The "Another Bag of Goodies" Story

It was an ordinary day. I had just finished working at the Acme Supermarket on North Queen St. in Lancaster. Nothing out of the ordinary I guess, except tonight I am taking another bag of goodies home for my mom, dad and brother. I started working at the Acme about 6 months after I turned 16. After another 6 months they put me in charge of the bakery section of the store. Now, this is before grocery stores had in-house bakeries. All we had was a couple of shelves that had bread, rolls, muffins, Tasty-Cakes, pies, cakes and pastries on them. My job was to make sure that everything was lined up nice and neat before I went home so it would look nice for the following morning. I also was responsible for making sure that anything that was outdated was removed from the shelf and discarded. Ah .... right into a grocery bag that I would take home with me. Hey, they said that was OK! As long as I did a good job, no one cared that I took the stuff with me. And, since I worked four evenings every week I got to take quite a bit of stuff home. So much that mom never had to buy bread or pastries for the few years that I worked there. Boy did she hate it when I quit! Relatives heard about it and told mom and dad to call when we had too much. They would stop by to take the leftovers that we didn't want. I still remember the lemon and raspberry filled pastries that I would bring home every week. They were my favorites. Still are today. I think the store saw this stuff flying off the shelf so fast and assumed it was all being sold so they continued to order it. The lemon and raspberry pastries weren't big sellers, just big giveaway items. And bread! Some nights I would bring home two grocery bags of outdated bread. Relatives were always visiting. They knew my work schedule as well as I did. Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights were shopping nights at the bakery counter. I did my job well and the next morning the trucks would arrive and place the new products behind my nicely stacked shelves. Whenever I go past the bakery counter today in a store, I wonder what store employee has the fantastic job of removing the outdated items and taking them home. Funny how you remember the jobs you had that you didn't mind doing. It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.