Sacker

Any fool hound dog knows you don't go out in the heat unless you're crazy. . . or you work at a grocery store.

 I actually fried an egg on the sidewalk in front of my house one summer.  I heard someone say it was hot enough, so I did.  Dumb kid.

 My job at the store was called a "sacker".  Why we weren't called "bag boys" like everywhere else in the world, I'll never know.  Sackers were the lowest form of life in a grocery store, and being the newest sacker, I was lower than low. 

Sackers dream of being "stockers."  A stocker was a mature sacker who helps unload the supply truck, place the boxes of food on carts, roll them out into their designated isle, price them and put them on the shelf.  You can even drink a Dr. Pepper while you are working, and you hardly break a sweat . . . heaven!

Sacker

  Everybody has stories of gross things that have happened to them.  I’m blessed by having many.  This particular one happened that very same summer.  The summer with several weeks over one-hundred degrees. 

Our particular store was pretty lenient about people snacking from the isles.  Some places really hammer down on pilfering, but this store pretty much ignored an occasional Coke or Twinkie.  I usually checked the break room for opened cookies and such, but I had a real weakness for Welch's grape juice in a can.  Man, that sugary sweet juice hit the spot.  When I was a young kid, we could never keep any around our house because it would be consumed within seconds of opening. 

 I helped myself, with full intention of paying, to a can of grape juice.  I went so far as to hide it in the frozen food so it would be icy cold when my break time came.  As luck, and a busy Saturday morning would have it, just as I really got settled to enjoy my break and had only taken a few good swigs from my juice, the intercom blared.  "ALL SACKERS TO THE FRONT, ALL SACKERS TO THE FRONT".

Darn!  I placed my can on the corner of the table and went back into the fray.  Twenty minutes later, sweating profusely, I plodded toward the break room and my delicious, sweet, cool Welch's grape juice in a can.  While I was gone, the frozen food stocker, two checkers who had not gone on duty, and one checker on break had inhabited the room.  Other than all working at the same store, these people had one other thing in common.  They all smoked profusely.

 I've never smoked, but I've never minded other people smoking around me much.  It was the seventies, and a lot of small town folks enjoyed their smoking.  Big deal.  Feeling my way through the cloud, I said my hellos, found a seat and found my delicious Welch's grape juice in a can.  Boy was this going to be good! 

I tilted the can back and started gulping. 

The bell went off in my brain about the time the cigarette butt bounced off the back of my throat.  You got it.  My can was the designated ash tray for one of the smokers.  One of them said, "Ah, is that your drink?" about the time I sprayed the remainder of my mouthful all over the room and occupants.

"Is this your cigarette?"  I said as I pulled the but from my mouth, glaring angrily.

 I did not vomit.  I wanted to, but didn't.  I leaped into the bathroom and began washing my mouth out, as the smokers cursed and wiped juice and ashes off their clothes.  Well, that's what they get for messing with a low life sacker's grape juice.  Serves them right.  Nasty habit anyway.