Before the management decided to have a midnight to 9 am nightcrew, we worked every Friday night til midnight, stocking the shelves to get ready for Saturday. The store closed at 9 pm but by the time all the customers had their orders checked out and bagged it was generally between 9:15 and 9:30. It was just about midnight on this particular Friday and we had packed out all the canned vegetables, fruits, juices, dog and cat food, boxes of rice, pasta, glass bottles of juices, syrup, etc. The cardboard boxes for these items had been broken down and tied up in big boxes (like boxes that originally contained toilet paper or paper towels) and hand trucked to the back door. In a few minutes, some of us would be heading to a local bar for a few beers and games of pool.
Pete, who later became the night boss, unlocked the back door, removing the heavy black metal bar and setting it aside. As he started to prop the door open, he looked around the back of the store and saw a car parked just past the dumpster. The motor was running and the windows were all steamed up. He quickly gave us the palm up stop sign and the index figure to the lip for us to hold up and be quiet. Then he got a devilish smile on his face. He told us he was going to tie two of the big boxes full of cardboard to the rear bumper of the parked car. (I don’t know what type of car it was but it wasn't new. I couldn’t tell a Ford from a Chevy back then and I can’t tell a Honda from a Toyota now.) Pete and one of the other guys each moved toward the car in a crouch quietly carrying a box to the bumper. Once they got them tied, one of us was to turn on the parking lot lights while we all would stand near the car clapping and cheering. The lights went on and we started razzing the couple. We could hear them scrambling around (presumably to get dressed) and then they raced out of the lot and onto Francis Lewis Blvd dragging all that cardboard. Guess they decided to find another place to park after that.
Another busy Friday evening the manager, realizing that he had forgotten to turn on the parking lot lights, told one of the store clerks go into the back room to turn them on. The dim clerk hit the wrong switch and turned out the lights inside the store instead. It was chaotic with a few screams, people stumbling around, etc. I don't think the lights were out for more than a minute but I wonder if anyone took advantage to leave the store without paying.
The A&P had a slogan in the 60’s, “Who Cares, We Care”. It was displayed like a banner in the front of the stores above the window, facing the cash registers. One of the guys thought it would be fun to take down the “We Care” part. It took a few days before anyone noticed the “Who Cares” sign. Guess they didn’t care?
One Saturday morning, a middle age woman asked one of the butchers if the chicken she was about to purchase was male or female. He picked up the chicken she pointed out, spread its legs and said with a straight face “Female” and quickly walked away.
One of the signatures of an A&P store was a coffee grinder so that the customer could take home freshly ground coffee. The brands of coffee beans sold included Eight O’Clock, Bokar and Red Circle. One customer found out (I assume) that the machine was capable of grinding other ingredients. He was giving one of the clerks a hard time. In addition to emptying the bag of beans into the top of the machine, the clerk slipped in a clove of garlic. I never heard any more about it but it’s certainly possible that the customer returned to complain when I was off.
Ray, one of the older part-timers (he must have been 23 or 24), had a trick he liked to pull on Friday evenings when the store was packed. He’d load up his arms with empty cardboard boxes and walk up to the checkout area and then fall flat on his back with a loud crash and the boxes flying everywhere. After the shrieks died down and the “are you alrights”, Ray would pull out a match stick and say “I must have tripped on this”.
Whenever he saw a good looking babe in the store, Ray would say “check the ice”. I don’t know where he got that expression. Once when we were crouched down packing out some cans on the bottom shelf, he nudged me and pointing to the end of the aisle told me to “check the ice”. I turned to look at a hot looking young babe and a middle age woman standing in back of us said “when you finish checking the ice, would you pass me two cans of that solid white tuna”. My face must have been red when I handed her the tuna. Sometimes, when packing out the canned goods Ray would be drinking from a can of coke or pepsi. He’d offer you a drink and you’d find that it was heavily laced with rum or bourbon.
We also had a fireman moonlighting on the night crew at the A&P, an Irishman with a fondness for the bottle. One night he came in loaded and started chucking cartons of ice cream all over the store. Some landed on the top of the shelves where they were found the next day melted into a sticky mess. Another time he had a bottle of Irish Mist liquor. He was in the meat room chatting with the night butcher with his right hand wrapped around the neck of the bottle. To emphasize a point he brought his hand down a little too hard and the bottle’s bottom shattered on the butcher block. The butcher had to spray air freshener to combat the smell of the booze.
One night we had bicycle races. Someone left an old bicycle in the back room and one of the guys came up with the idea of races. The winner was the one who could ride around the perimeter of the store in the fastest time. The timing device was an ordinary watch with a second hand since no one had a stop watch. There was no prize for the winner and I don't remember who won but it wasn't me. Luckily, no one rode into a display or did any other real damage.
We had a customer that one of the older full timers took to calling Al Kelly after a famous double-talker, whose claim to fame may have been an appearance on the Ernie Kovacs TV show. Our "Al Kelly" (never did know his real name) was a thin little guy (about my height) used to come in late Saturday mornings and spend about 2 hours buying at most a dozen items and chatting up everybody. He used to weigh the egg cartons on the produce scale and would buy the carton that weighed the most.
Every once in a while you'd get a customer embarrassed to ask for something. Usually, it was a guy who had to get kotex pads or pink toilet paper for his wife.
I had some other interesting co-workers. Bernadette was a tall girl who didn't take any crap from anyone. I think the customers liked her because she was the fastest checker in the store. If you were bagging for her and made a wise crack, a can would come whizzing down and mash your hand before you had a chance to get it out of the way. She also picked up a young wise guy and threw him into a stack of toilet paper cartons that were stacked outside the ladies restroom in the basement. Another young part-timer whose name I can't remember we called "sleeping sickness", a rather lethargic individual who had one speed - slow. Big John, a burly guy in his late forties, was a master of the non-sequitur. We'd be sitting around on our coffee break talking baseball and all of a sudden without any preamble John would say something like "you can drive to Washington, D.C. in about 2 1/2 hours."
Another young guy, Anthony, had a record player rigged up in his car. I thought that was pretty cool since I would not have had a clue how to do it myself. It worked fine until you hit a bump. I saw him play a 45 on it. This was just before 8 track tape players were offered in cars.
We had a softball team for store # 706. I still have the shirt. It was gold with black trim, letters and numerals and read “A&P” with “706” under it on the front and my number, “1”, on the back. One of the butchers who played for us claimed to have played triple A baseball. Don't know if it was true but he was by far our best player.
I was lucky to have that job. It may not have been the most prestigious part-time job but the money was decent and I worked with a real good bunch of people.
