Arrrrrrrrgh. I was hanging out on our porch tonight with our family, and when we came inside, I discovered that I was covered with mosquito bites. Stupid mosquitos. I’ve been thinking about it, and I’ve got a great solution to prevent mosquito bites. They bite us in order to drink our blood, right? Well, why not fill up a hummingbird feeder with blood, and let the mosquitos drink it from there? That way, they get all the blood they want, and none of us gets bitten.
I told my mom about my brilliant idea, and even showed her my diagram. She said it was the most disgusting idea she’d ever heard. “But we wouldn’t get bitten by mosquitos!” I said. And she said, “You also could just put on the insect repellent like I kept telling you to.”
It sucks to be a brilliant inventor and have nobody else realize it.
Today our whole family went to the park for the big Fourth of July celebration our town has each year. It was OK—they had games, and a bunch of clowns, and three mimes. (Originally, we thought there were four mimes, but it turned out one of them was just a crazy person who thought he was trapped in a glass box.) They also had stands where you could buy helium balloons. I don’t understand why anyone sells helium balloons—we must’ve seen something like twenty little kids crying because they’d let go of their balloon, or it had popped, or they were fighting with their brother or sister over it. Buying a kid a helium balloon is like paying $3 to guarantee that someone will be crying sometime in half an hour.
I got a job! I got a job! I got hired down at the Smart Mart grocery store as a bagger! I went there with my mom tonight, and she saw them putting up a “Help Wanted” sign, and she took me to the manager, a woman named Lisa, and said, “If you’re hiring, he’s available!” And before I knew it, I’d filled out a form and been given a time card and was told to come back tomorrow at nine.
Today was my first day on the job at Smart Mart. Lisa was really nice—she gave me an apron and a time card and a name tag, and showed me around, and she gave me a quick talk about how to bag groceries. But then I was out there, actually doing it, and it was really stressful, because the job’s a lot more complicated than it seems. There are a lot of things you should never do as a grocery bagger. Like, you should never put all the canned items in one bag, because it’ll make the bag impossible to lift. And you should never put a carton of eggs below a watermelon.
And even if someone is buying a really, really large amount of toilet paper, don’t say to them, “Wow! You buy a lot of toilet paper!” because it makes everything awkward for both of you.
The other baggers said I did an OK job for my first day, but that I was lucky that Lisa was the manager on duty, and not Mr. Nelson. I asked why, and they said, “You’ll see.”
Today was my second day of bagging groceries, and now I know what the other baggers meant about Mr. Nelson. I met him first thing in the morning, when I came in—I went to punch in my time card, and he was standing next to it, looking at his watch. I guess it was 9:02 a.m., and I was supposed to get there at nine. He took me into his office and gave me a long speech about how, if I’m late, I’m letting the whole Smart Mart team down, and how a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, and how there’s no I in team. Which seems like kind of a weird saying, because the letters for me are in team.
Plus, there are plenty of words that mean team that do have an I in them, like unit and organization.
And there’s no I in eye, even though they’re pronounced the same.
And there’s an I in giraffe, but that doesn’t mean that every giraffe has a person inside of it.
But I didn’t point any of that out to Mr. Nelson. I also didn’t point out that, if me being two minutes late was a huge burden to everyone else, then him taking twenty minutes to lecture me on lateness was probably ten times more of a burden. I just nodded and went to work.
Grrrrr.
Today, I made a special effort to arrive at the store early, so I wouldn’t get in trouble again with Mr. Nelson. And I actually got there at 8:54, and punched in. And about an hour later, I was bagging groceries when he came over and asked to see me in his office. At first, I thought he was going to tell me how happy he was that I’d gotten there early, but instead, he lectured me for a while about how I can’t punch in before my shift starts, because then I’m getting paid for time that I’m not supposed to be here, which is stealing from the company. And he talked about how it doesn’t feel like I’m a team player, and he really needs me to be giving 110 percent to the store. Which is funny, because what I’d done was give him 10 percent more of an hour than I was supposed to. But before I could point that out, he’d taken out my time card and changed my punch-in time to nine, and then made me initial the change.
I wonder if fish remember the story of Noah’s Ark as “the time God got mad at everyone but us.”
If your last name is Pepper, I bet you think twice before becoming a doctor.
Back to work at the Smart Mart. Lisa was the manager on duty, so it was pretty relaxed. There was one weird moment when I had just finished bagging two big boxes of wine, a tube of hemorrhoid cream, and a lot of Lean Cuisine single-serve dinners, and looked up and saw that the person buying them was Mr. Swanson, my middle-school guidance counselor. I looked at him, he looked at me, and then we both looked away as he picked up his bags and left. Afterward, the cashier, Bev, leaned over and said, “Do you know that guy? He comes in here every week and buys the same stuff every single time.”
Today at the store, I worked with Bev as the cashier again. We were having a lot of fun, because under her breath, she was pointing out all the people who are regular customers. There’s the Cat Lady, who buys twenty cans of cat food every single week. And Banana Guy, who buys a single banana every afternoon. And Mr. Exact Change, who always holds up the line by insisting on paying for everything with exact change down to the penny.
And then Bev said, “Oh! Here comes the Crazy Coupon Lady!” And I looked up, all ready to see some crazy-looking woman, and realized: it’s my mom. And before I could say anything, my mom came over to our register and said, “Hi, honey! I got us hot dogs for dinner!” And then she turned to Bev and said, “I hope my son isn’t giving you too much trouble here. Now, let me see, I have a coupon for the hot dogs, and this cereal, and the tuna fish, and the canned soup . . .” And Bev got really embarrassed, and we kind of didn’t talk to each other very much for the rest of my shift.
Tonight at dinner, my mom asked me, “Tad, are you working next Saturday?” And without thinking, I said, “No, I have this Saturday off.” And she said, “Great! You can help me out with the baby shower!”
I have to learn to always think before answering my mom’s questions. She’s super tricky sometimes.
Anyway, I guess my mom’s agreed to have a baby shower for her friend Julie, from her book club. I’m not sure I’ve ever even met Julie—whenever my mom’s book club comes over, my dad usually takes me to the movies, so that neither of us has to be around for it. But now both of us are going to be stuck helping out with the baby shower. I asked my dad what a baby shower was—he said it’s a party where women open up one box after another with tiny outfits in them and say how cute they are. I asked how long they usually take, and he said, “Around five hours.” I said, “You’re kidding.” He said, “Nope.”
Today, Mr. Nelson took me off of grocery-bagging duty and made me spray down all the grocery conveyor belts. And then, once I was done, he went around and inspected them and made me do it a second time, because they weren’t clean enough. He told me he wanted them all to be “as clean as a whistle,” which is weird, because whistles are full of dried spit.
A good day at work: I was on the express lane, for people with ten items or less, which made every bag much quicker and easier to pack. The only exception was when one guy came through the lane with, like, twenty items. Bev tried to point out to him that he couldn’t go through the line with that many items, but he was on his cell phone and just snapped his fingers at her and said, “Ring it all up quick; I’m in a hurry.”
Since he was in such a hurry, I decided I should pack his bag quickly, so I put his lightbulbs, bread, and pie at the bottom of a bag, threw his gallon of milk and a bag of kitty litter on top, handed them to him, and told him to have a nice day.
Today, I was off work, and so my mom and I went to the party store to get plates and streamers for her friend Julie’s baby shower. I’d never been in a party store before. I’d always thought it would be kind of a fun place, what with the word party right in the name, but all the workers there looked really depressed, like there’d been some horrible accident the day before where one of their coworkers had drowned in a vat of confetti.
All the baby-shower decorations had pictures like this on them:
Sophie asked why, and I told her it was because storks used to sneak into maternity wards and steal babies; we put these pictures on maternity stuff in order to commemorate all the babies that were eaten by birds, in the days before stork-proofing.
My dad and I went to BuyBuy Baby tonight to get some baby stuff for the shower. BuyBuy Baby is not a good name for a store. It sounds like it’s either a place you would go to buy a baby, a store where babies can shop, or a place to go to say good-bye to a baby. Like some kind of baby airport or something.
I just got out of helping my mom with the baby shower! It had barely started, and guests were still arriving, and my mom sent me out to offer everyone sandwiches. And when I was serving them, I said, “Congratulations, Julie! I bet you can’t wait for the baby to get here!” And the woman I was serving said, “I’m not Julie.” And I said, “Sorry. I just assumed, ’cause you’re pregnant.” And she said, “No, I’m not.”
And then my mom came over and said, “Thanks, Tad. I’ll handle everything from here.” And she sent me to my room for the rest of the party.
So, for future reference: saying one of her friends looks pregnant = surefire way to get out of helping out at my mom’s parties. I’m going to have to remember that.
I think if I had to choose one thing I hate the most about working at my summer job, it’d be a tie between getting lectured on teamwork by Mr. Nelson and having to listen to the same ten stupid songs that play on a loop in the store all day long. By the two hundredth time you hear it, Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up” sounds less like a promise, and more like a threat.
I went over to Chuck’s house today and we spent a while playing Minecraft. It’s an online game where you’re a warrior who’s dropped into the wilderness, and you can gather bricks and stones and build a house for yourself. Chuck and I spent the last few days building a pretty awesome castle with a moat, and torches, and a drawbridge. I showed it to my mom tonight, and she said, “Oh! Neat! It’s like a dollhouse!” And I said, “No, it’s not like a dollhouse. I’m a warrior.” And she said, “It sort of seems like a dollhouse.” And I said, “It’s not a dollhouse! I have a sword!” And she said, “Fine. It’s not a dollhouse. It’s just a house that you built and furnished, that an imaginary person lives in, that you like to play with.” Exactly. I don’t know why that was so hard for her to understand.
My dad is watching a golf tournament on TV. I’m not sure why. Golf is the only sport that’s so boring, I’m surprised people don’t actually fall asleep while playing it.
I think my work at the store is getting to me. Last night, I dreamed that I was standing at the end of a giant conveyer belt, and groceries kept coming toward me on it, faster and faster, and I had to keep bagging them. And then it wasn’t just groceries—it was scary stuff, like sharks and lions and chain saws. And the weirdest part was, in the dream, all I could think was, Do I put the sharks on the bottom of the bag? Or the top?
Rough day at the Smart Mart. Mr. Nelson fired one of the baggers, Eddie, for being five minutes late. Eddie was kind of upset about it—he went into Mr. Nelson’s office and changed the music that plays over the store’s loudspeakers, then locked the door. So for an hour, the music that played in the store was loud death metal. It was kind of a nice break from Rick Astley, actually.
Today was an even worse day at the store. Mr. Nelson fired two clerks and a guy who worked at the deli case for being late. He told us all that “their tardiness wasn’t fair to the rest of you.” And then he told us that, until they hired more baggers, we’d all have to work longer hours and extra shifts. Which didn’t seem especially fair to any of us, but nobody said anything, because Mr. Nelson seemed like he might fire one of us next.
So today I went to Mr. Nelson and reminded him that I couldn’t work next week, because I’m going to Florida for Grandma Judy’s wedding. And he said, “I’m sorry, but I need you to come in.” And I told him that I actually got permission to take those days off way back when I was hired, and he said, “Look, Tad, we’re running short on staff right now. It’s crunch time, so I need you to step up to the plate, hit the ground running, and take one for the team.” And I said, “You know how you always say there’s no I in team?” And he said, “Yeah.” And I said, “Well, there are two in ‘I quit.’” And then I left.
It’s weird that the whole plot of Cinderella kind of hinges on the idea that no two people can have the same shoe size.
Well, in two days, we’re flying down to Florida for Grandma Judy’s wedding. My mom took me to the Smart Mart tonight to get some travel-size toothpaste, and we wound up going through Bev’s checkout line. I looked down the row and saw that Mr. Nelson was bagging groceries at another register. He seemed really worn-out and tired. Bev leaned over and said, “After you quit, two more baggers left, too. He’s had to bag groceries himself ever since.”
I felt a little bad for him. But not very.