07-You Bit My Hand

The more than six foot tall, muscular African American shoplifter was sitting in the chair and we had finished reading him as Miranda Rights, when all of a sudden, Dave, the five foot five store manager, lunged across the room, wrapped his hands around the guy's throat, and screamed, you bit my hand. It took more guides to subdue Dave than it did to apprehend the shoplifter. To begin with, I'm Jimpolling, and this is my view from the middle. Before I launched my broadcasting career, I had a variety of other jobs. Like most people, I worked in sales, on an assembly line, and in retail. All of these were job jobs. There are career jobs like broadcasting, and there are job jobs, the ones you do while you're waiting for a career job to open up. One of my first job jobs was in a grocery store. It was the Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company, better known as the A ANDP. My brother had been a stock boy there, so it seemed like the logical thing to do was for me to apply there too. Much to my surprise, they hired me. I was sixteen years old and didn't have a clue how to have a job. I was, what behind the ears, very immature and had a sense of entitlement when it came to working. I thought, once they hired me, it could just show up and help out a little bit, collect a paycheck, and go home. Well it didn't really work out that way. These people insisted I work well a concept. The other stock boys had it down. They were a few years older than me, and they had figured out that the more you got done and the hours you were scheduled, the more hours management would give you going forward. I hadn't figured that out yet. Stupid is as stupid does, As Forrest Gump would say, I still remember leaning on a stockman's cart, casually pushing it out the stock room door and running into the manager coming out a he said, with this look of disgust on his face. That look, along with the comment volumes to me. He could have said, what the hell are you doing? You're moving slower than molasses in January, and we've got a ton of groceries to put on the shelves in a very short period of time. But no, he simply said, coming out, Eh. I think he was from Canada. Well, I got the message and figured it would behoove me to get my butt in gear and did my best to speed up. Didn't work, though, turns out haste really does make waste. I wound up breaking a bottle of grape juice on the floor. Panic ensued. One of the other stock boys was there when I butterfingered the bottle. He looked at me in horror and whispered in a low, terrified tone, Oh, my god, grape juice, grape juice in aisle three, he yelled at the top of his lungs. You'd have thought seren gas had been released into the air. The next thing I knew, people were running everywhere, wailing and screaming, the flailing of arms, gnashing of teeth. It was a mad scramble to get mops, brushes, and buckets so that the juice could be sopped up before penetrated into the floor and left a permanent mark for our descendants in the grocery store industry to discover some time in the twenty first century. Now, the juice was mopped up and the crisis averted. But when the schedule came out the next week, I wasn't on it. Oh, I wasn't fired I just wasn't on the schedule. That's how things are done in a union shop. You pay one hundred dollars initiation fee and the monthly dues, and then you don't get enough work time to make up for it all. So much for the A and P. Hey. At least I made my mark on the place. It's probably still there in Aisle three, right in front of the grapeshoes counter. My next real job was at a factory who lived in the suburbs of Detroit, the motor city. There were a number of small factories and assembly plants around. Not only did the major car companies have plants there, secondary industries, those that provided supporting materials to the car plants, were also in full bloom. I was hired to work the line at a company called foam Craft. This was a company that made things out of the material that you see in the foam dashboard of your car. No, we didn't make dashboards, at least not while I was there. That would have been too prestigious in mainstream. No, we were making foam ramp that General Motors used to hang bumpers on in their factory while they were being painted. Now that boys and girls is a secondary industry. This was nineteen seventy two. In factory automationion still hadn't really taken hold yet, at least in the secondary industries, so there was a lot of workers hired to do menial tasks that a machine can now do much more efficiently. I was hired as a mold closer. Molds for the foam bumper racks would travel down the assembly line, populated on one side by several workers including me. Now right now you're probably visualizing the famous scene in the Lucy Show television series where she was working with the line at a chocolate factory. I believe Lucy wound up eating more chocolate than she processed, only because she couldn't keep up with the moving conveyor belt. My experience wasn't nearly so entertaining, at least from my perspective. Anyway. As the mold traveled down the conveyor, one worker would open it and spray it with some sort of chlorine solution to clean it. Then it traveled to the next pert person who would take a nozzle and fill the mold with this black, nasty looking dashboard type foam goop. Then it was my job to close the mold. Seriously, this was a job that I actually got paid to do nine hours a day, six days a week. But it was harder than it sounds. The trick to this was timing. The stuff they were shooting into the mold would immediately start to expand the incident it made contact with the air. I had to grasp a metal handle and jam it forward to close the mold at the precise moment right after the nozzle shooting the goop into the mold shut off, but before the foam material would start erupting out of the mold, gushing all over the place, ruining the piece we were trying to manufacture and forcing them to stop the assembly line and do a cleanup. Do I really need to tell you what happened? Where is Lucy when I needed her? Know? Anything I couldn't do was eat the stuff. After a few embarrassing foam overflow disasters, I eventually got the hang of it. It was all in the rhythm. Wash squirt close, repeat, wash squirt close, repeat, nine hours a day, six days a week. The History Channel never showed that on modern marvels. The problem was jamming that mold handle forward for nine hours a day made my hands swell up. I tried using a glove, but it didn't help much. What's more, the chlorine solution that used to clean the molds triggered an asthma I didn't even know I had. By the end of my shift, I could barely breathe and my right hand looked like a cutchers met All this, coupled with the sexual harassment I received from some of the female workers, made this job miserable. Yes, you heard me correctly, I was sexually harassed. There were these women twice my age, twice my size, and half the teeth that just loved to make comments directed toward me that are not suitable to talk about here on a PG podcast. I guess I should have been flattered, but not so much. This was definitely a job job, and not exactly my dream job. One morning I came in and the supervisor asked to see me in the office. Turns out, in Michigan you have to be at least seventeen years old to work on an assembly line. I was on sixteen, and they didn't realize that fact when they first hired me. So again, I wasn't fired, I was simply unhired. They said for me to come back on my next birthday and they'd put me back on the line. After all, I was pretty popular among the toothless workforce. But I knew in my heart that my career in mold closing was over. While waiting for a radio opportunity, my job jobs in retail continued. My favorite job of all time is when I worked at Toys r US. I was hired going into the Christmas season as seasonal help, but they liked me so much they kept me on full time long after the season was over. You know all those displays you see on the sales floor, the bicycles, the big wheels, the doll houses. Almost every item of significant size that the store sold had to have a display model put together. That was my job. I spent eight hours a day assembling bicycles, jungle gyms, Barbie dreamhouses, kids, furniture, you name it, I put it together. I loved that job, mainly because everyone else hated putting that stuff together, so I was looked upon as the god of all toys. Well not really, but it got me through the day. I also got really good at fixing bicycles. People would bring back a bike they couldn't get to work right, and instead of replacing it, I would fix it for them free of charge. This made the customers happy and the store happy because they didn't have to scrap or send back as many defective bicycles. When I wasn't putting stuff together or fixing bikes, I would help the stockers put toys on the shelves. I knew how to do that from my A and P experience, but no grape juice in sight this time. This time, though I knew that speed counted. This impressed the bosses even more. One manager told me once, as I was rushing to get a bunch of toys out on the shelves before the end of my shift, Hey, slow down, take it easy. I looked at him like he had six heads and explained why I thought that comment was well odd. I told him about the ANP and how speed was everything. Well, we want you to get the job done, but we don't want you to kill yourself doing it. He said, well, that's a switch, which was it work fast or work slow. I fell it could start to develop a twitch. I had to leave that job and go with my parents when they moved to Florida. I wanted to go to school for broadcasting anyway, I had my eye on a college in Orlando that offered a radio and television program, a field that I was determined to make my career. That college was Florida Technological University f TOU, a school later renamed the University of Central Florida. But by the time we had made the move, f TOU had canceled their radio TV program and what they offered as an alternative didn't fit my plans. I wound up attending Saint Petersburg College, a community college that actually had a radio television department on campus. It was a start. So I now you're wondering what all this has to do with a guy nearly getting his hand bitten through by a shop lifter. Well, hey, I'm getting to that. While going to school in Florida, I still needed a job job of some sort. They were opening a fairly new type of concept store in south Saint Petersburg. It was a of two merged Western US companies, Skags drug Stores and Albertson's Grocery. The new store would be one of the first Skags Albertson's chain stores and would be a combination grocery and drug superstore. The help wanted to add in the newspaper. You remember those newspapers, right, They said they were hiring for stockers and cashiers. The store was huge, more like a department store than a grocery store or a drug store. These days were used to the large public Safeway Win Dixie combination superstores, but in the early seventies this was an anomaly, and Skags Alberton's was one of the first companies to try the concept. I was hired as a grocery department stocker. I learned my lesson from the brief and non profitable experience at the A and P, and mustered all my energy and organizational skills. After all, I was young and in pretty good shape. I was really strong for a skinny guy, and I could unload an entire truckload of groceries by myself and restack an entire warehouse in an afternoon if need be. I was a rock star. Although I was hired as a temporary employee, they were so impressed with my work they hired me full time after the grand opening. Soon I was working forty to forty eight hours per week and going to school full time. Stupid is as stupid does. I was falling asleep in class and my grade suffered. I had a business management instructor once say to me, I have no respect for students who work full time and still go to school. Really, how do you think I'm paying for your salary, you idiot? Well I didn't say that then, but I was thinking it. My ego wouldn't allow me to quit working at the store since they were determined to put me on a management track. As a matter of fact, they began to route me around to different departments. In the span of a couple of years, I worked in the grocery camera, front end, check out, drug and produce departments. I apparently became somewhat of a chick magnet while working in the produce department. Every day around the same time, I would hear mister skags, Oh, mister skags. This woman was about four foot nothing and looked like the majority of her last few meals wound up on her shirt instead of in her potbelly's stomach. She also had one or two teeth in her whole head. What is it with me and women with no teeth? Anyway, every day this woman had a produce question, and instead of calling me by my name, which was clearly printed on an impressive Dino label on my name tag, she insisted on calling me mister Skaggs, and in the loudest voice possible. She always had some in aim question that was obviously concocted so she could speak with me. I was nice, but I kept my distance. Later, the Skags in Alberton's families amicably parted ways and the store was renamed simply Albertson's. I never saw the pop bellied lady again. Maybe she didn't know what to call me now. Since Skags was no longer in the name, I was promoted to night manager, which wasn't more than a glorified stock clerk that worked the overnight shift. The manager title was tacked on only because the night manager was responsible for handling money and taking charge of the massive twenty four hours store during the overnight hours. At the time, Alberton's was one of the most successful retail chains in the country. The quote unquote gold coat manager of our store called that because he wore you guessed it, a gold sport coat. Earned more than sixty thousand dollars a year, a very respectable amount for the early seventies and among the highest salaries page retail managers anywhere in today's dollars. That's well in the six figures. So to get promoted through the ranks at Alberton's was something to write home about. In those days, the hierarchy was stocker to night manager, third man or floor manager to assistant manager, to department manager to gold coat manager. Our store was located in South Saint Petersburg, and in those days that wasn't the greatest part of town, so this meant we had to deal with a lot of shoplifting, ah shoplifting. See I told you I'd get around to this. Shoplifting became such a problem for us we created shoplifter watching posts, which were nothing more than displaced ceiling tiles where the ceiling at the wall in the back of the store. Video surveillance systems hadn't become practical yet. We spent most of our time keeping an eye on the cosmetic department, since that seemed to be the most popular for shoplifters. Lots of small, expensive items that can easily be dropped into pockets and purses. Each of the clerks and stockers and night manager had to take shifts watching. If and when a shoplifter was spotted, the procedure was to page Jack Sheehan to the front. Now, Jack Sheehan was a Florida president of Albertson's Corporation based in Lakeland, Florida, and wasn't likely to actually be in the store. The page was well known throughout the store and signaled to every stocker and every employee to come to the front of the store unmass. That way, when the shoplifter was confronted, there would be plenty of backup and the suspect would be less likely to cause trouble or run. Albertson's had a policy of prosecuting all shoplifters, the idea being that the store would earn a reputation of doing so and that would serve as a shoplifting deterrent. After confronting the shoplifter, we would escort them back to the office upstairs and way in the back of the store. The police would be called and the manager in charge or the clerk who stopped the person would read the person his miranda rights. You have the right to remain silent, etc. Etc. This was done that the insistence of the local police department who didn't want to take a chance on the shoplifting suspect saying something before they got there that would screw up the prosecutor's case later on. I have to admit it was kind of fun nabbing crooks. I felt like I was on drag net when I read a person their rights. It wasn't fun when a sixteen year old girl who had never stolen anything before in her life would burst into tears. Some were pretty good at faking it, and that wasn't insightful enough to make the distinction. One time we nabbed a guy who had stuffed several packages of hot dogs down his pants. We probably would have let him go and chalked it up to the desperate act of someone who couldn't afford to buy food had it not been for one thing. During the confrontation with Dave, our manager, the guy bit his hand hard. There were bloody teeth marks in Dave's hand, and he later required stitches and a tetanus shot. Dave was a short five foot five ish, albeit muscular guy, always well dressed. He was always a pretty laid back individual, but everybody has his or her limits. When we got the guy up in the office. Dave sat quietly, seething in anger at this guy who unapologetically nearly bit straight through his hand. Seething is probably an understatement. He was sitting on the launch pad and his solid rocket boosters were ready to ignite. You could almost see the steam coming out of his ears. All this guy had to do was look at Dave cross eye to start the launch sequence. Following established procedure, I started reading him his rights. I got to the part about providing an attorney if he couldn't afford one, and the guy scowled at Dave, we have ignition and lift off. Dave came up off his chair lunged five feet across the room, screaming, you bit my hand repeatedly. Dave was blood red in the face and full of rage. You bit my head? Did you some of them? He yelled so loud the people on the sales floor could hear it. It took three guys to pull him off and one to keep him in the chair until the police arrived. Don't never underestimate the rage buried in a short, easygoing guy. Another time, while working the overnight shift, I saw a sixteen year old girl stuff some cosmetics in her pocket. This kid couldn't have weighed ninety pounds soaken wet. But procedure is procedure. I grabbed the PA microphone. Jack. She hand to the front. Please jack, she hand to the front of the store. I announced, Now, I forgot that. That was the night when they were holding a training session for new grocery stockers. There were at least twenty guys stocking shells in the grocery department that night. They all came rushing to the front of the store, big burly looking guys, all dirty and sweaty from unloading trucks and slinging boxes of groceries all over the place. And in the middle of it all this ninety pounds sixteen year old girl scared out of her mind. She'll never do that again. Eventually, Dave, our manager, was transferred to a brand news store opening in bell Air Bluffs, Florida, not far from Largo and just a few blocks from Indian Rocks Beach. I describe it that way because just about the only thing in bell Air Bluffs was a gas station and now a new Albertson store. The first thing Dave did upon his rival is requests that I transferred to the new store with him. It was nineteen seventy seven and I had just graduated from Saint Petersburg College. I was twenty one years old and living with my parents, and this was as good of an excuse as any to move out on my own, so I accepted the transfer. Now long after we opened the bell Air Bluff store, I was promoted to third man, which quickly changed to floor manager to avoid the appearance of misogyny. So I was finally a real manager. The job came with a healthy pay raise and a lot more responsibility. During the period between Thanksgiving and Christmas, for example, all managers were required to work seventy two hours per week twelve hours a day, six days a week. We were scheduled for either seven am to say seven pm, or noon to midnight. I didn't mind. I was single, living alone and had a lot of energy. But after about a year I started to wonder what in the world I was doing. Then I want to go into radio broadcasting. What was I doing managing a retail store. This feeling started to eat at me day in and day out. Dave had been promoted to gold coat manager and sent on to another store, so finally I made a decision. I came in one day and turned in my two weeks notice. The gold coat manager of our store was completely taken aback by this. He said he was about to recommend another promotion from me to the next level assistant manager, but I explained that I needed to pursue a lifelong dream. So there I was in the middle of a lot of things, from the amp manager who thought I was the slowest worker on the planet defending off toothless advances at foam craft in Alberton's, to being an unlikely bike mechanic at a toy store, to trying to keep my boss from killing a shoplifter from the and to Albertson's. The retail business provided a purpose, but just a job job, not necessarily a career. It taught me a lot about work ethic and about management from above and below. From immature, preconceived notions to adult realities. The retail business opened my eyes to so many things I will find valuable in the years to come, including but not limited to keeping my cool when a shoplifter bites you in the hand. I'm Jim Polling, and that's my view from the middle in the next episode, while returning home to Detroit after a vacation in Florida, how would you like to see a newspaper headline in huge block letters that says Detroit burns next one. My view from the middle