Stocked Shelves
The ticking of the clock echoes in my ears as I rush to find a matching pair of socks, I only had ten minutes until my shift was starting and couldn’t afford to be tardy. My Boss, Ed, was the real deal, he had this certain energy about him I could never put my finger on. I had only been working there stocking shelves for a couple weeks and I just knew I wanted to stay on his good side, no matter what. From the perspective of a new worker with no major complaints, my co-workers were friendly, the workspace was nice, tidy and clean and my pay was quite a step up from my previous endeavor as a salesman in a hardware store. Rushing through the front doors and into the back, I slid my time card through the machine and clocked in, right on time, with a sigh of relief I tied my apron around my waist and began my workday. I wish I had saved that sigh of relief, because I had no idea the kind of day I was about to have.
Every Tuesday we had to work late, due to deliveries there were always extra groceries around which meant a lot more items that needed to be stocked. This was okay with me. “More hours, more money!” I thought cheerfully to myself, as I prepared to extend my arm to maximum capacity in the name of shelving the tomato soup. Around four o’clock the delivery trucks started to roll in, which was signaled to us by the loud, repetitive high pitched beeping sound, spaced out about once every three seconds. All of us mentally prepared for more loading of supplies as we took the short stroll over to the loading dock and awaited to be assigned a certain truck to start on by the boss. Ed was tall, always had the same expression on his face, the expression of simplistic professionalism, this made it quite easy to tell when something was off with him. That day, we lined up as usual and awaited Ed’s arrival, only after about five minutes of patiently waiting and still lacking instruction, the five or six of us decided it was time we took action into our own hands. The employee with the most work experience, a co-worker named Juan, walked down the row of people one by one greeting each person with a number corresponding to a truck, he made his way in front of me. “Five.” He said with an unsettling smirk, brushing it off I thanked him, took a deep breath, and proceeded to unhinge delivery truck number fives rusty, ancient latch, I lifted up the door and proceeded inward. “Nothing I haven’t done before!” I thought to myself.
Plunging myself into my craft, I got to work on the neatly stacked boxes that filled the truck, grabbing box after box, taking them through the back entrance, down the hall and to the right until reaching storage. As my truck started to appear more and more spacious, I began to feel less and less patient, my confidence rose as box after box was taken care of with ease. It was as if I was Godzilla, trampling over a city where the people, buildings and cars were made of cardboard, and this was my stomping ground and I was gonna stomp. In reality I was still just picking up boxes and moving them, sure felt more fun in my head. With a pep in my step, I walked over to the final stack of boxes, these were smaller than the others, five small boxes stacked upon one another stood between me and the new episode of Dancing With The Stars.With that in mind I figured I would use all of my practice from the day to finish off strong, I wrapped my fingers around the bottom of the third box down, bent my knees down low, and lifted. “Heavier than I thought, no problem though, through the door, down the hall and to the right, through the door down the hall and to the right.” I repeated to myself like a prayer. “Through the door down the hall, to the right, door, hall, right, door ,hall, right...Door…. Hall… AHHHHGGGHPFFFFFF.”
Everything changed so fast, one moment I was walking along to the storage room, next I was on the ground surrounded by the very cars, people and buildings I was stomping on as Godzilla just an hour earlier. The boxes were still intact except for a small rip in one’s tape along the top, an easy fix. I grabbed the tape, and sat down with my box for what I was expecting to be one of the simplest tasks of my life. “Tape the box, got it.”I ripped off the remainder of the dwindling scotch tape and opened up the box revealing a thick, heavy bag of fine, white powder, four of them to be exact. It was right then that I realized my Boss wasn’t a grocery store manager after all.
This was no casual street deal, the professionalism screamed cartel to me, being only a couple hundred miles from the border, cartel presence was not out of the ordinary and something about Ed had always made me feel strange. Ripping me away from my thoughts I’m interrupted by a familiar deep tone and the presence of a cold, metal barrel stuck against the back of my neck. “You’re with me or against me.” muttered an angry, frantic Ed. He instructed me to grab the boxes, I figured at this point if I didn’t he would shoot me, so I attempted to make myself useful and hauled the five boxes out of the store, through the parking lot to a slick, black Acura, 2005 I think. I enter the passenger seat and begin to have a panic attack, before I can even begin Ed is in the driver seat pounding on the gas. I thought to ask what was going on and quickly silenced the idea seeing as Ed was a crazy drug dealer and I was probably better off not knowing. I expected the police to flag us down at any moment, but I wasn’t that fortunate, at least not yet. With what seemed like a poof, a 1974 cherry red Camaro rolled up on my right shoulder, with hesitation I locked eyes with the driver, my co-worker Juan was aiming a MAC-10 right between my eyes. My survival instincts kicked in, I slammed my face down into my lap and prayed as I braced for my demise, then came the shots, but I was still awake.
These days I’m back at the hardware store, doing my best to forget all about being stuck in that 2005 matte black Acura in blood stained clothes and a “Groceries Plus” apron on. I spent a long time analyzing that day, asking myself how and why, I have come up with some excellent, well thought out reasonings, as well as some not very likely ones. Part of me wants to say I will know for sure the ins and outs of Ed’s practices, but Juan makes it easy to forget all about that with his monthly cash drop offs, he says it’s just a courtesy, he would kill me if he wanted. I believe him.
Next time you find yourself at work, ask yourself if your boss is really who they say they are, though there probably are not Cocaine dealers, you never know!