The Back (Part 1)

“I need to speak with your manager.”

Those were the words that left a young supermarket employee with no recourse but to grab the walkie-talkie off his belt, bring it to his lips, and use his knobby thumb to press down the “talk” button. 

“The presence of a manager is requested at the customer service desk,” he said.

He spoke with a voice that was surprisingly deep and smooth.

As soon as he let go of the button, a garbled but sprightly male voice replied: “Coming up.”

The associate let his arm flop back to his side.

Martha glared at this young man. Her mascara-caked eyes were viciously narrowed, her pearly white teeth were clenched like a bear trap, and her pink painted lips were shaped into a snarl. It was Martha’s privilege—nay her right—to invoke the presence of a manager at any time during discourse with a grunt worker. She was, after all, an American in an American business with a pocketbook full of American money. She looked her unworthy adversary up and down—this teenager with a jet black mop-top and lanky arms and prominent Adam’s apple. He was garbed in a bright pink polo shirt and a teal sun visor—standard wear for entry-level employees at the Shop-Mart of Oscaloo family of grocery stores. If the four crookedly applied block letter stickers on his name tag could be trusted, his name was Fred.

Fred looked past Martha with drained eyes. Once the manager was called, there was nothing he could do except stand still and listen to the shuffling bossa nova music playing out of the ceiling. Truth be told, he rather cherished those moments.

As they waited, Martha made smooth, reptilian motions as she loosely cross her arms and started drumming her bicep with her half-inch, lime-green fingernails. 

A door that was somewhat veiled within the panels behind the customer service desk abruptly opened, and a bald man clad in a suit and tie came angling out. He also had a name tag on his chest with four stickers. But his were far more neatly arranged and spelled the name “Walt.”

Then Walt uttered the five words that customarily indicated the official commencement of the supermarket’s process of appeals.

“How may I help you?”

Martha wrinkled her nose sourly for a second or two before she reached into the heavy, satchel handbag that was dangling off her shoulder. She pulled out a colorful, folded sheet of newsprint and slammed it on the counter. Walt recognized that immediately as the grocery store’s insert from Wednesday morning’s issue of the Oscaloo Times. It advertised the specials going on that week.

She then retracted one of her painted fingertips and pressed it against a picture of a brand name box of cookies. They were selling for $3.99. 

“Look,” she said to him with a bit of a hiss. That hissing being an impressive feat considering that word lacked any natural ‘s’ sounds 

Walt, dutifully obliging, squinted his eyes to carefully examine the product. 

“Berry Bites. Bite into a burst of berry flavor.”

Walt returned Martha a bit of an anxious look. The advertisement seeming innocuous enough, he feared that she was about to inform him that the cookies somehow insulted her mother. (Which had happened to him before, believe it or not, except the product was a package of Italian-style breadsticks.)

Martha cocked her head and then re-tapped her fingernail on the picture.

“I know they’re Berry Bites,” she said to him contemptuously. “But what flavor of Berry Bites is being advertised here?”

Walt furrowed his brow and cocked his head, as though she’d just posed an academically fascinating question. He picked up the newspaper from the counter and brought it close to his face so that he could make out the details. He then let out a bit of an infantile grin.

“Blueberry Burst!” he said.

She swiftly snatched the newspaper out from Walt’s hands and then stuffed it back into her handbag.

“Exactly,” she said tersely. “Blueberry Burst. You advertise that you have it at your store, and yet Fred here tells me that you don’t have any in stock! That you only have Razzle Raspberry.”

Walt then fidgeted his eyes for a while before he gave a meek a reply that seemed to be in the form of a question: 

“Because we don’t have Blueberry Burst…in stock?”

Fred, then tiring of the rather slow pace this conversation was going, let out a heavy sigh and decided to fill Walt with the details.

“Sir,” he said. “We looked everywhere on the shelves for Blueberry Burst. We looked behind boxes of the Razzle Raspberry. We looked around the competing brands to see if one might have been misplaced. We even looked behind nearby packages of product that weren’t related to Berry Bites at all.”

Fred then gave a floppy shrug and added: “There just aren’t any boxes of Blueberry Burst to be found anywhere in the store.”

Walt took a moment to beam at his associate. He’d considered Fred something of a protégé of his, and it warmed his heart to hear him describe doing exactly what he would have done in this situation.

But then when Walt looked back at Martha and jumped out of fright. She was glaring at him like a predatory poker player about to lay down a Royal Flush.

She cleared her throat in a rather dramatic fashion so as to make sure that what she would say next would have the appropriate impact.

“But did you look in The Back?”

Walt let out a confounded grimace, and Fred let out an exasperated huff.

Martha, who was then grinning like Cheshire cat, nodded her head up and down slowly. Did these supermarket big shots seriously not think she was wise to the existence of The Back? Did they think she was born yesterday?

But Fred had already been down this road with Martha. He had told her the same thing six times before she demanded to speak to the manager. And here he was telling her for the seventh time.

“We don’t keep Berry Bites product in The Back. Not Razzle Raspberry, not Blueberry Burst, and not even Lingonberry Lulu…”

While Fred mumbled to himself Why does everyone forget about Lingonberry Lulu?, Martha’s adrenal gland shot such a hefty dose of adrenaline into her veins that she gasped. Her eyes got wide and bulgy. She clenched her hand into a fist—or tried to, anyway, since her lime-green fingernails were so long that they didn’t allow her to tuck her fingertips into her palms—and she pounded it on the counter. 

Then she opened her mouth, which was trembling like an overheating steam boiler.

“But did you look?” she bellowed.

Fred’s eyes rolled to the back of his head.

Walt put a calm hand on his esteemed associate’s shoulder to assure him that he could take it from here.

“Madam,” he said. “We do not keep Berry Burst product in The Back. If you can’t find it on the shelves, then I’m afraid that means we are all sold out.”

Martha was taken aback by this response. Perhaps a low level employee like Fred could get away with such an insolent response. This was probably his first day and he didn’t know any better. But his superior? Clearly, he would need to be taught a valuable lesson as well.

Martha stomped her soft-soled, low-top, white sneaker on the linoleum floor with a thundering squeak as she said: “But how do you know if you don’t look?”

“Do I look behind unicorns to find dodo birds?” Fred countered.

Walt once again placed a calming hand on the shoulder of his associate.

“Ma’am,” Walt said calmly. “We don’t have Blueberry Burst in stock. Now, if you like, I could give you a 50% discount on the Razzle Raspberry…”

Martha—face now redder than a radish—threw up her hands in the air. 

“You know what? Just forget it,” she screamed. “You don’t want to look in The Back then I will look myself!”

Walt, then giving a bit of a smirk, said: “Oh no, customers aren’t permitted to go in The Back.”

“Like hell!” she countered.

She then turned around and grabbed the handle of her full shopping cart. 

As she was quickly going out of earshot, she could hear Walt call after her: “But you can’t go back there! The Back is for employees only!”

 

~*~

 

Martha roiled her shopping cart past pyramids of fresh apples and oranges, bags of dried meat, packages of fig bars, boxes of croutons, blocks of Parmesan cheese, among other things, until she found herself standing in front of a pair of black, saloon-style swinging doors. They had the words “Employees Only” printed on them with white lettering.

She scoffed and then used her shopping cart like a battering ram to barge right through.

Martha expected to find herself in a secret room of shelves from floor to ceiling with those hard-to-find products that supermarket employees like to deprive from their customers. But instead, she found herself going out the exact same door that she’d just gone in.

Martha squinted her eyes and looked behind her to see that those black doors were swinging at the hinges.

“What the—“ she started. She was about to go back through those doors and peak inside, but she was interrupted by the sound of quickly approaching footsteps.

It was Fred.  Except, there was something different about him. While he maintained the same physical attributes—that jet black mop-top, lanky build, and the pink polo shirt with the teal sun visor—he no longer carried himself like a droopy, ne’er-do-well teenager. Instead, he had the confident gait of a Fortune 500 CEO. He also held a clipboard in his hands, which also made him look quite official.

“Oh, it’s you,” Martha said to him contemptuously. “Have you come to your senses, finally, and going to look in The Back for my Blueberry Burst?”

“The Back?” Fred replied, giving a laugh. “Is that why you ran off like that? Blueberry Burst? You’re a funny one, Martha…”

He quickly jotted something on his clipboard and added more seriously: “If you run off like that again, I’m afraid we’re not going to let you buy that ground beef you have in that cart, and you’ll have to settle for turkey burgers. You wouldn’t want that, now, would you?”

“Excuse me?” she said, gasping. “Who are you to tell me what to buy?”

“Martha!” the employee said, appearing to be taken aback by that incredulousness. He then turned to her with a sideways glare.

“What’s gotten into you today?” he said. “Did you forget to take your hormone supplements?”

Martha gasped once again—so severely this time that she had difficultly catching her breath. How did he know she took hormone supplements?

“First of all, it’s Mrs. Jacobs to you--.” Martha started. But she might as well have not said anything, as Fred was ignoring her and expeditiously comparing the contents of her shopping cart against what was written on his clipboard.

“…I see you are buying bananas, yogurt, sliced ham, kiwis… very good… white wine, peanut butter, ok…”

But then his eye caught something amiss. 

“Whoops,” he said. He reached into her cart and removed a one-pound block of cheddar cheese. He playfully handled it for a while, like a quarterback testing the feel of a football before tossing it. He then firmly gripped it and held it out to her.

“Now what’s this?” he said.

He glared at Martha like an elementary school principal would glare at a kid he caught with a stick of chalk next to the word “Fart” scrawled on the school building.

“Er… cheese,” Martha said, wrinkling her nose. “But—”

Fred cut her off.

“Cheese is not on your approved product list,” he said. “Much less a one-pound block of it.”

He then gave Martha’s backside, which was sausage-cased in yoga pants, a swift swat and added: “Besides, with a butt like that, we think you could do without the cheddar, hmmm?”

Martha shrieked.

“Also,” he continued, “I don’t see rutabagas and cranberry juice in your cart. We need you to buy those. We need to move them off our shelves.”

At this point, Martha was so enraged she could feel the bile in the back of her throat start to rise. She dug the heels of one of her soft-soled, low top, white sneakers into the linoleum and then stomped it with an even more thundering squeak than the last time she had done that.

“First of all, I don’t drink cranberry juice. And I definitely don’t eat rutabagas,” she screamed.

"Uhhh," Fred said with his eyebrows raised. “You do this week, my dear.”

He then grabbed her firmly on her bicep and continued: “I am not liking the way you’re acting, Martha. You only just got back in our good graces, but if you keep this up, you’re going to get thrown into the Slow Line. Is that what you want?”

Fred then pointed his clipboard over to his left where there was a long, winding line of weary looking customers who were leaning against their shopping carts. The fluorescent lights that they were standing under were badly flickering, and there was a red dot matrix sign hanging on the wall that said "Current Slow Line Wait Time: 4 hrs. 52 mins." Martha could also hear Soviet-era orchestral music emanating from that direction.

Martha blinked. She couldn’t believe her eyes. She could have sworn, for years, that whole space was a lounge area where patrons could sit in chairs and couches and enjoy a free cup of coffee. She scratched her neck.

“Well?” Fred said.

Martha then narrowed her eyes at this incredulous employee. She wasn’t sure how or why he put together his practical joke, but she wasn’t going to play into it any longer. With her teeth clenched and her pink-painted lips formed into a vicious snarl, she said: “Do your worst, little man.”

~*~

More awaits in the second and final installment...

Picture from Wikimedia Commons.