyor by the next customer, who was also standing there, and beyond him there was the next, and the next—a line of them had formed.

“Uh, it’s—I think I got it,” Mrs. Moore lied.

She absolutely couldn’t bear the pressure of holding everyone up, and she had no way to articulate that she didn’t understand the sales process, that Tracy was moving through things too fast for her to follow, that there was no way to ask her to slow down when everyone was standing there in a row, irritated, staring them down. The gallon jugs of milk were forming beads of condensation as they warmed, frozen goods were surely thawing out, vegetable stalks tied up in those transparent produce bags wilted in the roaring overhead heat of the Food Lion.

With nothing else but a dismissive look, Tracy turned back to her job and ripped off the receipt paper to hand to the man.

“You have yourself a nice day, now,” Tracy rasped.

“Have—have a nice day,” Mrs. Moore pleaded.

The man’s receipt was already crumpled in his hand, and he strode off without comment. Although at first glance the exchange seemed impolite, Mrs. Moore was recognizing now that the man wasn’t that miffed by the glacial speed of service. The customer, one of countless streaming by in an endless queue, wasn’t even thinking about them at all anymore. While waiting he was maybe annoyed, but the moment the hangup was resolved and he could move on, he had already forgotten them.

Mrs. Moore wasn’t sure if that was a relief or not. It was better to be invisible, scarcely noticed by them and quickly passing out of thought. Surely. But, also—the entire cashier clerk experience was strangely dehumanizing, in ways she had been unable to realize until forced to stand on this side of the counter. When she dared to glance past their station and to the Food Lion cashier working at the next one, or the next, the same encounter played out endlessly.

As workers here they weren’t people, really, they were fixtures of the Food Lion, they played out their same task in repeat ad nauseam, forever, or at least until their shifts were over. Trapped in an unceasing horror of repetition as an endless array of products and faces streamed through their checkouts. The simple act of paying for groceries at the checkout was such an ordinary, trivial thing that she had taken for granted her entire life. Watching as that simple moment was instead stretched unnaturally into an unending revolving cycle of checkouts and nothing but checkouts, in what she was told were four-hour-long unbroken blocks—it was more than a little maddening.

“Hi, how are you,” Tracy asked the next customer in her personless monotone.

It was a greeting without any greeting in it; it was unconvincing script delivered in such a way as to indicate that while a courtesy was being offered, a response from the customer was neither expected nor particularly cared for. A dead voice.

With practiced motions Tracy operated the conveyor switch with one hand and drew item after item past the glimmering red laser of the barcode scanner with her other. The movements were so smooth they were almost hypnotic, and Mrs. Moore watched in what felt like a trance as with a blip, blip, blip the terminal registered barcodes and fed numbers to station eight’s point of sale device.

The store was crowded, and there was altogether too much motion and activity pressing in on all sides for Shannon to even begin trying to perceive everything at once. A sort of numbing tunnel-vision had formed until her awareness shrank to just her immediate surroundings, and still it was all so overwhelming she wanted to burst into tears. The Food Lion cashier clerk apron she’d been given hung from her neck and struggled to wrap around the coat she wore—she felt she looked ridiculous, in the heat of Food Lion’s furnace system blowing hot air near the doors she was stifled with sweat, and she knew that if that assistant store manager John didn’t rescue her soon, she was going to hyperventilate.

“Now—hey, watch what I’m doin’, yer gonna be on yer own tomorrow,” Tracy admonished, waving Mrs. Moore in closer to the terminal. “These here? These, an’ any of the stuff in produce bags like this, they ain’t gon’ have a barcode. You gotta punch in the PLU y’self, and set ‘em on here jus’ like—so, like that, an’ the machine’ll weigh ‘em. The codes are…?”

“The codes are, they’re on the laminate thing?” Mrs. Moore was frantic to answer, because twenty minutes ago when Tracy asked this, she didn’t know, but should have. It was one of the first things Tracy had explained. “The laminate thing hanging on the ring there below the, the—”

“That’s right, have the sheet hanging right here at all the stations,” Tracy narrated as if by rote. “You won’t need it ‘fore too long, you’ll remember ‘em all. But, look here—cauliflower. See here at cauliflower? Read me this PLU. For cauliflower.”

“Th-the PLU number, it’s four five seven two,” Mrs. Moore leaned in to read the listing off at a stammer. “Cauliflower; four, five, seven, two.”

“And, we punch in like so—and—there,” Tracy tapped the code in, saw the price pop up, and had the baggie of cauliflower off the scale and into a grocery bag before Mrs. Moore could even back out of the way of the woman’s elbow.

It was busy, too busy for Tracy to be training her, and in truth Tracy wasn’t supposed to be training her—either assistant store manager John in the intimidating vest and tie hadn’t communicated this properly, or Tracy didn’t care. Every other minute or so, just long enough for Mrs. Moore’s panicked attention to lapse in the direction of something else, Tracy would explain a single facet of the job or quiz her on something she’d explained earlier.

I-I’m not supposed to be training yet, this, this shouldn’t be my REAL job training, right?! Mrs. Moore fought off the creeping grasp of hysteria. I was supposed to just, just stand by and watch one of the cashiers, so I could get a better idea of what I might be doing. That’s what he said! It’s been, what, AN HOUR of this already?! Where the hell did assistant store manager John even run off to?! Please, PLEASE come and save me!

A little over an hour ago, Mrs. Moore had been seated in a cramped and cluttered back office for her hiring interview. Food Lion was the only place she’d put in an application that had called her back, and after her insides wrenching into knots with nervous anticipation and nearly throwing up her breakfast, Shannon Moore had dressed up as presentable as possible, stiffened her chin, and gone in for the job interview.

Except, there was no interview.

Assistant store manager John instead ran her through what she realized was orientation, explained how great it would be to have her because they were so short on seasonal help, and immediately threw her to the wolves. When he suggested she don the Food Lion apron today and observe for a bit at one of the registers, Mrs. Moore had been thrilled and quickly agreed—it seemed like despite all of her fears, she had this job in the bag! Of course she would agree, she was eager to prove herself to her prospective new employer, show that she was willing to learn and work.

The reality of the situation, the incomprehensible cashier terminal with its too-simple numbers display she didn't understand, and the manner with which Tracy rattled off details she needed to remember while multi-tasking the backed-up checkout line at station eight sheared away layer after layer of Mrs. Moore’s fabricated confidence until she was millimeters away from giving up on everything and fleeing the Food Lion.

The cash drawer had its own nuances she needed to pick up, personal checks had to be on this one side, beneath the magic pen she was supposed to mark every denomination of bill over ten dollars with. She was supposed to mind her change at all times and be ready in advance to call a manager over for assistance for new rolls of quarters, dimes, nickels, or pennies as necessary. She would have to be careful to never ever close the drawer until she was absolutely sure she had the correct change for a customer in hand, because once the thing was closed it wouldn’t open again until a new sale started, and calling a manager for keys held up the line for everyone.

And, if my till is more than five dollars over OR under, it’s a write up, Mrs. Moore remembered Tracy’s warning. Three write ups and that’s a suspension, but I’m not supposed to worry too much about getting fired for it, because she says everyone’s drawers are always a little off. The suspensions are only in effect when they’re not short-handed, which is never, and are just an excuse to never give anyone the ten cent raises John said everyone gets after the three month evaluation.

There were PLU codes to learn and memorize, she would have to ask each customer if they had a Food Lion MVP card which gave them various small discounts—something Shannon noticed Tracy didn’t actually do—but also there was a separate system for coupons customers might clip out of the monthly ad inserts that went out. Those involved one of the many terminal buttons with abbreviations she didn’t understand, and then you also had to tuck the given coupon beneath the drawer in a ragged messy pile, and not lose any of them, because if you didn’t have proof of the discounts you applied, your drawer would be off by however much the coupon was for and you’d get written up.

“Hey,” Tracy called over her shoulder. “What was your name again, hon?”

“Uh—Shannon,” Mrs. Moore answered, wringing her hands. “Shannon.”

“Well, I’m fixin’ to go on break here in a minute,” Tracy said. “Do you know what you’re supposed to be doin’ after this?”

“I—um—no,” Mrs. Moore admitted with a wince. “I, I wasn’t told. He said—John said I was supposed to, to observe, right now. I’ve been waiting for him to come back by and, um. Tell me whatever I’m supposed to be doing next. But, I haven’t seen—”

“John?” Tracy gave her a confused glance. “Store manager John? Hon, he went home a half hour ago, he’s already off the clock.”

“O-oh, okay,” Mrs. Moore let out a nervous laugh. “Um. Then—?”

“I dunno hon, you need to head back through the office and find whatever manager came in for afternoon shift. I can’t be watchin’ you all day, that’s not my job.”

/// Appending 'store manager' to basically become part of John's name there, as in my experience with many common names in that sort of environment you basically have to for people to understand who you're referring to. Like, in a grocery store you can't just talk to someone about Bob, you have to clarify from the get-go if you're talking about Dairy Bob or Manager Bob.

My aesthetics study; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WF8ZU2P_Hhc&list=PLMBfXhncTE3Di5InmPZ5FAkBx94JPdqiB&index=12

I imagined Springton's Food Lion in 1999 to be about as outdated as you'd expect from something in 1995. My actual personal experience is from a County Market franchise in 2006, whose furnishings and terminals were installed circa 2001 and slowly SLOWLY were updated throughout the years I worked there. So, we had earlyish primitive touchscreens at least, I figure Mrs. Moore would be operating in the generation just before that.

You can probably tell from how I wrote this how I've been itching to set up a way to convey more of my "retail/food service nightmare" stories to readers. Did something similar with Kelly not long ago in my AnimeCon fiction. They won't all be completely demoralizing tedium like this was... but introducing it that way is absolutely necessary to correctly set the stage for the proper experience.

One of my first jobs I was nervous to the point of being terrified, was supposed to be just seating customers and taking their orders. The woman who was training me, Lynn, promised everything would be okay and that she'd be right there next to me every step of the way for the first few customers. Halfway through starting to seat my very first pair of customers, Lynn spots other customers coming in and bails on me to go greet them. I had no idea which section I was supposed to seat my customers in, didn't know the protocol for telling them about what specials we had (I had no idea what deals were going on, no clue how the buffet stuff worked, etc) or making sure I got their drink orders first--nothin'. Zero training.

It was downright traumatizing to be unexpectedly on my own, with customers and zero oversight or instruction, in the first minutes of my very first day on the job. Two years later I was night shift manager and juggled seating customers, answering phones, making food, training new hires, and covering all the checklist stuff morning shift checked off but didn't actually do... simultaneously.

There's something just universal about nightmarish shitty high turnover churn jobs, and swapping those stories with people was always one of the quickest ways I found myself bonding to people over.