Shenanigans...

Exactly how many ways can you get creative with a pair of khaki pants and three t-shirts? Let me count thy ways. Khaki pants and green shirt. Khaki pants and red shirt. Khaki pants and navy shirt. In the summer, this challenge becomes a lot easier with shorts. 
    Flashback to June 2007. I had just graduated high school and was looking forward to a summer of doing nothing and laying out and getting that Snooki glow. Or not. "Well, two other girls have left for new jobs and there is an opening up front working the registers. When can you start?" And there I stood. Hired on the spot for what I thought would be a summer job to pay for car insurance, gas money, and all the buzz-kill bills that come with being an adult but has instead turned into some of the best three years of my life. "Can you start tomorrow? Actually never mind, start Monday." Sweet. More time for me to watch ESPN All Day Coverage of The Scripps National Spelling Bee (Seriously. There are two sporting events I love with one being the spelling bee.)  That was Thursday, I was to report for duty promptly at 9 AM Monday morning. 
     You could say that I am a very punctual person. On a good traffic day it takes me seven minutes to get from home to work. Being I'm way too early for everything person I am, I left my house at 8:30 which got me to work at 8:37. And look who sat in her car with the air OFF (I didn't want to waste gas. Aren't we in the middle of a "go green" movement?) in the scorching June sun for almost half an hour because she didn't want to go in early? 9:00 had arrived and it was off to start my shift. I was given the ever so popular green polo and the instructions "why don't you go help with strawberries." Exactly how bad could this be? Putting strawberries into a container shouldn't be that hard. Wrong. Oh no. I had to sort through hundreds and I mean hundreds of those things and throw "bad" ones into a box, and put good ones, but the good ones had to go in a certain way to fit. 60 minutes and my hands covered in strawberry juice later, my task was complete. It was off to tackle bagging and somehow know the difference between a seedless and regular cucumber. Exactly how quickly could 3:00 come? Not fast enough. 
     Being paired with one of the girls who knew what they were doing, I was taught the in and outs of bagging. "Even though apples are hard, you have to set them in the bag gently, because they will bruise. And don't put pears on the bottom either. And you know bread goes on top right?" As long as I could get through the day and not squish the bread, I knew I had learned something. And that was only noon. 
      "You wanna ring people up?"Oh shoot. Not three hours into my first day and you're asking me to identify fruits and vegetables? I knew I had to learn one day, so why not start day one? I nervously took over and began the daunting task.  Asking the obligatory"Hi, how are you?" question, I got the "Oh I haven't seen you here before. Are you new?" response from the customer. Well considering it's taken me twice as long to ring up your order, I have no idea what anything is, and just learned the most basic grocers code you can learn, yea, I'd say I'm new. 


-Sara-