for checkout. Their shopping day is over. By 10:30 the lights are down to 30 percent and the registers have been closed out and the lot wranglers are rattling long snakes made of carts with wobbling wheels home for the night. The store grows silent; the little sparrows close their wings and settle on the beams.
Kral calls me to the register station and inventory comm-terminal. With the main lights down, I notice that there are halogen beams focused on the handguns. I’ve seen that trick before, in the jewelry department: Sparkly, sparkly, don’t you want me? Except here there is no sparkle. The beams of light are swallowed up by gun-shaped chunks of darkness. Then that’s it. That light is gone forever.
“You did good today. You stayed busy.” The praise is grudging, but I earned it. I scurried up the ladder to the top shelves like a squirrel. I sorted out the squid-body fishing lures from the flashers and the dodgers and never once gave in to the urge to pretend they were earrings. When consumers passed through, I made sure I directed them to our special sale item, the Red-E-2-Go emergency kit. When I took my ten-minute bathroom break, I was back in seven. If Kral wanted an excuse to bash me in the training eval, I didn’t give him an obvious one. He starts to type, putting stuff into my permanent employment record. Then he stops and points to the stock cases behind him where the ammunition boxes are stacked behind lock and key. “You see how short the inventory is there?”
I do, and I wish I didn’t. It looks like there’s a lot of work to be done, filling the empty shelves, scanning the bar codes, and placing orders. I don’t get paid for overtime — not during training. And I don’t especially want to be stuck here, in the 30 percent gloom with a dead polar bear and Kral, doing unpaid after-hours work.
“We keep ’em short stocked,” says Kral. “It improves sales. Heightens the perceived value. Know what I mean?”
“Yeah.” I learned about short-stocking in Retail Psychology, but this is the first time a department supervisor at AllMART has suggested anything that deviated from the customer-happiness-comes-first AllMART way. Full shelves signal bounty and free choice, and empty shelves trigger anxiety and paranoia. That’s classroom knowledge. I’m not in a classroom anymore. The customer psychology of purchasing ammunition may differ from the psychology of purchasing radishes.
“You take these.” Kral hands me a stack of business cards:
“Anybody asks you about ammunition, you give them one of these cards before you tell them Aisle 127. You write your name on the back so I know it was a referral. I’ll make sure you get a fair taste.”
I put the stack of cards in my pocket.
“Now, hop up on the counter over there.”
I climb up. I’m almost eye to eye with the dead polar bear. I wonder, is that a real tongue behind those fangs? Or a plastic replacement? Is the polar bear a sort of mannequin, dressed in a fashionable winter-white coat?
“Little more that way,” says Kral. I take a few steps in the direction he points.
“That’s good,” says Kral, and then he unlocks the gun case in front of him.
Crap. I must be in front of the surveillance camera. Kral’s made me into a giant blind spot. He’s going to steal from AllMART, and I’m going to help him. I stand exactly still and shut my eyes so I can be honest when I say I didn’t see anything.
CRACK! CRACK!
My eyes shock open. I freeze like a bunny.
“I hate them birds,” says Kral. He’s locking the case. The gun is back in its place under the glamour light.
“Think I got a couple. One’s on the floor, but you better take the ladder and check on top of the high stock. They stink real bad after a couple of days.”
I do as I’m told. The bird that landed on the top shelf is blown into bloody feathers and chunks, but I get as much as I can see and reach. My hands are full of bird parts when Kral calls up to me,
Kral calls me to the register station and inventory comm-terminal. With the main lights down, I notice that there are halogen beams focused on the handguns. I’ve seen that trick before, in the jewelry department: Sparkly, sparkly, don’t you want me? Except here there is no sparkle. The beams of light are swallowed up by gun-shaped chunks of darkness. Then that’s it. That light is gone forever.
“You did good today. You stayed busy.” The praise is grudging, but I earned it. I scurried up the ladder to the top shelves like a squirrel. I sorted out the squid-body fishing lures from the flashers and the dodgers and never once gave in to the urge to pretend they were earrings. When consumers passed through, I made sure I directed them to our special sale item, the Red-E-2-Go emergency kit. When I took my ten-minute bathroom break, I was back in seven. If Kral wanted an excuse to bash me in the training eval, I didn’t give him an obvious one. He starts to type, putting stuff into my permanent employment record. Then he stops and points to the stock cases behind him where the ammunition boxes are stacked behind lock and key. “You see how short the inventory is there?”
I do, and I wish I didn’t. It looks like there’s a lot of work to be done, filling the empty shelves, scanning the bar codes, and placing orders. I don’t get paid for overtime — not during training. And I don’t especially want to be stuck here, in the 30 percent gloom with a dead polar bear and Kral, doing unpaid after-hours work.
“We keep ’em short stocked,” says Kral. “It improves sales. Heightens the perceived value. Know what I mean?”
“Yeah.” I learned about short-stocking in Retail Psychology, but this is the first time a department supervisor at AllMART has suggested anything that deviated from the customer-happiness-comes-first AllMART way. Full shelves signal bounty and free choice, and empty shelves trigger anxiety and paranoia. That’s classroom knowledge. I’m not in a classroom anymore. The customer psychology of purchasing ammunition may differ from the psychology of purchasing radishes.
“You take these.” Kral hands me a stack of business cards:
“Anybody asks you about ammunition, you give them one of these cards before you tell them Aisle 127. You write your name on the back so I know it was a referral. I’ll make sure you get a fair taste.”
I put the stack of cards in my pocket.
“Now, hop up on the counter over there.”
I climb up. I’m almost eye to eye with the dead polar bear. I wonder, is that a real tongue behind those fangs? Or a plastic replacement? Is the polar bear a sort of mannequin, dressed in a fashionable winter-white coat?
“Little more that way,” says Kral. I take a few steps in the direction he points.
“That’s good,” says Kral, and then he unlocks the gun case in front of him.
Crap. I must be in front of the surveillance camera. Kral’s made me into a giant blind spot. He’s going to steal from AllMART, and I’m going to help him. I stand exactly still and shut my eyes so I can be honest when I say I didn’t see anything.
CRACK! CRACK!
My eyes shock open. I freeze like a bunny.
“I hate them birds,” says Kral. He’s locking the case. The gun is back in its place under the glamour light.
“Think I got a couple. One’s on the floor, but you better take the ladder and check on top of the high stock. They stink real bad after a couple of days.”
I do as I’m told. The bird that landed on the top shelf is blown into bloody feathers and chunks, but I get as much as I can see and reach. My hands are full of bird parts when Kral calls up to me,
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