The $16,000 jar of honey
Ξ July 30th, 2008 | → | ∇ Disco Bay, Shopping |
Today I went grocery shopping for the first time. You know, for staples. Olive oil, peanut butter, jam. Things you buy when you know you’re going to stay in one place for a while. It felt really good. And anyone who knows me knows I love grocery shopping. The Discovery Bay ParknShop is different from the southside Kroger in many ways, but it’s grocery shopping nonetheless. And I liked it.
I bought steak, eggs and honey from New Zealand. My milk came through Singapore. Dried apricots from Turkey. Cheese from Bangkok. Orange juice from nearby China. Nice and fresh. The trolleys actually roll smoothly, even side-to-side. It just about rolled by itself it was so smooth. If they installed a slanted floor you could just let it roll down the decline, tossing things in along the way.
…
I stepped up to the cashier station and asked how I can get one of their cash back cards. Teresa, the cashier, says I have to fill out a form then get a card. So I take the form and push my cart off to the side so the gentleman behind me can check out. Teresa won’t have it. She comes out from behind the register to where I am over by the shampoo and wheels my cart back into her line. She insists that I fill it out there in line using my 12-pack of Coke Light. I don’t know why it’s called Coke Light and not Diet Coke. Sometimes you see Diet Coke. Sometimes Coca-Cola Light. They have the variety with a hint of lemon. To me it seems like more than a hint, but I prefer the lime anyway.
Back to the check-out. As I’m completing the form, Teresa takes it from me and runs off to get my cards. She goes through the formality of showing me the cards. “They all have the same number. This one,” she points, “goes on your keychain.” It has a little hole. This all makes sense. She scans the card and hands the packet with one credit-card size card and three keychain-size copies. I don’t know what I’ll do with all those cards. I guess I’ll do the same thing I did with the Kroger cards and Dick’s cards and CVS and Walgreens cards. Whoever thought of those keychain-sized cards should’ve thought to get rid of the credit-card-size ones. All I need is another card in my wallet.
I’m pondering all of this while Teresa is ringing up my cereal and peanut butter and pretzels. I put the cabinet items up there first, and the big items. The Coke Light and three big bottles of mineral water. Then she gets to the honey. It doesn’t have a bar code so she looks at it for a second then tries punching some numbers into the system. She gasps. The machine reads, “Deli item / $16,000.”
“Sssshhhh…” Teresa whispers, with her finger to her lips, her shoulders hunched a little. She looks around to see if anyone’s watching then scurries off, to return seconds later with a key that allows her to void all the transactions. “Sssshhh.”
I sort of laughed and tried to tell her it’s ok. No worries. She voided the whole transaction. So she has to pull out the three big bottles of mineral water, the Coke Light and all the rest so she can scan them again. But first she needs my cash back card. I pull it out of my wallet and fork it over. I’m glad she remembered it.
I laugh a little more and watch the register screen. I always forget to bring my reusable bags for things like this. But I guess because I ran to the grocery it wouldn’t have been easy to bring the bags. Next time. I’m planning to go back Friday to pick up some wine and beer. I’m still looking for clothespins too. Maybe at WingOn upstairs. Oh, and a drying rack. I couldn’t figure out how to get it from Ikea. The tag said to see customer service, but they didn’t know what I was talking about. Drying rack? Not here, they said. I bet they’ll have lighter ones in WingOn, anyway. Who wants a heavy drying rack? You’ll just have to move it. It’s better to have a lighter one, for moving purposes, as long as it dries. I guess they should all dry pretty much the same.
Steak and eggs and bread and milk. A $16,000 jar of honey. I’ll remember this.
“This is my last day here.” Teresa looks around, points to the store, the place. “This is not a good place.”
“Oh. Where are you going to go?” I ask her.
“Home,” she says, ringing up the last of the cold items. She’s had enough of ParknShop. I bet it’s her first week, and her last week. She seems really smart, maybe she’s on summer break from school and wanted to make some spending money. But is it really worth it to be here at the grocery wearing a glove on one hand and double-bagging dried apricots and setting the bulky items aside for delivery? I love how witty she is. She knows her boss will see the voided transaction. I’ve worked in retail and food service. You’re supposed to minimize those, for whatever reason. I thought it was a dumb rule too.
I really didn’t want this to be the last meeting between Teresa and me, so I asked her if she wants to hang out sometime. Her English comprehension is really good, but she doesn’t believe her ears. It’s not that I’m some hot shot. It’s just that most customers probably don’t tell their cashier they hope to hang out some time. “You know, get dinner or ice cream or hang out,” I say. “I’ll give you my phone number. Yeah,” I say, as she grins and laughs a little bit, just like I laughed a little bit when she told me how the ParknShop really isn’t a good place.
“Do you have Skype?” I do. She wipes up the perspiration from the gelato container (Tiramisu gelato!), scans and bags the last couple items, and tears off a sheet of paper for me to write my Skype name. It’s probably because we can chat on there without talking out loud. Maybe to see if I’m a real weirdo or what. We wait for the debit card to clear while i write out my Skype info. She looks at the paper, folds it and puts it in her right pants pocket. I hope she finds it later and looks me up.
We smile and say bye. We really smile at each other.
on July 30th, 2008 at 1:54 pm
That’s a great story. If you do hear from her tell her I said ‘hi’ from the States.
Is the gelato good?
on July 30th, 2008 at 8:12 pm
Will do, bro. And yes, the gelato is tasty. I moved to a different spot in the freezer to see if it stays a little softer. The freezer is tiny though, and I doubt my moving the tub six inches out to be closer to the door makes a lick of difference. It’ll be a fun experiment.
How’s the new place shaping up?
on July 30th, 2008 at 10:05 pm
Are Hong Kong dollars equal to U.S. dollars? If so, then those are some very expensive bees. I guess they pamper them a bit in HK?
on July 31st, 2008 at 6:58 am
I love this story! I want to be friends with Teresa, too. About ten years ago in Canada, I bought a can of Diet Coke/Coca-Cola Lite/Coke Diete.
It was like the UN of beverages.
on August 2nd, 2008 at 10:55 am
Daniseyweesy,
Hong Kong dollars are like Monopoly money. Colorful and … well, maybe that’s the only common denominator. One US dolla (holla!) is the equivalent of 7.8 HK dollar.