Foodland – Everything That Happened .com

2018-04-232024-08-05

Brushes with the law

These are some police encounters/interactions that I’ve had over the years. I hope this piece doesn’t come off as anti-cop; I’ve had many positive encounters with the police along with the negative ones, which are easier to remember. Society needs cops, and I am the first to call for the water cannon during large-scale bad behavior.

I wish I could say “at least I never got arrested”, but a municipal scam in Clarksville, Tennessee spoiled my record. The cops there were only doing what the town demanded of them: bringing in more revenue.

At about eight years old, I was in Newark Penn Station with my father, who was talking to a cop. I don’t know who initiated the conversation, but I doubt it was my father. More likely, the cop came over because his Spidey-senses spotted a drunk. I didn’t pay any attention to what they were talking about, but while they talked, I studied the cop’s holster and gun, and the other equipment attached to his belt. I asked him what the thing with the handle was for. I don’t remember if he told me, but he did show me, right there in front of my father.

Iron Claw Wrist Cuff with leather holster, courtesy liveauctioneers.com)

The Iron Claw Wrist Cuff has a locking ratchet; when the handle is pulled up, the claw gets tighter. The only pictures I have seen of the claw in action show it as a come-along restraining device tight around the subject’s wrist. However, the demonstration I received was of an “off-label” use, as an instrument of torture. In this usage, the claw is closed on the wrist like a letter C, with one arm of the claw closing down on the upper side, between the radius and ulna bones, and the other arm digging into the pressure point underneath. Try grabbing one wrist with your other hand, fingers on top, tip of the thumb digging in hard underneath. Hurts, doesn’t it? Now imagine that grip made of steel. Oh, and the claw’s handle can be twisted sideways to increase the pain. All in good fun, sir. Just showing your son how it works. Hug your babies tonight, officer. Hope you enjoyed it.

When I was in Cub Scouts, at maybe nine or ten years old, they took our pack on a field trip to a local police department. In particular, I remember they showed us the cells; I think there was an implied threat there of what could happen if we were not good citizens. They also took our fingerprints, sort of an interesting process to watch back in the days before you could see it done on TV twice a week. They made and retained for themselves a set from each of us. The reason they gave was “In case you get lost”, but what they really meant was either, “In case you are ever so hideously mutilated that you are unrecognizable”, or, more likely, “In case you grow up to burglarize the house of somebody important enough to warrant a full investigation”. A few years later I mentioned the fingerprinting to someone who said, “Oooo, FBI knows who you are now, better not do anything!”, implying that I might be the type to maybe “do something” some day. The army took my fingerprints too, so I guess the FBI has a double set.

One 4th of July, my high-school buddies and I had some firecrackers, nothing big or dangerous, just those little ones about two inches long that come strung together in a pack of 50 and go “bang” loud enough to make anyone who is unprepared jump. We were setting them off on the curb in front of my house, sometimes putting one under a tin can to see how far it would fly. We only had one or two packs, so we lit them one at a time to make them last.

(When we were younger, we lit them using slow-burning “punks”, skinny foot-long sticks of compressed sawdust, but there was no need for punks this year, since at least one of us always had a cigarette going.)

Anyway, one of the neighbors, probably the constant complainers from two doors down, called the police. When they arrived, one cop explained (as if we didn’t know) that fireworks were dangerous and illegal, and that they had to confiscate ours and “destroy” them, that’s the word he used. I have to give them credit – they destroyed our firecrackers right then and there, by driving two doors down the street, lighting the whole string at once, dropping them into the gutter and driving away.

I got a speeding ticket on Park Avenue in East Orange when I was 17; I know I was 17 because one condition to resolve the ticket was that I bring a parent to court so the parent could receive a lecture also. My mother was annoyed at first, but changed her tune when “The judge looked just like Gregory Peck!”

The Glen Ridge police once gave me a speeding ticket for doing 38 in a 35 zone on my way to work. Glen Ridge didn’t want kids driving crappy old cars through their classy town.

Traffic stop, courtesy law offices of Hart J. Levin

Other classy towns that didn’t want kids driving through were the Caldwells, a collection of towns in North Jersey. We would cruise around the area pretty much aimlessly, then maybe stop for burgers. One night we were driving around, four kids in the car, not speeding or anything, when the cops pulled us over. They explained there had been a warehouse break-in and burglary in the next town, and the night watchman had been knocked out. They asked what we were doing in the area and made us get out of the car so they could look us over. There was no search. They were satisfied and let us drive off. Next night, different car, different guys (except for me) out cruising in the same area, stopped by the same two cops. One comes up to the window and explains about a break-in and burglary in the next town, night watchman got knocked out. I asked him if it was the same night watchman that got knocked out the day before. They took a closer look at us, then said to keep moving. No apology was offered, and we didn’t expect one.

My friends and I generally hung out on the corner by Vince’s grocery store. Vince’s neighbors were mostly our own parents, aunts and uncles, so there were few objections to us being there. Some neighbors did object, though. One of them was Angelo, a special cop who lived on the second floor of the building next door. He had a new baby, so he was stretched pretty thin, and wanted us to keep the noise down. I don’t think we were ever noisy; it was just conversation; the boombox hadn’t been invented yet.

One day Angelo came out on his porch and shouted down to us to be quiet, adding that he was a cop. I knew he was only a special cop, and muttered “Let’s see your badge”, more as an aside to the group than directly to him. He went back inside, and a moment later was downstairs, walking up to me with a .45 automatic. He cranked the slide and pointed it in my face from about two feet away, saying “THIS is my badge. Now get out of here!” That was a tough argument to counter, so I turned around and started walking home, followed quickly by everyone else. I still remember how big the hole in the front of that thing looked from up close. I don’t know if Angelo ever got hired as a real cop, but I hope not.

When I worked at Foodland, employees were expected to keep an eye out for shoplifters. If we saw someone leaving without paying, we were supposed to intercept them, then bring them back inside to sign a confession form in which they promised to never again enter the store. I didn’t try very hard to catch any, but one Sunday I spotted a particularly egregious case. Right in front of me, without even looking around to see if anyone was watching, a fiftyish woman picked up a chunk of expensive cheese and put it into her purse. I approached her as she was leaving the store, told her I knew what she had taken and asked her to follow me back to the office. (Looking back, I am ashamed of being involved in this apprehension program. I wasn’t trained as a police officer. If stores have a shoplifting problem, they need a paid security guard walking the aisles to deter it, not untrained employees stopping people outside after it happens .)

She ignored me and kept on walking. Stupidly, I grabbed a nearby clerk and told him to come with me. I didn’t have a plan – we just followed her, with me occasionally entreating her to come back to the store. So, here’s the picture, a woman of a certain age wearing a Persian-lamb coat is being followed closely down the sidewalk by two young men wearing supermarket whites. My lack of a plan was resolved when a police car took interest, and after hearing our stories brought all three of us to the police station. After some conflicting explanations, the woman and I were eventually given a court date, a Thursday. When I explained to my bosses where I’d be the next Thursday, they said I’d have to take Thursday as my day off; in other words, they weren’t going to pay for my court time. I said in that case I wouldn’t testify, and they said that was fine. The punchline? My shoplifter was the mother of the store owners’ rabbi.

Driving home from work one Sunday evening, I was pulled over while headed north on Route 9 in Elizabeth. I had a ’51 Lincoln at the time, which at nine years old looked more like a hoodlum car than a luxury one. I had no idea why I was stopped. The officer, an older gent, asked if I knew the speed limit there; I replied 45 and he said no, it’s 35, but you were doing 45 exactly. I think he liked that at least I was observing my own imaginary speed limit, and for extra credit was wearing a white shirt and tie. He let me go with a warning.

One Sunday morning future wife Mimi and I were headed down Park Avenue in East Orange. It was early, traffic was light, and I was speeding. From a long block away, I spotted a cop on traffic duty, standing on the corner in front of a church. I tried to slow down, but not soon enough, and he stepped into the road to flag me down. Oddly, he was wearing motorcycle boots and the whole strap-across-the-chest deal, but seemed to be on foot. He walked up to the window and I rolled it down. As soon as the window was down, future wife leaned across me and demanded, “Where’s your motorcycle?” Oh shit, I thought, this isn’t going to end well. He replied with something like, “Oh, hi there!”, and went on to explain to her that he had had an accident with his motorcycle, and until it was repaired he was on traffic duty. “Damn!” I said as we drove away. “You know everybody.”

For the sake of completeness, I’ll mention the NYPD subway cop who refused to give me directions when I asked him the same question, at the same location, two days in a row. His response, “Same as I told you yesterday”, is a perfect example of the New York City attitude; it runs deep in the blood and I can’t fault him. In fact, I don’t bear a grudge against any of the cops mentioned here, except for that one sick bastard in Newark Penn Station.

2018-08-052024-08-05

Camerawork

In the 1960s, Foodland supermarkets gave out Blue Chip trading stamps with each order, one stamp per ten cents spent. After a shopper accumulated enough loose stamps to be an annoyance, they pasted them into a small book with space for 1200 stamps. After shoppers collected enough books to exchange for an item in the premium catalog, they brought the books to a redemption center. One of my jobs as bookkeeper was keeping the cashiers supplied with stamps.

The Blue Chip premium catalog included such useful items as a Swank key ring with nail clipper attachment, 1 book; a Health-O-Meter bathroom scale, 4 ¼ books; and at the high end my personal favorite, the Polaroid Highlander Model 80A Instant Camera, price many, many books. About this camera, I will just say that it took excellent pictures.

Each pad of stamps had 50 pages, 100 stamps per page, 5 thousand stamps in all, equivalent to just over four full books.

Our store had two tiny rest rooms for employees – the men’s was always dirty and in a state of disrepair, the ladies’ much nicer. When closing the store at night, after all the female employees had left, often the remaining men would use the ladies’ to wash up. In the morning, the man (back then it was always a man) who opened the store might use the ladies’ to straighten his tie and otherwise get ready for the day.

On Sundays we usually had a single female employee working, a cashier named Barbara.

One Monday when I arrived at work, assistant manager Eddie, second-in-command to manager Neil, was waiting for me. Waving a sealed pad of Blue stamps, he said “I have to fire Barbara, I found these in the ladies’ room.”

“Errrm, those are mine.”

“Oh.”

A few months later, I transferred to another store in the chain. Eddie told me they weren’t planning to change the combination to the safe after I left, adding “If it was Neil leaving it would be a different story.”

Polaroid Highlander Model 80A Instant Camera

2018-08-062024-08-05

The One Where Paul Gets Fired

But first let me tell you about some other Things That Happened at the first Foodland I worked at.

L Three W-_]-omen, Fernand Léger 1921, via flickr

The three chain owners and their wives, sometimes just the wives, stop by occasionally on a Sunday to watch the money roll in. Perhaps one of the wives has read tips on “how to reach your customers” in a business magazine, for she has decided the store needs a suggestion box, and it should be where the checkout lines form.

After the box has been installed for a week, the wives are eager to learn what their customers think would make for a better Foodland. When the instigating wife opens the box, there’s not much inside, but the first thing she pulls out is a torn-out page of notebook paper on which is scrawled “THIS STORE SUCKS”. The woman has probably lived a life free of criticism or adversity, she is genuinely hurt . She worries aloud, “What’s wronggg with our stoooore? What’s wronggg with our stoooore?”, and seems ready to start a witch hunt among the employees until her husband settles her down. Shortly thereafter, the box is gone.

As bookkeeper, I’m in charge when the regular management is off. I have an arrangement with the manager of the movie house across the street. I let him place a placard for his latest movie in our store window; he gives me free movie passes. One day he talks me into loosely putting a bumper sticker for the latest movie on my car. He takes a photo so his management can know he’s on the ball, then unsticks the sticker.. The process seems demeaning, both me and to my car, and I don’t let it happen again.

One week, perhaps due to cashflow problems, the employees don’t get paychecks. Instead we get vouchers that can only be cashed in the store. This is not well-explained to the butchers, who usually cash their checks when having lunch at Marino’s bar across the street. Mr. Marino cashes the vouchers and sends them to the bank as though they were checks, and they all bounce. He comes into the store waving the dishonored vouchers; he’s in a rage, he thinks Foodland is broke and he’s just been burned for several hundred dollars. When I see what’s happened, I explain and he calms down. I tally up the vouchers and give him the cash; he is a happy man.

That part about Foodland being broke may not have been too farfetched. One day I try to call home, and discover the phone on my desk has been disconnected. When contacted by pay phone, the phone company tells me Foodland’s bill hasn’t been paid for several months. I call the main office and they say there’s been a small mix-up, and they take care of it.

There is a liquor store next door. A man who’s been loitering in front of our own store waiting for his wife to finish shopping beats her up because after she pays for the family groceries she doesn’t have enough money left over to suit him.

A few days before Thanksgiving, the store is crowded with customers I have never seen before. They look needy. Each family has a $25 or $50 check from the Salvation Army. I open a checkout lane and ring some of them up. Maybe they have just come from church; I hear “God bless you” several times. They seem so sweet and grateful to be well treated and shopping in a “nice” store for a change. If you’re able to, giving to “The Sallies” is a good way to help good people who happen to be struggling.

One spring day, two cashiers on their lunch hour decide to get some sun and perch on the top rail of the parking lot fence. Some leg is shown, and one passing car runs up the back of another. Embarrassed but still flattered, they hop off and run back inside the store.

After a couple of years as bookkeeper here, the company sends me to manage their small store in West New York while its manager takes vacation. The employees are nice; the town is working-class so most of the customers are nice too. When I walk into a barber shop to get a haircut, the owner is jumpy; he thinks the stranger in his chair wearing a white shirt and tie might be a cop. As we talk, I mention why I’m in town and he relaxes. Men enter the shop, speak briefly and leave; my barber is the local bookmaker.

After my stint n West New York ends without disaster, the company sends me to be assistant manager of what I’ll call Foodland II. It’s in Elizabeth, the same town as the first Foodland, but is newer and much bigger.

The manager of Foodland II, Gabe, is old for the supermarket business; he wears nubby sweaters and looks like a turtle. He has a scam as old as cash registers: he unlocks the front door to admit occasional early shoppers who arrive before any cashiers do, then tallies their purchases old-style, #2 pencil on a brown paper bag, making change out of his own pocket. I think he knows I’m on to him.

On Friday nights the store stays open until ten o’clock. I can’t leave until the store closes, and the store can’t close until all the carts are collected from the parking lot. During the evening, Gabe has the clerks doing things that could be held over until the next day. I suggest that perhaps some of them could be rounding up carts instead, so we’re not here all night. He says “No, we bring in the carts after the store closes.” I say “That’s stupid, it doesn’t make any sense.” After a bit more back-and-forth, he fires me. He probably engineered the confrontation because I’m on to his early-shopper scam, but I’m not terribly upset; I’m tired of supermarket work. Maybe it’s time to try something new.

2018-08-062024-08-05

Pursuit

One day at the first Foodland I worked at, I was sitting near the front door in my little raised-up bookkeeper office, what they now call a courtesy counter. I was idly watching the cashiers and making mental bets about who would be next to need a roll of nickels or a pad of trading stamps.

The main part of my job there was approving customer checks. As a general rule, if I never saw the customer before, I would ask them to bring the check back after they finished shopping and were ready to check out. That weeded out the people who thought supermarkets were banks and just wanted to cash their paycheck and be on their way.

I’d note their driver’s license or other ID on the back, then scribble my initials up in one corner to tell whatever cashier they went to that the check was okay to cash. Probably 98% of the checks I saw looked fine and I approved them. But I had a good eye for people who wrote personal checks without enough money in the bank to cover them, and if I didn’t feel right about a check, whether personal or payroll, I’d just say “Sorry, we can’t cash that.” If they argued, I’d give a reason like “Sorry, I don’t know that company”, or “Sorry, that’s an out-of-state bank.” I didn’t get fooled very often.

If they still argued, I’d call the manager over and he’d listen to their story and make a decision. If a check bounced, it was something of a demerit for whoever approved it, and of course Foodland was out the amount of the check

On this particular day, a skinny guy about 30 years old came to the desk. He looked like a regular working man, wearing working man clothes, and he had a working man’s paycheck, something like $180, a good week’s pay back then, from one of the local chicken companies. It was already signed on the back. He passed me a beat-up paper driver’s license, looking at the floor as he did so.

I’ve never seen a worse fake ID. The poor thing looked like someone took the top half of one washed-out driver’s license and the bottom half of another, put them together with scotch tape on the back, then handprinted on it the name that was on the check.

I couldn’t believe anyone would offer such an obviously fake ID, and I said “Can you just wait here a minute?”, took a dime out of my cash drawer and dropped it into the pay phone on the wall behind me. The customer asked what I was doing, and I said “I’m calling the police.” He turned and ran out the front door. Operating on pure greyhound/mechanical rabbit instinct, I was right behind him. I ran out of the office, slamming the door behind me, and began chasing him through the parking lot.

When we got to the back fence and he jumped over, I came to my senses and stopped. I didn’t have a plan, not of catching him, tackling him, or anything else; it was just blind instinct. To be honest with myself, I think it was mostly because I was insulted by being offered that terrible fake ID. I didn’t consider the possibility of getting punched, stabbed or shot in the face until I got to the fence and stopped. As I’ve admitted elsewhere here about a different subject, “I was a young guy myself then, and I too was prone to doing stupid young-guy things.”

I took my time walking back to the store, getting my breath back and trying to come up with the funniest way to tell the story of what just happened. When I got back inside, the cashiers were cashiering, the baggers were bagging, and nobody even glanced at me. I sat at my desk for a while, looking out across the checkout area, waiting for someone to meet my eye and mouth “What the hell was that about?”. But no one did.

The paycheck and fake ID were still on my desk.

As my breathing returned to normal and it became obvious that no one had noticed my impulsive chase, I was overtaken by a fresh impulse. If you have even a speck of latent opportunism in your soul, you will have already guessed what it was. I destroyed the license, scribbled my approval on the check, cashed it, and put the money in my pocket. The check went to the bank along with the rest of the day’s receipts, and of course it bounced and was reported to the police.

A few weeks later, two detectives came to the store. They had a folder with the bounced check in it, and they asked if the scribble on the back was my approval. Yes, it was. They asked if I remembered what the customer looked like. No, I don’t think so. They said if we showed you his picture, do you think you’d remember him then? Yeah, maybe. They produced a small stack of 3×5″ front-and-side view mugshot cards, maybe six in all. They told me to take my time and go through them slowly, one at a time. As I did, they watched me for a reaction. My customer was the fourth one down. When I reached the bottom of the stack without picking one out, they asked me to try again, and really pay close attention this time.

I went through the stack once more, with the same result, and opened my hands in the universal what-next gesture. They knew their guy’s picture was in that stack, he’d probably cashed those checks all over town, and I know they were disappointed in me that I didn’t recognize him. They thanked me and left.

I spent that windfall on my family, with us probably taking a jaunt somewhere we couldn’t have afforded otherwise. Yes, I am a little embarrassed by my impulsive act, but I won’t say that I regret it.