Unexpectedly, Milo - Matthew Dicks [27]
He had just opened his last jar of jelly earlier that evening, and he was in need of many more.
chapter 7
Five jars of Smucker’s grape jelly would probably be enough, he thought, but he bought ten just in case. It didn’t hurt to have extra jars stacked in the cupboard in the event that the demand arose again, as it undoubtedly would. Though new demands were not uncommon, old standbys such as the pressure seals on jelly jars could always be depended on to return again and again. Had he still been living with Christine, bringing home ten jars of grape jelly would require an explanation, but now that he was living in the apartment, he had to explain the purchase to no one.
A decade ago, Milo might have been embarrassed to bring ten jars of jelly to a cashier, and so in order to reduce his level of mortification, he might have purchased several other items as well in order to camouflage the abundance of jelly in his cart, much the same way as a teenage boy might pile candy bars, magazines, and soda atop a box of condoms in order to conceal the true reason for his purchase. But now, though he was still not completely comfortable with the oddity of this purchase, Milo no longer felt the need to fill his cart with other items. Cashiers, in his experience, just didn’t care.
Milo had found that cashiers came in two varieties. The first and more prevalent kind were nearly robotic individuals who barely took notice of the customer, the items being purchased, or what they themselves were even doing. For these employees, ringing up customers’ orders had become equivalent to turning a screw on Henry Ford’s assembly line.
Just another customer in an endless line of customers.
This, Milo thought, was probably why they appeared so mindless. Unlike many occupations, in which one assignment or task could be finished and another one started, the career cashier faced a lifetime of incompletion. Their purpose was to service a line of customers that would never end, and if it ever did, this would mean the end of their employment. Even in Milo’s line of work there were small accomplishments and notable milestones. Training a client to use the Internet. Convincing another to adopt a pet. Assisting another through the difficult process of dying. These were all accomplishments from which Milo derived great pride. For the cashier, these moments did not exist, and so most eventually became mechanical in their actions.
There was a minority of cashiers, however, who insisted on engaging their customers in meaningful exchanges of dialogue during every possible transaction. These people were typically new to the job (and therefore didn’t understand the monotony of their future) or were those constantly upbeat and cheery people whom Milo never understood. If Milo were to run into one of these cashiers, questions about his inordinate amount of jelly might arise (That’s one big peanut butter and jelly sandwich you’re making, mister—hardy har har!), and though a query like this might infringe on Milo’s sense of normalcy, he had learned to combat this reaction with the same detachment of those cashiers who understood the truth about their occupation and their future.
The cashier manning the express lane in the Stop & Shop this evening was an older woman named Lauren (or so claimed her name tag) whose shoulders appeared to be bearing the weight of a thousand jelly jars. She was short, hunched, and frowning, the archetype of what Milo imagined an older Russian woman would have looked like living through the siege of Stalingrad: hopeless and defeated. Her green