Get A Real Job (Part 6 of 7)

I got to the point where I would buy things to take home and eat late at night when I got home. One was a 32 ounce glass bottle of Sprite. I’d run it through the register and then put it back in the milk cooler to get it very cold. When I went home that night, it would be perfect. Other nights I’d buy three different kinds of yogurt, Western Family, Dannon, and Yoplait. At home I’d eat the lowest price one first and work my way up to the highest priced one. Most nights that I worked it was my duty to mop the floor of the whole store. I started about 9:00 at night in anticipation of closing at ten. First I swept the whole store with a dust mop. Then I’d go up and down the aisles with the wet mop and mop bucket. About half way through I’d change the water. The floor silently said, “thank you.” I think at times I was really just spreading dirt from one place to another. All this was okay, unless I wasn’t feeling well. Calling in sick had never occurred to me. That wasn’t even an option. If I was scheduled to work, I worked. It was as simple as that. But being sick was still not fun. One night I got home very late from work. I checked in with my parents who were almost asleep. I explained to Dad that I was achy all over and had a soar throat. I was also fasting and I had been working all day. I still didn’t want to break my fast. Dad admonished me to brush my teeth and “accidentally” swallow some water.
Country Farm Save More was one of the last large markets, as opposed to the giant mega-markets of today. It was probably built in the 1950s. It had more warmth to it than the super supermarkets that were coming into fashion in the late 1970s. If there was an important ball game on the radio, Bob or Jack would put it on over the loudspeakers for customers and employees to hear it. BYU football games or the World Series were broadcast in this manner. We punched time cards. There was a time clock in one of the back rooms and when a person arrived for work he punched in. The clock would print the hour in military time, and the minutes in a format which was easy to calculate. Instead of sixty minutes to an hour, it was divided up into one hundredths of an hour. My pay checks were hand calculated and hand written.