Shopping Cart Wars

Shopping Cart Wars

When I was sixteen I got my first official job at a discount grocery store.  It was a small store by today’s standard, part of a family owned chain of eight or so stores.  The store was in a small shopping mall on the northwest side of Chicago.  Our store was in the middle of the older section of the mall, along with several small shops and a bank at the corner.  A supermarket was added to the other end of the mall only a few years earlier.     

I didn’t realize it at the time but the grocery business was changing and changing fast. Within a few years our small grocery store would close and even the supermarket found itself struggling against the newer and even larger mega-markets.

From my first day at the store, I noticed there was no love lost between our store and the supermarket.  I was one of maybe fifteen part-time stock boys.  We were expected to do a variety of jobs including; stocking shelves, bagging, mopping and sweeping floors and gathering shopping carts from the parking lot.  Gathering carts was considered the worst job and usually the newer stock boys got stuck with it.

Everyone hated being assigned to shopping carts, especially on Saturday, our busiest day of the week.  We only had eighty carts and could have used thirty or forty more.  Every time the store manager asked the store owners for more carts, he was told to make do with what he had.  This meant we were always running short of shopping carts. 

By contrast, the supermarket had between three and four hundred carts.  They never seemed to have a problem running out of carts.  They even had two rows of about a hundred reserve carts lined up along the outside wall of the supermarket.  To me it seemed like they were just taunting us with these carts.

When we ran short of carts, customers often used supermarket carts which they collected themselves.  This normally resulted in a phone call from the supermarket manager to our manager, complaining about the misuse of his carts.  Sometimes we borrowed supermarket carts ourselves, again resulting in a nasty phone call.  Once, we were so desperate, we tried to borrow a whole row of the supermarket reserve carts, only to find out they were locked up with a long chain. 

One Friday evening some stock boys, myself included, decided it would be interesting to see how well the supermarket handled a cart shortage. We devised a plan and decided to execute it the next day, Saturday.  We also decided this would be a stock boy operation; the manager and cashiers were not to be told about the plan.

The next day the store opened at 8:00 A.M. like normal and all day we had between three and four stock boys assigned to carts.  One stock boy brought back our carts and the others brought back supermarket carts and/or kept an eye out for supermarket cart boys. The rest of the stock boys spent most of the day bagging groceries. We were stretched to the limit and very little else got done.  Whenever supermarket carts were brought into our store, they were rushed right through the store, out the back door and into the alley. From there they were pushed all the way to the far end off the mall and neatly lined up at the behind the bank. 

By afternoon we noticed the supermarket using their supply of reserve carts usually lined up outside.  By evening we noticed the supermarket had doubled the number of cart boys and even we were having trouble finding their carts.  By the time our store closed at 9:00 P.M. we had amassed about two hundred fifty supermarket carts, all neatly parked in the alley behind the bank.  There had been no phone calls and the supermarket would have to manage with their depleted stock of carts until they closed at midnight.

The next morning was Sunday and we opened at 8:00 A.M. like always.  I noticed there were no shopping carts along the supermarket wall when I came in.  Sunday was our slowest day of the week and usually only two cashiers and two or three stock boys were scheduled to work.  Since it was so slow we usually had coffee and donuts setup in front of the managers little office.  There were no customers in the store. The stock boys were eating donuts and talking to the cashiers when one of the cashiers noticed something outside.  I looked out the window and saw ten or twelve supermarket stock boys, each pushing twenty to twenty five supermarket carts across the deserted parking lot.  It looked like the marines landing on a beach.  They did not look happy.

With all our laughing and commotion, our manager came out to see what was going on. He looked out the window and said “I’m going to get a phone call, aren’t I”. “Yup” I said, “but since you don’t know anything about it; at least you won’t have to lie”.   

Amusing Team Names

Amusing Illinois High School Team Names

I was wandering around on the internet the other night and found a list of Illinois High School team names.  I found some to be very unusual.  I am sure there are very good reasons for these names.  I apologize in advance if I hurt or upset anyone associated with these schools.  Here is a list of some of the names I think are most amusing:

SCHOOL	BOYS TEAMNAME	GIRLS TEAMNAME
Atwood (A.-Hammond)	Rajahs	Rajenes
Bunker Hill	Minutemen	Minutemaids
Canton	Little Giants	Lady Giants
Carthage	Blueboys	Bluegirls
Centralia	Orphans	Orphan Annies
Cobden	Appleknockers	Appleknockers
Effingham (H.S.)	Flaming Hearts	Flaming Hearts
Fisher	Bunnies	Bunnies
Freeburg	Midgets	Lady Midgets
Freeport (H.S.)	Pretzels	Lady Pretzels
Hoopeston (H. Area)	Cornjerkers	Cornjerkers
Hampshire	Whip-Purs	Whip-Purs
Monmouth (H.S.)	Zippers	Zippers
Morton	Potters	Potters
Plano	Reapers	Lady Reapers
Polo	Marcos	Marcos
Rockford (East)	E-Rabs	E-Rabs
Teutopolis	Wooden Shoes	Lady Shoes

I tried to pick a favorite, but I just can’t.  I don’t know what an appleknocker is and it may be illegal to be a cornjerker in some states.  I keep picturing an image of a football stadium full of fans clopping around in wooden shoes yelling across the field “Marco” and the opposing fans responding “Polo”.  I see cheerleaders dressed like Orphan Annie, singing “don’t fear the reaper” and coach’s telling their teams to “go out there and fight like bunnies”.  I guess it really doesn’t matter what the team is called, as long as parents get out there and support their children.

Driver’s Education

Driver’s Education

One of the most memorable rights of passage to adulthood for me was getting my driver’s license.  In the 70’s you could get a driver’s license in Illinois at age sixteen, if you successfully completed an approved driver’s education program and passed the driving test.  My High School offered a semester long driver’s education program to sophomores in place of gym class.  So for one semester of high school I actually did not suffer from athlete’s foot. 

The driver’s education program was run by the athletic department. I found it somewhat disturbing that the same people who used terms like; “attack the ball”, “punch it in” and “kill, kill, kill”; were also responsible for teaching sixteen year olds safe and responsible driving skills.

The classroom part of the program mostly involved reading and studying a small booklet provided by the state call “Rules of the Road”.  This was supplemented with several educational films with titles like; “Death on the Highway” or “So You didn’t See the Semi in Your Blind Spot”.  These films were created by adults and filled with gruesome scenes of car wrecks intended to scare the crap out of potential new drivers.  They did not work on sixteen year olds, who still saw car wrecks, blood, guts and gore as cool; not scary.  These films were not even filmed in color.  They were old black and white movies that were modified with an over abundance of red blood painted on the film.  I can honestly say these are the only black, white and red films I have ever seen.  After completing classroom training and passing the written portion of the state driver’s examination, I was given a learner’s permit.  This allowed me to actually drive a car under the supervision of a responsible adult.  I could say something here about the athletic department, but I don’t want to offend anyone.

For the next few weeks, the class was allowed to drive around a closed course constructed behind the school.  There were stop signs and intersections and an instructor screaming at everyone through two way radios installed in all the cars.  I believe the course speed limit was twenty; I doubt anyone went over ten. 

As part of the behind the wheel training phase of the program, everyone was required to complete two, on the street, driving lessons with one of the instructors.  With public safety in mind, these lessons were always scheduled early on Saturday mornings. Usually there were two students per lesson. One student drove for about half an hour while the other student sat terrified in the back seat; then they switched places for another half hour.  I had completed my first lesson without any problems and had no reason to believe the second lesson would be any different.

My second lesson started at 7:00 A.M. on a Saturday morning.  The car was a Buick Skylark coupe.  There were stickers on both doors, both bumpers and there was a giant sign strapped to the roof, all with the words “CAUTION - STUDENT DRIVER”.  The car was also modified with a brake pedal on the passenger side.  This was for the instructor to use in case of an emergency.  I didn’t know the instructor or anything about him except that he was the head baseball coach.  I was chosen to drive first.

I was about twenty minutes into my lesson, traffic was light and everything was going well.  As I approached an intersection with a traffic light; the light changed from green to yellow.  I hit the gas, the instructor panicked and hit the brake, the wheels locked, the car screeched and everything came to a dead stop in about twenty feet; everything except the sign strapped to the roof, which kept going.  In fact the sign slid all the way across the entire intersection without being touched or run over by any cross traffic.  It was truly an impressive feat and if I hadn’t been the driver, I am sure I would have fully enjoyed it.  Unfortunately, I was the driver and saw any hope of passing driver’s education disappear, along with the roof sign, across the intersection.  I felt sick.

When the light turned green, I pulled myself together, drove across the intersection and parked the car along side the sign.  The instructor told me to shut off the engine; I did.  Then he told both me and the other student to pick up the sign and place it in the trunk.  We did as we were told; me trying not to cry and the other student trying not to laugh his ass off.

After the sign was neatly stowed away in the trunk, the instructor told me to give the keys to the other student because I was “done for the day”.  I spent the next half hour hunched over in the back seat trying not to throw up.  I was totally depressed.  Not only was I a failure, but I knew this was the kind of event that could get around school and haunt me for years.

When we got back to school the instructor signed the other student’s completion slip; then asked for mine.  I handed it to him expecting him to rip it up or something.  Instead, he signed it, handed it back to me and said “I don’t know why we even use those roof signs; they come off all the time”.  

I was so happy, I almost peed myself.  I shook the man’s hand and said “thank you” for what seemed like five minutes.  I don’t even remember how I got home.  I think I took the bus, or I could have walked. I really don’t know.  When I got home, my dad was sitting in the kitchen reading the paper.  He asked “So, how did it go”.  Like a typical sixteen year old, I said “It was fine” and went to my room.

The Mary Magdalene Bus - part 2

The Mary Magdalene Bus - part 2

The manager came into the back room also laughing.  I was not going to loose my job over this; apparently I wasn’t the first stock boy to be tortured on the Mary Magdalene bus.  He gave me an apron which covered most of the stains on my shirt and call a stock boy named Mike over.  Mike took one look at me, started laughing and said “Mary Magdalene bus.”  Was I really the only person who never heard of the Mary Magdalene bus?  The manager told Mike to give me a tour of the store and show me what to do.     

I worked at the grocery store for the next year and a half, until the store went out of business because it could not compete with the big supermarkets.  I never rode the Mary Magdalene bus again, I never called any of the phone numbers scribbled on my math homework; even though I thought about it a few times and to this day I hate the smell of most woman’s perfumes.