It was a beautiful day, the sun beat down, I had the radio on, I was stocking. Wait a minute, those words are accurate, but sound vaguely like my favorite Tom Petty song.
It was a beautiful day in September. One of those rare Indian Summer days with the temperature up in the 80’s. I was a freshman in college at Indiana State University and was paying for it mostly through money I was making at the old A & _.
My manager, Mr. B had been around for ever and knew everything there was to know about the grocery business. He reminded me of this every day. He must have thought I had a short memory. Not only did Mr. B know everything there was to know about the grocery business, but he knew ever cliché every heard to express his knowledge. Like the times he told me, Al, no matter what I give you to do, it always takes the same amount of time for you to get done. He said this to me many times. I wanted to tell him that I was the classic example of Parkinson’s Law (work expands to fill the time given), but I wasn’t sure that he would appreciate that. I always came to work on time, but Mr. B was always good enough to remind me that “the early bird always gets the worm”. I don’t like worms so I guess that’s why I never was very early to work.
Mr. B usually had me doing price changes on Saturday. Now we discussed price change procedure in Chapter 2, so you need to go back and re-read if you can’t remember the difficult, time consuming job that this was. But, Mr. B new how to push the productivity out of me. He’d remind me a few times to “not let the grass grow under my feet”. Now I wasn’t a rocket scientist back then (come to think of it I’m not one now either), but I am smart enough to know that the grass was not going to grow up through the concrete slab and then through the linoleum that was under my feet.
My usual shift was over night where I worked on the night crew. You didn’t expect me to be that redundant, did you? My night crew leader, Tom, really like me because I did the work of the three guys he had fired for letting grass grow under their feet. Tom would tell Mr. B of the great job I was doing on nights and Mr. B couldn’t believe it because of the grass growing under my feet on the occasional day shift that I would work with him. It must have been the sunlight. Everyone knows that the grass needs sunlight to grow and perform photosynthesis.
Getting to work with Mr. B during the daytime on a Saturday was considered a reward for jobs well done.
Back to the day of the chuck roast in Terre Haute. It was a beautiful day in Terre Haute. I know that is somewhat of an oxymoron. It was bright and sunny and the temperature was rapidly soaring to a high in the mid 80’s. Mr. B knew everything about the grocery business, I may have said that earlier. His knowledge even extended to the seedier side of the business, the shoplifter. Mr. B could spot them a mile away. He was pretty quick on his feet for a man pushing the mid 60’s. He had notches on his belt for every shoplifter he had ever apprehended. Mr. B claimed that this was his third belt. He had run out of leather on the previous two belts. Mr. B had a 43” waist, so you can see he really knew his stuff about shoplifters. Mr. B would be the first one to tell you that the most important rule in the apprehension of a shoplifter is to never lose sight of the perpetrator after they have concealed their item or items of choice.
We were busy that Saturday. I was doing price changes and letting grass grow under my feet and Mr. B was on the prowl for shoplifters. When what to my wandering eyes did appear but a women in the biggest moo moo I had ever seen and I had seen some big moo moos in my short time on earth. This woman went about 6’3” and must have tipped the scales at around 500 pounds. Now being 6’3” her moo moo didn’t cover all of her legs and a large area of cellulite was clearly visible on her unshapely legs. Mr. B’s eyes lit up as soon as he saw her rumbling down the first aisle. I just thought it was a funny, fat lady, but Mr. B knew that she was a prime suspect in a crime yet to be committed. Mr. B was on it, slipping from back room to backroom peeking out of the tiny windows, non of that expensive two-way mirrors for Mr. B. He didn’t need it, he was quick on his feet for a man in his mid 60’s. There I go being redundant again. The round lady was making her way through the store remarkably quickly. She was quick on her feet for a woman of 500 pounds. Oh, no, Mr. B was distracted for an instant by another customer asking him a question. When he turned back, he noticed something was distinctly different about the fat lady. Was it her hair? No. Was it her shoes? No. It was her gait, that is to say the way she walked. She had picked up a slight shuffle in her step. Now to my untrained eye, it appeared she merely was getting tired pushing all that weight around. But, to Mr. B’s trained eye, a dastardly deed had been done.
The fat lady made her way to the front with Mr. B in hot pursuit. Mr. B appeared to be interested in seeing what was under that moo moo. I thought to myself, Mr. B must be really desperate to being looking at the fat lady’s legs, but beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Mr. B even followed her to the front door to ask her if there was any thing she had forgotten. She said no and proceeded to sweat profusely as she left. Hey, she weighed 500 pounds and it was 85 degrees outside, what’s the big deal?
I will never forget what happened next. I was summoned to the front door by Mr. B in his frantic voice. He told me to “walk with him and don’t say a word”. He proceeded to impart great knowledge to me. “See the way that fat lady is walking? It’s not natural. Duh, I could have told him that. He continued: “I was watching her at the meat department, I was distracted, when I turned back around she had done it.” I was searching my brain, she had done it, she had done it, what could it be that she had done? Not wanting to appear stupid at the feet of the master, I said, “Oh that’s when she did it?” “Right” he said. Now we’ve got to handle this the hard way. The hard way? The hard way? Again I searched my mind to figure out what he meant. By this time the fat lady had crossed the street and was about two blocks from the store. She began to pick up her pace and Mr. B matched her stride for stride following about 8 feet behind. I was about 12 feet behind. I had lost some time while I was searching in my mind. This quickened pace continued for another six blocks when Mr. B said loudly “this must come to an end”. The next millisecond was as fine a ninja move as I have ever seen. Mr. B leaped the 8 feet to the fat lady and landed with such force that the concrete sidewalk shook. He next loudly uttered a famous ninja shout: “BOO”! It was then that I became a believer in Mr. B. As an eight pound chuck roast dropped from between the fat lady’s legs to the pavement Mr. B had again proven his prowess in apprehending shoplifters. As I fought to hold back the tears of laughter, I noticed a squad car had pulled up to escort the fat lady to the pokie. A call had come from the store, you see they were already believers.
It was a while before I would eat chuck roast again.
