The Poor, the Bad and the Angry

by Kevin Keating

I went in through the loading dock. Asshole was coming towards me from the walk-in. I punched my time card and put it back in the slot, feeling him rush past as I headed into the office.

I sat at his desk and counted the money in my cash drawer. When he came in I kept my eyes on him without blinking as he moved around the room, since I know he doesn't like that.

"You're late again, Max."

"Yeah, I'll be on time tomorrow."

"You know you're fucking up around here."

"No I'm not, man. I was just a little late, that's all."

"Well..." He cleared his throat. “I'm gonna have to write you up."

I took the cash drawer out front to register two. Miller was on register four.

"Okay, this one's easy," he said, dropping right back into last night's talk at the bar, waving a finger at me, crooning, "Like a summer with a thousand Julys..."

"Um. Miles Davis, right? 'Bitches Brew'? "

He shook his head.

"Trumpet Man."

“Ah, fuck it, I'm still back in the punk rock days." I nodded toward the back of the store and said, "He's pullin' my chain again." Miller made a snorting noise: "Well, fuck him. It's Sunday." Miller smiled and made a goofy face and disappeared down one of the aisles.

This place used to be an A&P. Now it's a natural foods market, a big, expensive place with a produce section, bulk goods and vitamins, a deli and a bottle shop. We work under bright white lights illuminating wide aisles of black and white tile floors. Big windows give a view of the parking lot out front. The store stereo is tuned to a modern rock station, music to shop and sleepwalk by. Miller had come in at nine. Leslie and Susan would be in at eleven. Asshole would probably take off in another half-hour or forty-five minutes. Then we could relax. With the arrival of the rebel women the potlatch would begin.

Sunday is Employee Theft Marathon Day. The loyal dogs don't have to work today. After the store opens the owner is gone till Monday morning, so the four of us make off with as much money, food and alcohol as we can rationally expect to get away with. We tap the till a little on every shift, but on Sundays we pull out all the stops. It's a game, a friendly competition to see who can grab the most without the losses becoming obvious: intelligent planning, that's the key. Of course, Miller usually wins, since he's far more industrious than the rest of us, and for him, every day is Sunday. Last night at the bar he showed me his shift under-rings: a thick wad of bills rolled up with rubber bands. That's mostly plastic, ATM and credit transactions are where you find the real money, and Miller has a gift for sleight of hand. Miller is a fiend; I can never keep up with him. He claims he learned to work hard like that in the Army. On the base in Germany he says they' d say: "If you can't take it, break it."

When I move like Miller I more than double my cash income, and that doesn't include the to-go items: the microbrews and Belgian ales, organic juices, nice cheeses, deli items, fresh pasta, and crystal vitamin C. I love that $22 a pound Nova Scotia Lox, and the elegant way it melts in your mouth, and I've cultivated a discriminating taste for high-end velvety Merlots and Alexander Valley Cabernets, wines that with the first sip create a galaxy of bouquets on my palate. I'm so spoiled that I just can't go near the cheap stuff anymore. There are certain vintages and wineries that I favor, and might even recommend - but I'm not going to make any commercial endorsements! We're not stingy about sharing the wealth, either, except for Miller. I mean, I've tried to spread it around, but the Volvo-owners don't want to play along. Just yesterday some old man got all indignant when I tried to undercharge him, snarling at me through his tiny, sharp white teeth. I don't like the people in this neighborhood, anyway, so fuck them.

The first of the day's shoppers came in: a man in Italian clothes, and a clinging female with a haircut that made her look like Woody Woodpecker. I watched them, blurry images in the anti-shoplifting mirror lining the upper back wall; the man's voice indistinct, the woman laughing, a fatuous "Ha!-ha-ha!" booming down the aisle; the sound of a rental property owner who goes to Paris or Milan every summer to buy new shoes.

They came to my register with one item, a Napa Chardonnay. I picked up the bottle, read the label, keyed in $15.99 on the register and asked, "What's this like?"

He pulled a crisp twenty dollar bill out of his wallet and purred, "Gorgeous."

l hit the Clear key, re-keyed in $1.99, hit the Sale key and the register opened. I added the tax in my head, made change quickly and bagged the wine, knowing he wouldn't ask for the receipt with her on his arm. He smiled at me and they took off.

That twenty in the register was mine. After under-ringing the difference with another sale or two I'd put the bill in my pocket. I should've waited until Asshole was gone, but that single-item $16 sale was just too smooth to pass up.

The Chardonnay drinkers weren't even out the door before Asshole appeared at my register, frowning, "Let me back in there."

l stepped aside. He hit the No Sale key on the register and the cash drawer opened, bumping to a stop against his stomach. The incriminating twenty fluttered like it was waving to him. When he counted the cash in the till and compared it to the register tape l' d be nailed. I looked around.

Miller was gone, off in the back somewhere. I was glad for that at least. I didn't want him to have to see this.

In the old days it would have been Ultravox or Gang of Four, but now I thought of a line from a blues-song:

"All the doctors in Wisconsin sure can't help her none..."

And I relaxed, tried to act like I didn't care, got a feeling like a headache at the back of my neck, then remembered a bandit in a Russian story; how in the hands of the law the valiant thief proclaimed his innocence until his death at the end of a rope. l' d lie to this guy here. Then l' d lose my job. With no income and no savings and the rent due in a week I' d be kissing good-bye to my windowless basement flat. Soon I might be living in my car.

It all ran through my head in a second or two; no more clowning with the gang. I' d miss the busy Christmas season, when friends and neighbors show up for big bargains; prices for a number of special customers will be reduced to absolutely nothing. The angry burning sensation lifted. More than my loot, I'd miss this little community of theft that I'd formed with my co-workers. I was mad about it, but I also felt a strange clarity and freedom at that moment, because I'd had a blast robbing this place, and, waxing philosophical under stress, I told myself a bad conscience is my enemies' weapon, and guilt is for the weak.

He just stood there, staring at the bills in the drawer. Then he opened the plastic door above the register tape, took the spool out and slowly unrolled the tape, comparing it to a piece of tape from the previous nights' shift.

He exhaled loudly.

"You've got a problem here. You were on this register last night, right?"

"Yeah."

"Why are there all these double zeros here?"

"I don't understand."

He didn't respond. After a minute he said, "You're opening the register without making sales."

"Yeah, so? People want change for the paper – “

"I don't buy that. There's some kind of devious bullshit going on here. You've been hitting the No Sale key when you should be ringing up sales, then taking money out."

"No way. That's for people who want change for the newspaper racks, or the bus. People come in here and they ask for change, that's all that is. Man, that's the truth."

I looked away from Asshole, and that old guy with the teeth from yesterday was standing there, gaping at me, like he'd heard what I' d just said and was now going to expose me. We stared at each other for one long, cold, awful moment. He hissed, "Young man!" Asshole looked at me like I was on trial then at the old guy, then at me, and he scowled and called out with a new warm music in his voice, "Miller, Mister Bergen would appreciate some assistance - " Miller appeared, and the two of them loped away down the bath-and-body aisle.

Asshole spooled out the tape until it reached the floor, looking it over for a long, long time. But he still didn't get it. I'd never be stupid enough to open the register without a sale and take money. Those double zeros were places where I'd made change for people, like I said. I've always rung up a minimal purchase when I've opened the register to pocket cash. I've subtracted the minimal purchase from my take. Doing these equations in my head has helped me survive the reign of boredom in the store. It's added excitement and happiness to my workday - until now. I kept my eyes on him, away from my twenty in the register.

"You're not supposed to make change for those newspaper machines. I don't own them. They don't bring any money into my store."

"Yeah, but the racks are right out front – “

"That's bullshit! I don't make dick out of those machines! Those machines aren't mine, and I don't make change for them and I don't want to see you opening the register unless you're making a sale."

"People expect things like that. When I don't give them change they get pissed off at me, they get pissed off at you, and they get pissed off at the store, they leave and they don't come back."

He shut the register drawer and handed me the spool of tape. Quietly he said, "I don't give a fuck what they want. You can make change for a paying customer, but not for anybody else. I don't want you or anybody else opening a register in this store without a sale being made, or a pay-out."

"All right. I understand. I got you."

"Good. Have a nice day."

He forgot to count the money in the till. The next thing I saw he was moving across the parking lot to his SUV. Two of the usual Sunday morning shoppers came in, and we exchanged polite greetings as I fumbled to roll the register tape back on the spool, almost juggling it in the air as I did it. I took a breath, and made a funny little nervous sound that I don't think I've ever made before, a combined laugh and sigh of pain, and looked around me, and everything was how it had been fifteen minutes before, with Miller floating around and making noise in the back somewhere, and customers bouncing through the doors with their wallets full of plastic, dressed in new Eddie Bauer togs and dark sunglasses and big down parkas like they were going Elk-hunting. Then the kick I got from not getting fired was gone, and I wondered just how much of a victory this was; he knew something was up. And no matter what happened we still had to work for him, and something gets taken from us that we can never get back; we could strip this place bare and it still wouldn't make up for all he steals from us.

Miller came back to his register, beaming, with the old guy behind him, pushing a shopping cart. Miller strummed an invisible guitar and sang,

"She's got Elgin movements from her head down to her toes

Breaks in on a dollar 'most, anywhere she goes..."

I pointed toward his register, said "Robert Johnson!" and shook my head; either Miller was a mind-reader, or we were now both humming on the same unique wavelength. In front of the store the Jeep Cherokee with the "Greenpeace" bumper-sticker peeled out like a muscle car and sped east toward the freeway, carrying our employer to his other business interests, or to his health club, or to watch a football game on TV, or to whatever other way he whiles away his Sunday afternoons, and I laughed and told myself that it was going to be a good day after all.