Over the last few months you have read about my exploits from when I was 16 and worked at Kroger's. People really loved those stories, which sort of surprised me, and I certainly didn't think that I would get the response that I did. So, I have written all the best stories that I can remember, and I owe it to you to tell you how my employment ultimately ended. I wish this was the best of the stories; I wish I had been fired due to some grand prank gone horribly awry or something like that. But, since these stories are not made up, I can't very well make up the ending. Maybe you'll like it, maybe you'll be disappointed. But without further ado, here is the final story.
I began working at Kroger's in March of my sophomore year of high school, worked there through the summer, and I planned on quitting once school started because the Fall was my busiest time of year. I told Judy I was going to quit, and she begged me to stay on. They were short staffed and I was pretty experienced, and they didn't want to lose me. Seeing my negotiation position greatly increased, I told Judy I would stay on, under my terms. Those terms were not unreasonable. I told her I would work three nights a week, no weekends, and I didn't have to be in until 6:30. She agreed, but stipulated that if I didn't come in until 6:30, I would have to stay and close, which was at 10pm. I agreed, and we set my schedule up so I would only work on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday nights, 6:30-10. Everyone was happy.
School started, and I began my new work schedule. Immediately, I had one big problem. While I was scheduled until 10, the closing procedures took a while and I never got out of there before 10:30, and sometimes, not until 11. At first, I started closing early, around 9:30, so that I would be done with the procedures by 10. But some uppity customer complained, and I was sternly told not to close the gate until 10pm. I needed a new plan, so I decided to cut out the most arduous closing task: Shelving the videos.
Shelving the videos doesn't sound tough, but it is. Most people return videos between 8pm and close, lest it be late and they be given a late fee. And, the evening hours were the busiest, so it was difficult to take care of customers, check the returned videos back into the system, and then put them back on the shelves. So typically, I would let the returns pile up, and check them back in and shelve them after close. This took, at a minimum, 20 minutes, and often took longer than 30. One day, all I did was check them back in (the easy part) and leave them on the cart where we put movies to be shelved, and figured I'd let the person who opened shelve them the next morning. However, the lady who opened did not appreciate me leaving nearly 100 movies for her to shelve, and complained. That night I came in, and Judy again sternly warned me that I was to have all movies shelved before I left.
I was sulking that evening around 9:30, checking in the movies but not looking forward to shelving them, when one of the baggers, John, came in. John was in his late teens, out of school, and worked full time as a bag boy. (Before you judge him, let me tell you that he was also mentally challenged. Not Corky from Life Goes On challenged, more like Forrest Gump challenged. Slow but functional.) Every night after work, John came in and rented a movie or two, and this night was no different. He noticed me sulking and asked what was wrong. I explained that I didn't want to shelve the movies, that it takes forever, etc. Then I had an idea. "John", I said, "How would you like a free movie tonight?". He asked what he had to do, and I told him that if he shelved the movies for me, his movie would be free. He seemed very enthusiastic about this arrangement. I told him how to shelve the movies, and he quickly got to work. When he was done, I rang up his movie as free, closed the gate, ran the daily report, and was out the door by 10:05.
The next time I worked, I went and found John up front, about an hour before his shift ended (which was at 9:30). I told him that if he came and shelved the movies for me again, there was another free rental in it for him. He agreed, came back after he was off, and shelved the movies. I rang up his rental as free, and was out the door by five after ten again.
This arrangment continued for maybe a month, and I figured that I had found a perfect way to avoid staying late. I knew that it was very wrong, since the first day of work they told me that giving away free movies was about the worst thing you could do. But I was cocky and thought I could get away with it. However, I made one crucial mistake. In order to ring up a movie as free, you had to be a manager. I certainly was not a manager, but I did know Judy's password. Whenever I rang John up, I entered her password to authorize a free rental. I knew that this would leave a paper trail, but I figured that the managers were idiots and wouldn't know. (Granted, it should have been more obvious to me that they would find out, but given my previous encounters with them, can you blame me?)
One day, I came into work, and as soon as I got back to the video department, the phone rang and Judy told me, in a very ominous tone, that I had to come see her in the manager's office. I knew exactly what she wanted to see me about.
I slowly walked the stairs and opened the door to the office. Inside sat Judy, Brad (one of the other assistant managers) and Jim (the head store manager). They all had very serious looks on thier faces. Brad motioned for me to sit down, and I did. They looked at me and I looked at them for what seemed like an eternity, before Judy spoke.
"Mike, we found out what's been going on down in the video department every night."
My mind immediately jumped to a line by Newman in a Seinfeld episode I had recently seen. I looked at her and said, smugly, "Oh yeah? What took you so long?"
All three of them became infuriated at the sheer audacity that I displayed. Brad angrily went down the list of things that I had done, and said that the worst thing was bringing John into the whole situation. I said that I didn't think it was that bad and tried to defend myself by saying that John was a willing participant in my movie shelving scheme. Brad, who was almost shouting, said, "You took advantage of a mentally challenged person for your own personal gain."
I responded: "Well, sure, anything sounds bad if you put it like that".
Jim finally cut to the chase and told me I was no longer welcome to work there. Then, displaying his own audacity, asked me to resign instead of being fired, so that the union wouldn't get invloved. In what had to be my only moment of weakness, I agreed. They asked my to write a resignation letter. They handed me a piece of paper and a pen. I wrote:
Dear Kroger's,
I resign.
Love,
Mike
I handed it to Judy, tossed her my nametag, and left the office. I went down the stairs, ran back to the video department to grab my book, and left the store. I would like to say that all the employees saw me leaving, knowing I had been let go. I would like to say that one bagger began to clap slowly as I left, and was soon joined by all Kroger employees as I made my final exit to a deafening ovation. But they didn't. No one noticed, except one person. As I was walking towards my car, I heard a voice behind me. "Mike....MIKE!", he said. I turned around and saw John running towards me. He got to me, and, out of breath, said "Thanks for the free movies".
"No problem", I responded, as I got into my car and drove away.
