A took a trip back in time today to 1929 when I went to the Ashby Market...back to 1929 is a good thing. It's quaint and a classic New England Town Market/General Store.
It's a food market with all the essentials, a copy center, penny candy and a hardware store. It's small and doesn't have all of it's shelves stocked. None of the shelves feature electronic price tags. Items either have no prices, or stickers. Gatorade had stickers, cans of soup had stickers. Everything did. It was such a cool place to go to. Certainly it can't compete price or selection wise with a big store, but if you need something quickly you can run and get something there. Ashby is right next to Ashburnham...and is about a five to ten minute ride from home at most.
Ashburnham also has a country store, but's a new store. It's nice and modern, but different from the Ashby Market. It has a whole different feel.
Anyway, while I'm talking about grocery stores, which I feel I usually do here...Stew Leonards, Wegmans and now the Ashby Market...I'm going to say something I believe, from experience.
Everyone should work in a grocery store during their life. It's hard to explain what I learned while working there but I'm sure it was a lot. One of the first reasons is that at a grocery store you are a no one and that is humbling. You also learn how to deal with people. There are people who are a pain in the you know what and won't bag with two carts full of food, others that complain about everything, others that are just particular about everything. You learn how to please people and deal with people who just want to get home and have no problems with your service. Most people don't enjoy buying groceries after work because it's a chore.
I had some interesting moments when I worked. One proud moment...and I can't confirm this, but I think that I sold $26,000 worth of groceries in one week, which I think was up there. I think I was one of the more popular cashiers when I worked. I always seemed to have a line. With the regular customers I tried to remember them and how they liked to have things done.
I have a few favorite moments. I cheered up a young women one day who was in a terrible mood. She said she was having a horrible day. I asked her if she wanted to punch me and by the time she left she had a smile on her face. That was a cool memory.
Sometimes no matter how hard you work your boss won't like you. I certainly had that problem with one of my bosses at the grocery store. One boss loved me, the head person did, but the person who supervised the cashiers, well he may have not liked me less than everyone else. He was like the head of the KGB over cashiers. I remember how much he enjoyed showing up cashiers with how fast he could scan groceries.
He once yelled at me after he asked me to get carts in the parking lot. I ran and got every cart in the parking lot in 95 degree heat in a couple minutes. (so I'm guessing I'm the only person who ever ran to get shopping carts...You don't normally see someone just running a grocery store parking lot getting carts, most lollygag) It was like record time and I came in dripping sweat and went right back to my register and kept ringing people up. He yelled at me for putting in the price for something manually instead of scanning it when it wouldn't scan. It was some stupid reason. He made a point of watching over everyone, and once yelled at me for not doing something he never taught me to do. He made work very very stressful and ran off many cashiers. Not surprisingly he was fired eventually. Working with him though was quite an experience.
Obviously I haven't worked at a grocery store in years, but I still remember my experiences there. I always bag my own groceries when needed because I remember what it was like not to have someone bag, plus I like brushing up on my skills.
Anyway, I maintain that working in a grocery store is a great experience that teaches you lots of things.
How this can apply to sports? Well basically in business as in sports, you have to start from the bottom and learn how all the pieces fit together. I guess I'd say that working at a grocery store is like the 101 introductory course to working in most businesses. I have to think that a lot of people successful in business once held a retail job or job at grocery store.
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