My Korean Deli_ Risking It All for a Convenience Store - Ben Ryder Howe [24]
Which doesn’t make me completely useless. With my repertoire of professional communication skills honed as a member of the media, I can serve as a cultural interlocutor of sorts, educating my mother-in-law about the subtler aspects of American culture. For instance, recently I taught her the meaning of the words skanky and Eurotrash, and explained to her what a platypus is. I also had the occasion, on a recent foray to an International House of Pancakes, to explain to her the maple syrup-making process. (“You see, it’s just sap.”)
The sad part is, Gab actually expects my being a “big-picture person” to be an asset at the store. “You know what people want,” she says. Gab says that her mother’s business philosophy is similar to the way she drives, which is that when she gets on the highway she prefers to stay in one lane and never get out. “It has the virtue of being consistent,” Gab says, “but everything she learned about American tastes is fixed in her mind from twenty years ago,” from convenience stores in Texas and Ohio, where the Paks first came when they got to the United States.
As I’m lost in these thoughts, I hear Kay’s voice summoning me back to the checkout counter.
“You bag,” she says. “I do register.”
The evening rush is here. You’d think a subway car had stopped outside our door. Customers arrive in waves—the door will not stay closed—and stand at the register, heaving armfuls of groceries. They’re tired and grumpy and want to get home. Fortunately, you can be a terrible bagger and not slow down the line, because people rarely discover that you’ve placed a gallon of milk atop their eggs until after they leave the store.
Kay’s register technique is dazzling. Even when she’s punching the keys four or five times a second, every stroke is perfect, and the sound it makes is like a galloping herd of horses. When she stops you can hear a penny roll, and you almost expect the Royal Alpha to let out an exhausted sigh. Kay’s steady presence makes people feel that the universe is a just and orderly place, and someday they will see their families again. It is impossible to look at her and not feel some faint yearning to be a cashier.
THE GHOST
IT TAKES ONLY A FEW DAYS TO NOTICE THAT THE STORE HAS certain patterns. During the night shift, for example, the early hours are often too busy, but the later hours usually aren’t busy enough, and yet it’s hard to devote the slow times to something useful, like reading a book, because you never know if you’re going to have two minutes or a whole hour until a customer breaks your concentration. If we had a computer in the store, the Internet would be perfect, with its bite-sized doses of mindless information. When a customer walks in I try not to make it too painfully obvious what I’m thinking, which is Stay! Please! Tell me anything! I want to know all the mundane details of your boring life—just give me some companionship!
Such is the boredom, in fact, that I end up rationing inane little chores over the course of the evening so that I have something to look forward to, like Eight o’clock, clean lint out of pockets. Nine o’clock, clip fingernails (left hand only—save right for later). Ten o’clock, recheck pockets for sudden lint regrowth. Eleven o’clock, count tiles in floor.
On nights like these the pleasure that comes from stocking shelves can be positively kundaliniesque. Stocking is a repetitive task that’s either meditative or inane, and it can yield deep thoughts about, say, the nature of time, or more useless ruminations, such as, Do toilets on Amtrak trains