While going to programming school during the day, I worked nights at the A&P produce warehouse in Newark. According to pre-employment testing, I was too smart to be jockeying crates of lettuce and celery around, so I got to be a (non-union) desk jockey instead, at a rate of quite a bit less per hour.
Our general duties were to create the paperwork needed to ship produce to A&P stores in north and central New Jersey. The forms included “E-1 order sheets” listing non-perishable special items. Each had to be copied in an ancient pre-Xerox ammonia copier. The sheets were supposed to be submitted only on Tuesdays or Thursdays, but needy stores could get special dispensation by phoning the daytime warehouse manager. There were five or six of these special cases every week, and Johnny Byrne treated each as a personal insult, loudly announcing each one as he rose from his chair and trudged the ten feet to the copier, usually with the words “Son of a bitch! Fucking E-1 sheets, every night of the week!”
Johnny was also what might be called the “window man”, the dispatcher. As tractor drivers arrived to hook up to loaded trailers, Johnny made the call of who went where. Favored drivers knew he could be bribed with a few packs of cigarettes to assign a “good” route, that is, one with easier traffic or better chances of earning overtime. These deals were made surreptitiously, when no other drivers were in sight. Particularly favored was the route that included Store 37 in Toms River, way down in South Jersey.
Steve, the warehouse-floor foreman, occasionally visited the office to rant about some indignity he had suffered on the floor. Steve had been to prep school in his youth, as he would often remind us, saying “I don’t have to work here, you know. I went to fucking Saint Benedict’s!” Steve also had a favorite compound-word curse that was so vile and improbable that I won’t repeat it.
Steve-Two was the day foreman. The Vietnam war was grinding on, and Steve-Two was angry and disappointed with anyone who believed the war might be a bad idea. He had a son in the army.
My buddy Lou had an annoying catch phrase he used whenever he wanted to borrow an eraser, which was often, sidling up and asking “Got a rubber on ya Dick?” Walt and I were the rookies, still learning how the world of shipping produce worked. 
Across the street were some low buildings and an all-night diner, and beyond them apartments with a clear view into the pool of light that was our office. Many times the guy at the desk might be alone.
One night I came back from break to find Walt almost in tears. In one of the overlooking apartments was a lewd and perverse individual who had our phone number. The next few times he called, we simply hung up as soon as his obscene suggestions started. Once I handed the phone to Walt and said “It’s for you”, but that was a prank I felt guilty about later.
After a few nights of calls, Walt and I were both in the office when our admirer called for what would be the last time. I knew he could see us, and after listening for a while to his elaborate plans for me, I made a show of looking around to be sure I was alone. I was not, he could see that, and in my best might-be-interested voice I said ”I’m very busy right now, but give me your number and I’ll call you back as soon as I get a chance.” I guess he was so surprised he didn’t really think it through, because he gave me his number. I read it back to him as he watched me write it into the company logbook.
When Walt left on break later that night, I knew our caller was watching for me to pick up the phone, but wondering whether I’d call him or the police. We had a laugh about keeping him in suspense, and he never bothered us again.
Our paperwork required some old-school multiplying, tedious and error prone since pocket computers didn’t exist yet. I discovered the way to do this on our Comptometer model WM mechanical calculator, which was only being used as an adding machine. Wanna multiply 24 times $1.69? It’s similar to multiplication on paper: push down the 1-6-9 keys simultaneously 4 times, shift your fingers left one column, push down the 1-6-9 keys simultaneously 2 times . Easy-peasy, and always right.
When I finished school, I put on my tweed suit and started looking for my first programming job. The warehouse manager, Mr. DeBow, directed me to the real A&P office in downtown Newark to interview for a job as an auditor, and they made me an offer. “Auditor” is a good and respected job in the supermarket business, but there’s not much money in it.