Dairy Clerk
October 20, 2008
$4.17, no I don’t have change. I am ready to accept my abundance of change. Here’s a ten.
Mocha frap, the Barista is overweight with a hiked up A-shirt. Her arms have a thick layer of thin hairs the same way a naked mole rat is considered “hairless”. Whipped cream, yes, chocolate syrup, yes. Since I’ve been to college I put on weight. I remember the summer before, my brother, tall and toned, short blond hair, poking my chest and grabbing at fat, pulling away with handfuls of air.
“You are going to get so fucking fat dude. Freshman 15.”
The fifteen pounds the school board has decided most freshman will gain because of new eating habits, change of atmosphere and new freedoms. But what the 15 really compensates for is depression, fear, adaptation, stress. It’s comfort food. Why do you think school cafeterias can never keep anything in their freezers? Bon-bons, Hershey’s ice cream bars with peanuts, Ben and Jerry’s Chunky Monkey, Phish Food, Tollhouse chocolate chip cookie ice cream sandwiches. Comfort food. I didn’t get depressed, but I did gain thirty pounds.
All night grocery stores stock at around 12-2a.m. The few employees that stay around for the midnight shift, stand in blue parkas, zipped to the neck with their hoods up. They stand waiting in the middle of the night for massive trucks that bring heavy things to throw their backs out with. Faceless brown boxes that give vague instructions like the image of a penguin and an arrow pointing up. They slump around with little push carts, they stock hair dye, they sweep the aisles. Their little worlds, cooled by recycled air and dairy freezers, controlled by demanding old ladies pointing shaking fingers at high shelfed items and college students trying to crack the plastic security tips off bottles of Jack Daniels with Oldsmobile keys. Their life soundtrack, “Hits of the 80′s” playing quietly all night long over the ceiling speakers. A midnight grocery store symphony.
I check expiration dates, stock the high shelves and clean up any break, spill or otherwise dropped product in the store. On my paycheck it says my job title is “Dairy Clerk” but amongst the employees it’s “Cum Monkey”. “Cum” because half the milk I check the expiration date on is already congealed, “Monkey” because I climb the shelves to stock them.
You wouldn’t believe how little the expiration date on your milk carton means. “Fresh” organic milk with the smiling cow and rising sun, believe it or not, is not straight from the cow’s tit when you buy it. No, it’s not warm because we just shipped it here from the farm. It’s warm because Jessica left the dairy freezer door open so she could hear Rick’s radio from inside while she had a smoke break. The expiration date is an expression, like an anecdote that makes you feel better about yourself. It’s been sitting in that carton, somewhere for longer than you’d like to know. And between that somewhere and to your fridge it’s about as fresh as the powdered milk in your pantry, you know, that box that’s still waiting for the Apocalypse. When the world really is reduced to Twinkies and cockroaches I know I for one, will crave some powdered milk.
“Soy milk please”.
The Barista nods her curly head and gives me my change.
We all have expiration dates. From ages 0-10 years old we’re milked, 11-20 we’re shipped, 21-40 we’re on the shelf, we rot, we die.
“Dairy clerk, clean up on aisle 14.”
I take my frappuccino and make my way back to the impending mess that some asshole has left for me. This is my time to shine.
Sure enough it’s a large woman in an electric wheelchair. Her grabber still in the air, frozen in time at the exact moment the Ragu dropped. Her eyes are locked in that of disbelief and awe by what just happened. She sees me and her look switches to anger.
“You stock boys shouldn’t put the sauce so close to the edge. It could have killed me!”
I awkwardly smile and do my job, sweeping the broken glass into the dustpan. I don’t think she should be afraid of sauce killing her, I think she should be afraid of diabetes.
“It’s carelessness… and a clear lack of care for the customers…” she rambles on.
I bite my tongue and nod along. If she only knew how much I cared. As I scrape up the rest of the sauce revealing the off-white checkered tiles I wonder what her shelf life is.
