Self Serving

I’m retired, which is a good thing because I don’t think I’d have time for a regular job anymore, I have way too much unpaid work that I need to do every day just to get by.

For instance, this morning I drove over to the gas station to pump my own gas, check my oil and clean my windshield. I’m very good at these tasks because one of my first jobs as a teenager was working at a service station where these were things that we routinely did for all our customers. Hence the name “Service Station”. Back then many of them would even tip me for my efforts. At my current self-service station, the only tip I get comes from the TV screen at the pump endlessly telling me about the great deals they have in their mini-mart on 24 oz. Slushies and beef jerky. Back in the day I would also check customers’ tires and fill them with air if they needed it. Now this is another task that I have to perform myself, and pay extra for, if I can manage to park close enough to the air machine that sometimes works, and always shuts down before I can manage to check and fill all four tires, requiring another round of haggling with the finicky payment mechanism.

When I’m finally ready to hit the road, I head over to the Post Office. I need to do this to mail some letters because our de-joyless U.S. Postmaster recently removed the mailbox from the corner of my street, along with hundreds of others around town, in a “cost-cutting measure”. Also, we’ve been warned repeatedly by our local Fox TV station that it is dangerous to place any mail in mailboxes because there are rings of thieves who have gotten hold of the master keys, which they use to steal the mail, and then alter the checks we’ve written so that they can deposit our gas, electric, and Christmas Club payments into their bitcoin accounts somewhere in the Cayman Islands. So I drive to the post office where I see the few old neighbors who still use our land-based communication system, standing in line to send packages, or buy stamps. I have my choice of waiting in line with them for the one worker whose window is open (while she tries to deal with Mrs. Koslowski, who is hard of hearing, and never really learned English,) or using the self-serve system that is conveniently set up in a tiny corner of the lobby, next to the trash can. Either way I’ll continue to work hard to pay my bills on time, because if the faceless corporate entities receive them a day late, they are sure to tack on penalties, fees and possibly try to reclaim my first born, who is still being paid for on the installment plan.

Next I head over to the Whole Foods to do some shopping. When I was younger, we used to be a members of the local Food Co-op. We all pitched in to run the place, everybody doing a shift a month, and we were rewarded with a 10% discount on our groceries plus all the unsellable, slightly rotten vegetables we could use. The other great thing about the Co-op was that we were able to buy the kinds of food that you couldn’t buy at the chain supermarkets: organic local produce, eggs, meat and dairy, as well as bulk beans, grains, nuts, and herbs. The Co-op thrived for many years, kept alive by dedicated members and the fact that it was the only good grocer in a slightly seedy neighborhood near the University. But eventually Whole Foods came along, offering many of the same products in a clean new store in an upscale neighborhood at similar prices, and without the requirement to work or go to the dreaded monthly meetings.

Of course, now Whole Foods has been taken over by Amazon and become pretty much like every other supermarket, as they all seem to carry the same produce from California or Mexico or Peru, and the same brands of once cutting edge natural foods (mostly bought out by other giant corporations). I favor the Whole Foods, where a number of the regular Co-op workers migrated after it shut down, mainly because they always have huge spaces in their shelves where they’ve run out of various items, which reminds me of my days at the Co-op, where we also found it impossible to keep our store properly stocked. Although, to be fair, this might be due to gross incompetence, or that fact that Amazon is too cheap to hire enough workers, whereas at the Co-op it was usually because we were always broke, and never seemed to have enough cash in the bank to place the next essential order.

At Whole Foods I also have the choice when I’m done shopping to stand in the one open cashier line, behind several shoppers, (including Mrs. O’Leary, who is buying two cartloads of healthy snacks for a pre-school orientation party, and has spent the last ten minutes arguing that she should get some sort of educational discount) or going to the self-serve checkout area, where I get the opportunity to become an apprentice cashier. This is great training in case I ever want to apply for a job at Whole Foods, as it requires me to learn their entire system of scanning, weighing and coding. I’m only interrupted four or five times to call over my supervisor, the one harried employee assigned to make sure none of us self-servers do any self-dealing and try to get away with pretending that the expensive bulk pistachios are actually the slightly less expensive bulk cashews. Or worse yet that we need a price check, because the infernal sticker is missing from one of our organic Gala apples.

After a hard day’s self-service work, we decide to go out for dinner. We’re heading for a new joint in the neighborhood called Hot Pot, where you pick up all the ingredients from a buffet and cook them at your own table in a pot of boiling broth. It should be loads of fun. I wonder how much I should leave for a tip?