Grocery Store

I had to get up way too early this morning to take Erin to the airport. After I dropped him off, I drove back towards the house and decided to swing by the grocery store before catching a nap and heading off to work. It was so early that Giant wasn't open, but Safeway was open so I drove over there. I walked around, slightly dazed from sleepiness, selecting a few items for work lunches and so on. I think there was one other customer in the whole store.

There were tons of employees there, though. Mostly stockers. I remembered when I worked in a deli-bakery at a Winn-Dixie for a summer...one of the worst jobs I ever had. It sucked because I asked specifically not to work mornings and they had me working mornings all the time, because I took the job so they'd train me to decorate cakes and they never did, and because the store was managed by a guy we had to call Mister who referred to female employees as Girls.

While I hated working in the morning because I wasn't awake in the morning, there were definitely some nice things about being in a grocery store in the early hours. Few shoppers were there, and the ones who were in the store were usually in no big hurry and in a good mood. Most employees were too tired to be bitchy at 7am, and the grocery store workers liked coming by the deli-bakery for 35 cent cups of coffee and early-morning gossip catchup. It still smelled like fresh bread baking when I got there...the woman who baked the breads worked from 11pm to 7am, so she'd be leaving as I arrived and the shelves would be filled with fresh bread. The interesting contractors...the ones who filled the commercial breads shelving, and who stocked the wine shop...they'd all be in the store in the early morning. I learned a lot about bread and wine from those people. If I hadn't been so exhausted, it would have been a great way to start a work day.

Being in Safeway this morning reminded me a lot of that feeling. The people I saw in there were all so friendly and nice, even though they mostly looked kind of sleepy. I've never had decent service in a Safeway like I had this morning. I also never thought I'd miss working in that damned Winn-Dixie, but I couldn't remember a single good thing about that job until I went to Safeway this morning...and then all kinds of good things flooded back.

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