Free Tales from the Dad Side by Steve Doocy Page B

radiation from that will poison my food. Ring it up manually,” said the freaky Fortune 500 CEO. How did this dingbat make it up the corporate ladder? Usually companies don’t hire a person for the corner office when he arrives for the job interview wearing a three-piece suit and a tinfoil hat.
    Meanwhile her own classmates who’d seen her behind the cash register dissed her with “Nice bow tie, Mary,” a not-so-subtle reminder that she was somehow less of a person than they because she wore a uniform and they had the freedom to wear whatever slutty belly shirt they chose.
    That town was a precious enclave of wealth, fame, and attitude, and while many were privileged, there was one customer who was always friendly and courteous and respectful of Mary as a person: a very famous rapper from Run-D.M.C.
    He was the polar opposite of an alarmingly high number of customers who would say something mean or unkind. Every Sunday night when I’d pick her up after her shift she’d get into my car and break down in tears. We love the family that runs the place and I’d thought this would be a great job, but I had not factored in a few of the patrons who had her sweating like James Gandolfini on a Stair-Master. So we pulled the plug.
    Getting my kids a first job at a grocery store was what my father had done for me, when he talked a friend into hiring me in my hometown of Industry, Kansas. Misnamed because there was no actual industry in Industry; apparently the town founders had figured that if they named it that, America’s industrialists who needed to plunk their smokestacks somewhere would flock to our town, which they did not. Industry was small, and sleepy, a cozy hometown that was much like TV’s Mayberry, without the crack law-enforcement team.
    My place of employment was a shiny silver-painted Depression-era storefront on the main drag. It was a simple emporium featuring miscellaneous canned foods, starchy snacks, and every imaginable bug-killing concoction. The back wall had a free-standing deli case packed with freshly ground hamburger and various “lunch meats”: bologna; braunschweiger; and, from the Who-Eats-This-Stuff? category, headcheese, a vile amalgam of “head” parts harvested from the fatty noggins of barnyard animals that unwittingly volunteered for the job.
    A small store required a small staff; we had a deli guy, a cashier, somebody to walk the bags out to the car for the old ladies, and a bookkeeper who’d balance the cash drawer at the end of the day. It was a four-person job, and I was all four of the people. I was also thirteen years old. Forget the child-labor laws designed to protect indentured children in overseas sweatshops from getting a dime a day to stitch soccer balls; I got a buck an hour, paid in cash at the end of the day, completely off the books because it was way south of the minimum wage.
    There was one terrific fringe benefit: I could eat whatever I wanted. And the choice was always easy—this store featured Fanestil’s, the filet mignon of boiled ham. For a kid who carried peanut butter and bologna on Wonder bread every day to school for lunch, Fanestil’s ham tasted like a slice of hog heaven. Too pricey for my family to buy at a buck ninety-nine per pound, for the store’s lone Saturday employee it was on the house. During my fifteen-minute orientation on how to operate the store, the owner suggested that I grab a bite during a slow time before or after lunch. “Just shave off two or three nice thick slices of whatever you like.”
    â€œOkay. Where’s the bread?” I wondered.
    Pointing toward the bread rack, the owner instructed, “Take any kind you like. My favorite’s Roman Meal.” And with that he pulled out a loaf of the rust-orange-wrappered bread, undid the twist tie, and stuck his hand in the bag. “I generally go about a quarter of the way back,” he said, pulling out two