"Feet" or "Why the Cartboys are Disgruntled"
Jan 07 '04
The Bottom Line A cartboy breaks his back and gets nothing but hassled.
I originally wrote this story as an assignment for a short stories class I was taking at the time. It's a slightly fictionalized account of something that actually happened to me. The weird layout is because I cut and pasted it directly from the paper, which was double spaced. I got an A-. So I hope everyone enjoys it as much as the teacher did.
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I’m a slave, a slave and nothing more.
Alright, so I’m really not. I’m just a supermarket cartboy (cart “associate” as they
refer to it, to make me feel more important), but after this episode, I’m convinced of my
employers’ inability to tell any difference.
You’d figure they would at least pretend to care. After all, how many people
have the aptitude (or just plain desperation to not get fired) to push carts around a
parking lot in sub-zero temperatures for hours at a time? The only thing I can say is, at
least I’m not a cashier. But this is bad enough. For five hours a day, it’s just me, back
and forth, back and forth, back and forth while those jackass customers just stand
around in the nice warm lobby with their thumbs up their behinds, complaining about
how there are no shopping carts to take. It really makes me wonder if the people in
this country today could possibly get any lazier. There are carts right outside, and they
could be pushing those carts around right now if they had only trailed off the beaten
path to the front door and gotten one. But the front door is apparently so hard to find
that a single step off the beaten path would result in immediate misdirection.
On this particular day, there had been a rather nasty ice storm which left the
streets - and the parking lot - completely flooded. My momentary lack of transportation
left me to slosh my way through Abbott River to work on foot, learning in the process
that my waterproof boots don’t quite live up to their billing. At least my supervisor for
the day showed me where the boot-waterproofing kits are in the store. Lot of good it
does right now, seeing as how my boots were completely soaked through by the time I
got here. But do I get some kind of work break, like getting to bag for the day? Or even
a “Don’t go out until you really need to, we don’t want your toes to get frostbite and fall
off.”? Nope. I get the same old routine, just shoved out into the freezing cold to drag
carts slowly through the newly-formed ocean.
So off I go on my soon-to-be-stiff feet, to a corral which had obviously been
ignored by the previous shift workers. Funny how I’m the only one who does any
actual work around here, and I’M the perpetual target of my managers’ wrath. So I
grab the carts and begin pushing them back, helping a customer unload her baggage
along the way. I’ve now wasted two minutes of my shift.
This goes on for the next hour or so, and eventually I run into one of my normal
customers. It’s that picky lady who always wants her bags arranged a certain way, and
I’m almost certain she isn’t that happy to see me. Her favorite bag arrangement isn’t
easily compatible with my short right arm, so it’s tough for me to ever get it right. But
of course that never stops her from complaining. After unloading her bags, I reap my
massive reward: A dollar. Gee, thanks. Such kindness will nullify my sopped feet,
which are now in danger of getting frostbitten.
After a couple more hours, I’m finally going in for my break. My break is
supposed to be 15 minutes long, but all the cartboys like to stick around for an even
half hour. Call it our way of balancing out the universe. Hey, I do this for minimum
wage, and right now my poor feet are wet beyond any hope of drying up for the
impending second round. Today there’s slush on the cart handles, so my gloves aren’t
doing all that much to protect my hands either. Once inside the nice warm store, I
slog my feet straight to the cappucino machine. My slave-driving employers of course
make me pay full price for the crap. After paying for my warm drink, I hit up the
magazine rack so I have something to read in the breakroom. I have to pay for that too.
As predicted, my feet never dry off. They don’t even come close. So I walk out
for the second round with my pre-soaked feet, and fortunately traffic is beginning to
slow down. That still doesn’t stop my feet from developing yet another blister to go
along with the frostbite. Returning with a load around the end of my shift, I attempt to
take a few quick seconds to sit down on one of the wheelchair carts, only to be seen
by one of my managers and told to get back to work. They seem to think I have it easy.
Just a few minutes later, my shift finally ends, and I can go home. When I get
home, I find my socks are frozen to my skin. I slowly roll my socks down my feet,
listening to the crinkling sound coming from the ice as my skin reveals a pale blue
color. Frostbite.
Great. Now I have to wait to shower.
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