My first day as the Morse Road seafood manager is November 1, 1999. I’m taking over for Mike Carney, who has transferred to run the shop at the just opened New Albany store. It’s only an 8 foot case, which will be a breeze compared to Bethel Road (12 foot case) – but not this first morning. Donza, the head meat cutter, tells me I have this Richard kid working for me, and he’ll be in at 9 to set the case. Except Richard mysteriously picks this day to never show up again. By 9:30, with a dept head meeting looming ahead at 10, I realize Richard isn’t coming in and frantically start setting the case. I want to get off on a strong foot but can only half ass things, that’s what kind of rush I’m in. And let’s not forget the meeting, which I’m nervous enough about to begin with, a feeling that is only compounded when I come breezing in there a half hour late.
Still, this Morse Road experience is unique in my work history for at least one notable reason. It’s the only place I can think of where I hit it off better with the management, on average, than I do the other employees. There are a few exceptions, of course, but this mostly holds true. Christine is the only other seafood employee, and she’s amazing, plus a really cool person. We later hire another part-timer, Latasha, who turns out to be pretty awesome as well. The meat department people are mostly nice folks and all. One guy in produce (Larry) and one cashier (Samantha) used to work at the Bethel Road store and had transferred here prior to my arrival, so I already know them. Otherwise, though, it’s mostly just Donza and then the two guys running the store: Steve Cokonougher and Sam “Colonel” Collins. I’m chummiest with that trio and a handful of the others already mentioned, but don’t really hit it off much with anyone else.
Mike Carney does breeze through during one of my first few days, to show me a couple of things concerning this department. He hands me this binder used for ordering and is smacking me on the chest with it. “This is your Bible,” he tells me, adds, “learn it. Know it. Love it. Use it.”
“That was Mike’s problem,” Donza instantly jokes, standing right there, “he knew it and loved it, but he didn’t use it.”
The first two times I place an order, it somehow manages to double the entire truck for meat and seafood both. Nobody can figure out how this happened, and I have no clue, either. I had been doing some ordering at Bethel Road before coming here, so I’m not a total rube. But still…the third time I go to place an order, assistant store manager Debbie (she was nice, too, but transferred away soon after I arrived) sits with me and watches the entire process. Neither of us pick out anything that I’m doing wrong, but at any rate, it does not double the truck this time – and will never happen again, either, thankfully.
Otherwise, it’s mostly a highly depersonalizing experience here. I think a lot of this has to do with the fact that they continue to ask for my ID every week when picking up my paycheck, as though never seeing me before. Most of the other department managers even seem disinterested in my presence, though I see them bare minimum every Monday morning during our 10am meetings. Whatever the case, it’s definitely an inner-city store, distantly removed from the suburban one I came from, yet is also far busier. At a time where Bethel was doing $600,000 every week, this store was doing $900K. Which is an even larger discrepancy than it looks, considering that they were selling more high dollar items over there at Bethel, the average basket was bigger.
During my tenure here, there was only one other store in the city that had ever cracked a million a week – this brand-new location up at the Maxtown Road and Route 3 intersection – but we were routinely coming in second, though could never seem to hit that magical seven figure mark. Well, it was interchangably us and Chambers Road (grouped in our zone, despite a location that would seem to slot it elsewhere) coming in second and third every single week. Chambers occupied this sweet spot of being totally landlocked without any competition nearby – whereas if you’re built at the edge of town, or in some crumbling district where buildings are being knocked down, a rival store might potentially pop in. So Steve was continually marveling at this in the meetings, regarding our truest competitors. Our claim to fame, though, is I once overheard a Western Union rep telling Corissa (she worked at the front desk) that this Morse Road store did the most wire business in the state of Ohio.
So the customer count is through the roof here, though the average shopper is typically poorer, and there’s definitely a very brusque, impersonal atmosphere in the air. Yet, while many are constantly complaining about how cocky Steve is, and hardcore, I don’t have a problem with him at all. To me he does a great job, we have a solid rapport, and he’s also pretty hilarious to boot. Maybe kind of like if you happen to know a cop who is a major comedian off the job – and he’s able to project that same antagonistic vibe while on it, but keeping a straight face. For example this one Monday morning where Steve arrives at the manager’s meeting, cracking up about an encounter he had along the way. He had stopped some young kid and demanded to see his receipt, for whatever item he was eating. As the terrified kid then burst into tears, though digging through his jean pockets and eventually producing it.
“Of course, I was just messing with him, I didn’t really believe that he stole it,” Steve chuckles, “but he didn’t know that.”
Maybe a little bit of a sadistic streak, then, but whatever. It’s possible that this is precisely the attitude needed to succeed in an environment such as this. For example, our store manager at Bethel Road had this policy that she wouldn’t press charges for shoplifting episodes totaling less than $250, because it wasn’t worth the hassle. The problem with this is that word had clearly gotten out on the streets, and they’d routinely bust thieves coming in just shy of that mark. Contrast that against this Morse Road location, where, shortly after my arrival, Steve proudly boasts about pressing charges against a shoplifter who’d only stolen a candy bar. His point was that he hoped they’d spread the news about that, and steer clear of this store entirely.
So yeah, a totally different world. Another early example of this occurs when they hire some other goofball to replace Richard. He’s this young kid named Josh, with wild blonde hair blowing every which way in outrageous, bed-head fashion, who shows up for work wearing some legitimate old school looking cowboy boots. Therefore, everyone immediately begins calling him Boots and/or Cowboy. Therefore, this is pretty much all I can remember about him.
Except for this one day right after he starts, and this highly attractive female of about my age comes up to the counter. For some reason we are both helping her, as she flirts in extremely over the top fashion with Boots and me both. Gets a bunch of shrimp from us, I can’t remember what else, but then after she walks away, he and I are like, “holy smokes!” and agreeing that she was not only really hot, but that she seemed to be majorly digging us. Until this random grizzled veteran lady, who was working over in the bread aisle, came flying up to the counter and basically read us the riot act. Apparently that chick just been busted for attempting to walk out of the store with the shrimp.
“I knew right away what she was up to!” this woman barked at us, “anytime you see anything like that, you should be suspicious!”
Other random episodes:
- This old couple came in all smarmy acting, asking for salmon. Only they insisted it has always been kept in a “bucket” & that they’ve customarily picked out which one they wanted out of the bucket. Naturally, I couldn’t make heads or tails of such nonsense. “Armenia always lets us do it!” the woman clamored, “don’t you know who Armenia is!?” I shook my head. “Armenia runs this department!” “Oh really…,” I smirked. “Yes. You’ve never heard of her?” I shook my head again. “He’s never heard of Armenia,” she scoffed to her husband, & they walked away. The next day I asked Christine who Armenia was. Turned out she had indeed once been the head seafood here – but had left the store four years ago.
- Donza has this kooky but effective scheme worked out for making shrimp rings during the holidays, which he’s been doing for years. He tells me not to breathe a word of this to anyone, or we’ll have the union reps down our throats, but…the truth is, he pays the girls softball team from nearby DeSales High School to assemble these for us, 75 cents per ring. It only takes them one day, and they manage to crank out 900.
Donza and I will occupy ourselves running supplies and completed rings back and forth from the store to the school. The kitchen here is below ground, I recall, with windows looking out into a side parking lot. It took numerous trips up the road & back in Donza’s Bronco-type-thing & my beat up Geo (you can imagine the terror of cruising past the cop station again & again, as I did that Tues, w/ no license, no insurance & a loud ass muffler that didn’t work anyway tied onto my car), but we got the job accomplished. Donza & I more or less did all the running as these young ladies & a few female teachers made the rings (one of which was a mom of one of the girls, & got mad because I smashed into her one side mirror when parking my car. Even though I denied it, she knew it was me.)
3. The day I forget to close out an order and Donza comes up to me, with this huge metal pole in one hand, smacking it into his other, open palm. He asks if I’ve seen the movie Walking Tall and threatens to reenact a certain scene if this happens again.
4. A manager’s meeting where Steve is reminiscing about the year 1957, figures out that he was in the second grade then. A chuckle somewhat involuntarily escapes me. “Jason just snickered!” Joyce points out. “Nuh uh! I was just…choking!” I reply, and the entire room busts out laughing.
5. There is this highly amusing black dude named Aaron who works on the front end, usually a cash register. He basically lives for getting on the intercom, and cannot resist any opportunity for doing so. His favorite is to get on the horn and plea for some urgent bagging assistance: “bagging assistance to the front end, please…bagging assistance to the front end, please…” One morning I happen to be in this little room up front where the pricing coordinators, Diane and Carol, mostly work. They have a computer in there for making signs whenever I have a need to do so myself. Aaron gets on the intercom yet again except this time he says, “bagging assistance to the front end, please…Diane and Carol to the front end, for bagging assistance, please…” One of these ladies (I forget which) turns to the other and says, “they really need to do something about him.”
6. Steve marveling in something almost approaching admiration one day, after he busts this front end girl for stealing. She had a long running and apparently quite lucrative scheme going, which he admittedly had never heard of before (and neither had any of us): she was going out into the parking lot, finding receipts customers had left on the ground; then coming back inside and assembling a shopping cart to match, stowing it in a cooler until the end of her shift. This cart has the receipt taped to it, showing these goods were purchased hours earlier, and she just wheels it right on out to her car.
7. In February of 2000, I win this contest for pushing imitation crabmeat. With quite a bit of help from Christine, it’s true. The deal I make with her ahead of time is that she can have the prize money, if we manage to win, while I will take the night’s stay at the Adam’s Mark hotel and dinner at Mitchell’s Steakhouse. She was perfectly happy with this arrangement.
But whereas nearly every single contest they ever ran, before or after, that I can recall – in fact I can’t remember a contest where this wasn’t true – revolved around reaching a certain sales figure, beating out the other stores, for some reason this lone competition was different. With this particular instance, the contest was to see who could order the most imitation crabmeat within the stated time frame. I’m sure you can see where this is headed.
Though my shoppers trended toward cheaper options like catfish and perch, the imitation crabmeat also did okay, it wasn’t like I ever had to throw much out. And once I realized you could freeze this stuff, and that we had plenty of room in my small frozen backstock cave, well, it was off to the races.
For the contest to be worded as such, I think it’s safe to say kickbacks were happening on some level up above, so my superiors were probably not losing any sleep regardless. It’s strange how these things work out, too. As it so happened, a relative of Christine’s, a nephew I believe, died unexpectedly right after it was announced we had beaten all the other stores in the zone. She would desperately need the cash to afford this trip, and I only received it the night before she was set to leave. I drove over on my day off to hand it to her. She did a little jig back there in our seafood department, and then hugged me.
II.
My numbers are always good, which is maybe one reason I’m on great terms with management. A lot of people say that a busier store is paradoxically much easier to run than a slow store is, and that might be true, I’m not sure. Bethel Road is actually considered one of the stronger locations, actually, so this takes it to a whole other level. I do think that being able to narrow my focus down here is a major plus, in that I determine very early on that only a handful of things will sell out of that fresh case: catfish, perch, salmon, a few varieties of shrimp. I can have mountains of these and make it look pretty good, maybe flesh things out with a few other offerings in the gaps that remain, and not worry about much else on that front. One of my first mornings, I attempt putting out fresh tuna. Debbie’s walking the store and observes, “tuna, huh? Hmm!”
“Is that a bad idea?” I ask. You would have had rioting in the streets without tuna, at Bethel and pretty much anywhere else I’ve worked, but maybe not here.
“Oh, I don’t know, but you can try it!” she grins, indicating that she already knows the answer to this, based on past experience. And she’s right. This is a total waste of time here.
Yet if you consider that we’re doing one percent of store sales, week in and week out, with just a handful of not especially expensive items in the fresh case…then yeah, this seafood department is jumping. With just myself and two part-timers for a staff. The frozen case actually performs just as well or slightly better here. One day I’m out working my frozen section, which is right beside the fresh case, when one of the crusty old meat cutters I don’t particularly get along with, Ken, comes strolling past.
“Boy, I sure wish I could spend half my day out here slinging boxes around!” he dismissively scoffs.
“This frozen section is half of my business,” I tell him.
“Pssh,” he says and keeps on moving.
We do have a pretty sizeable Asian demographic, and they seem to prefer shopping from the frozen section. I think some of this is probably language related, in that maybe they don’t feel as comfortable approaching the counter. It does lead to one of my better insights, though, which is recalling that they also like to purchase whole fish, heads and all. So I begin stocking a nice variety of those out there…and this in turn eventually leads to another winning idea, which is double dipping on the heads, so to speak. A lot of shoppers want the whole fish, but then bring it to the counter and ask me to chop off the head. They are okay with paying full price for what the package says, they just want the head removed. At some point I realize there’s no reason to throw the heads away – when I can just wrap them, by themselves or in a group, and put those back out for sale. These also move like hotcakes, once again mostly appealing to the Asians.
Christine is my second in command for the entirety of my short tenure at this store. Following the short lived Boots character, we hire this other young kid named James as a part timer for the department. He’s a nice guy and all but doesn’t work out even remotely well. Then to replace him, we hire another high schooler, this black girl named Latasha, who totally rocks. She has great people skills and works very hard. In fact, one day her teacher swings through to ask how she’s doing – Christine and I both tell him to give her an A.
In April of 2000, Bethel Road will call to ask if I want to come back, this time to run their recently vacated seafood shop. Things were getting a little monotonous here already – it felt like I could run this store on autopilot and still make a decent margin, from now until the end of time – and yet I was also never 100% comfortable in this environment. Plus, despite a more upper class clientele, the Bethel Road bait shop had been struggling to turn a profit (hence the firing of their manager, my former boss, Ed Bianco). Therefore this sounded like an awesome challenge, and I told them I would take it.
