52° and Overcast
We only needed a few items and I didn’t feel like driving to Lewiston so I visited ghetto Tops at 7:30 Saturday night. All we needed was milk, iced tea and sugar.
As I entered, a scruffy looking Black man dozed in a battery operated cart in the lobby.
There was no security guard in sight.
Inside, the way left to produce was sealed off by a metal gate, likely a loss prevention tactic since anyone entering or leaving has to go past the registers.
I’m a creature of habit so I walked past the deli to visit produce. Because somehow it seems apropos to orient myself to the way I usually enter. Produce seemed empty. A couple heads of romaine rested on the floor.
I grabbed iced tea and sugar and headed for milk. A gallon jug was on the floor. I spotted it too late to pick it up. A woman beat me too it.
“I didn’t see it. I would have picked it up,” I said.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “I got you.”
“I didn’t realize you worked here,” I said.
“Have a nice night,” she said.
I’ve come to know a couple of the workers at the store. Chuck the butcher with his Guy Fieri hair and Mrs. Ann the cashier.
Chuck prepared the part of a pork butt needed to make capicola for me. On Valentines Day it will have been hanging in our attic for 3 months. He told me when it would be ready and then charged the same price as for pork butt. You can't get that service at Wegmans.
Mrs. Ann rests on a stool between customers and staffs the only register open other than self-serve. She packs groceries carefully, not like the careless teen likely to slap apples on top of your bread. She even puts cold with cold.
In front of me in line was a man with two kids and a cart full of junkfood, chips, pop and such. He was attempting to pay and it was being rejected.
“Try it again,” she said with an air of patience greater than I possessed. He did. It failed. She asked him to suspend the transaction and called a supervisor over to help as he fiddled with his phone trying to resolve the issue.
I thought about paying his $33 bill but somehow judged him for the junk in his cart. If he was buying real food an a couple dollars short I would have helped out.
A mother unloaded healthier food behind me on the conveyer.
Mrs. Ann cashed me out.
“You handled that guy with grace and patience,” I said. “What was it, a problem with his card?”
“His card is different from what you have,” she said. I assume that meant some sort of benefit card.
“Do you have bags?” Mrs. Ann asked the woman behind me.
“Do I have to pay for them?” she asked.
I handed her the two extras I brought into the store. “Thank you” she said as I turned to leave.
In the lobby, the sleeping man had awakened. As I walked past him, he greeted me. With another few minutes of lucidity he would have asked if I could spare a few dollars.
Another homeless-looking guy, bundled as if he expected to sleep outdoors, had joined him in the lobby to warm up. He stared out the windows with bloodshot eyes. They are the sort of characters the guard usually shags away.
I made my way back to the car and noticed a bank of portable police cameras blinking blue 15-feet off the ground, watching the lot.
The store was clean, the staff polite. If ghetto Tops has a problem it is demographic. It’s in the middle of a poor neighborhood. No matter how hard the grocery chain tries, it can’t fix poor.
