The Trouble Way (9 page)

1970
’s

With a smooth motion of a three-card Monte dealer scamming rubes at the seedy end of a carnival midway, Ann swept the bills and coins lying on the register shelf and palmed them. She made a point of looking toward the supply shelf, as if she were searching for something, and with deliberate stride, walked behind the refrigerated submarine sandwich case, and reached to the bottom shelf. With one hand, she picked up the unneeded bundle of popcorn bags while the other hand dropped the cash into her smock pocket. With the silky movement of a dancer, she stood and returned to the shelf with the waiting subs and slid the bags into the proper slot. It was only ten-thirty, an hour and a half into her shift, and she had pocketed ten dollars and thirty-nine cents.

Ann recognized the next customer, a regular who shopped at Big Richards several times a week and was invariably in a hurry when he was with his wife. Actually, it was his wife who was impatient. On days when he was by himself, he could linger half the day. The social atmosphere of the early bird breakfast provided the older, retired men who gathered in the cafeteria a place to dodge their wives for a few hours. They could grab a cheap breakfast and get free coffee refills. Ann knew, like past days when his wife was with him, he never asked for a receipt. To nudge that action along and to enhance his anxiety, she purposely took her time. She could be quite the actress and knew how to drag the transaction out. “I’m sorry, sir.” She smiled at him. I ran out of sub-bags. Excuse me just one sec, Hon,” and slowly moved a few feet to behind the sub display case where she bent to grab a supply of the clear submarine sandwich bags on the bottom shelf. “Bet you have a hot date today, handsome, you seem to be in a hurry again,” she said and giggled to the portly gentleman with the graying comb-over who glanced at his watch for the second time.

He fidgeted a bit.
“No, no date, the wife is waiting. We have another one of her urgent appointments.” He moved from foot to foot and kept shifting his eyes, looking at her and then at the floor.

“
Hope it’s nothing serious,” she said as she plucked the ten he offered and purposely hit the no sale key on the register. “I called the supervisor for singles and she hasn’t shown up yet.” She motioned to the cash drawer where she had previously removed all the ones and put them beneath the tray and pulled the receipt tape and replaced it with an empty spool. “My last customer cleaned me out. You wouldn’t happen to have the exact change, would you Hon? I apologize, dear.” She stepped away from the register and stood smiling at him.

The bald
ing man searched his wallet and his red, squeeze-open, plastic coin purse and came up with the exact amount and made a swap.

“
Thanks, you’re a doll,” she said and went back to the register.

“
Darn, darn, double darn. One thing after another; no receipt tape. When it rains, it pours. Just one moment, Sugar, and I’ll change it and have your receipt in a flash. I am so incredibly sorry.”

“
Never mind the receipt, dear,” he said as his wife latched onto his elbow and nudged him toward the exit. Occasionally, Ann insisted that he take his receipt, just to enhance the impression of legitimacy of all her transactions.

“
Enjoy your subs, made fresh daily, sir. Thank you for shopping at Big Richards. Come again, Handsome,” she said to the gentleman being led to the exit by his agitated wife.

It seemed like the hundredth time she repeated the mandatory, monotonous,  TYFSABR closing already today. She placed the bill and several coins on the ledge on top of the register, purposely neglecting to register the sale. Had the customer insisted, she would have feigned stress for her mistake and run the sale.

Men customers rarely asked for a receipt. Women on the other hand were a bit more diligent and Ann had to be extra vigilant with them; she was no fool. She made mental notes on those who were not receipt savers. It was not as though she were selling TVs or diamond rings. She sold submarine sandwiches, popcorn, and Slushies, not something the door greeter would check customers for a receipt.

Ann replenished the cellophane bags on the hook and scanned the area around her workstation in her peripheral vision. She made it a rule not to engage other employees in conversation, especially the management associates during this critical transfer maneuver. The closest customer was several aisles away and the employee at the service desk was shielded by the popcorn machine and the high submarine sandwich display refrigerators.

The sale was the third of the morning she had not rung up, and for the third time this morning, Ann surveyed the area and did her little diversion dance and caused an additional three dollars and eighteen cents cash to disappear with the sleight of hand of a Pike Street pickpocket.

She never counted the money in her smock pocket while she was behind the counter but she was good with change and her estimates were generally spot on. During her morning break at ten, she would go to the ladies room, wrap the coins in a napkin, and transfer her take to her the pocket of her slacks.

When she left for the day, she retrieved her purse from the employee locker and again went to a stall in the ladies room and transferred the funds in the privacy of a stall. On a good day, Saturdays being the best, she could pocket fifteen, twenty bucks a shift. One particularly busy Saturday, she came away with just shy of forty smackaroos. Generally, Ann took home more than what her buck and a quarter per hour salary was for the day, plus, best of all, it was tax-free. Her “tips” resulted from skillfully manipulating the rubes; the ill-mannered bitches, or the enamored older men that she could distract with her sweet talk. Not too shabby for a minimum wage worker who never attained higher than a 2.62 GPA in four years of high school.

In her initial few months of working for Big Richards, Ann would never have considered misappropriating funds from the register. Stealing was against her Lutheran principles. But, after several events that seemed totally unfair to her, she gradually changed her view of Big Richards and corporate America in general. She had heard through the grapevine, Mr. Peter Hedd, the manager, made over fifteen dollars per hour and she made a damn sight less. When she observed what he did compared with what she and the other minimum wage workers did, her feelings gradually morphed into more cynical ones toward management. She worked much harder than the manager or even the assistant managers. Everyone seemed to work harder than the manager.

Then there was the change in overtime pay for Sundays. Upper management eliminated it. Employee pay was not adjusted to compensate for the change in policy. They changed the employee discount from fifteen percent to ten. Then, it was eliminated altogether except for those ridiculous Employee of the Month coupons. Easter was no longer a day off with pay. It was now a non-paid holiday. Vacation for first year employees was cut from two weeks to one. The list of policies that took away from the lowest paid workers seemed to keep expanding. Inflation kept climbing. It was nearly impossible to make ends meet and the system was definitely skewed against the hourly wage earners.

Tough economic times and cutthroat competition was management
’s excuse. She could read the financial news as well as anybody and knew that Big Richards had been having banner years recently.

It was not only Ann
’s view that had changed. Ann knew of at least three other employees that felt the same, and she suspected many others, that they were being singled out for abuse because they were powerless minimum wage earners. There was no union to look after their interests. Many of the lowest paid workers had taken matters into their own hands and decided to get paid what they considered a fair wage, one way or another.
The Man
was going to get what was coming to him and so were they.

Ann was a favorite of management because of her excellent customer care skills. She was forever getting compliments from satisfied customers, generally from older men, but sometimes even from women.

“She always goes the extra mile to help,” an older gentleman told Mr. Hedd.

Mr. Hedd brought up the compliment at the weekly employee meeting on a Friday before the store opened.

“We need more employees like Ann,” Mr. Hedd had said when he honored her with the “Employee of the Month” certificate and gift coupon.
Does not apply to sale merchandise or with any other offer
, was in small print on the bottom of the coupon.

“
Ann,” Mr. Hedd motioned her to stand. “Ann is an example of the enthusiastic employee that Big Richards is proud to have as an associate. She has the fire in the belly that exemplifies the best that Big Richards has to offer. On behalf of the management and all employees of Big Richards, we salute you.” Mr. Hedd did his best General George Patton salute to Ann, a perfunctory motion, evidence the closest he’d been to anything military was in the audience of an Audie Murphy movie.

“
What a loser, he was probably a draft dodger. That looked more like a Boy Scout salute,” Dwight, sitting in the back of the meeting room leaned over and whispered to Linda.

“
She deserves a round of applause,” Mr. Hedd suggested to the attending employees who responded with their usual lack-luster enthusiasm.

A photo of Mr. Hedd and Ann, both with Miss America smiles, looking at the camera while both held the certificate, would be pinned to the cork-board near the time clock for the entire month of her reign.

“You are so kind, Mr. Hedd, I really don’t deserve this sir,” she said, appropriately embarrassed to be recognized in front of the entire staff.

When her shift ended, just before she transferred her days take to her purse, Ann read the insulting offer on the certificate and reduced it to confetti. She duly christened it and flushed it down the can.

Linda, a slim, Filipino girl with long, shiny, black hair and dark complexion, taught Ann the skills needed to successfully carry out the skimming operation. Linda worked behind the deli counter at least a year before Ann started working at Big Richards. Over the course of several months, they became close friends. When Mr. Hedd offered Linda the position in the jewelry department, she took the position of Jewelry Department Manager. She had been gradually more disgusted by the odors of the deli department and accepted the promotion.

Ann had a hell-of-a laugh over a screwdriver with Linda about that
“fire in the belly,” comment at the Triangle Tavern. “I get more fire in the belly from this screwdriver than anything I get from Big Dicks,” Ann said. “I’m embarrassed to work there. Did you see that toy soldier salute that jerk, ‘Pecker Head,’ did? The dork honestly thinks he’s the general of the store.”

Much of Linda
’s instructions were over drinks with Ann at the Triangle, the bar sitting on the corner of Big Richards’s parking lot. Ann had asked Linda if she’d like to have a drink after one of their shifts together. It’s where some of the employees hung out to wind down after the hassles of working at what they referred to as WWR, the Wonderful World of Retail. “The Triangle is a dive,” Linda said, “but for Happy Hour drinks are cheap and on Wednesdays there is a Ladies’ Night where drinks are half price.”

The Triangle is the Big Richards of the dives in town catering to the class of people who worked and shopped at places like Big Richards and the Schwab
’s tire stores and Mo’s and Skipper’s fish food joints along the strip in the west side of Seattle. They sold cheap drinks and depended on rapid turnover to make a profit.

“
See how that guy is constantly looking at his watch?” Linda said as she was instructing Ann on the finer points of the scam. “He’s in a rush.”

“
What you want to do is make them anxious,” Linda instructed. “Take it extra slow, drop something, make like you didn’t see them standing there. Big smiles and lots of compliments and you’ll have the guys exactly where you want them. Always give them something extra; throw in a few extra slices of meat on their sub or an extra slice of cheese; make sure they see you doing it,” Linda said as she stood at the prep counter assembling sub sandwiches. “Give them a wink with those big doe peepers of yours, Honey. Keep the top buttons on your blouse un-done,” she said as she reached over to Ann’s sweater and popped the top two buttons; she let her fingers linger for just a moment. “Take advantage of that pair of assets, Honey, you know, give them a peep show, a visual thrill ride. It will keep them dreaming and they’ll keep coming back for more. Always make sure you give the guys a little physical contact, squeeze their hand when you take their money, get in close and act like things are real confidential between you and him and whisper something in his ear. Doesn’t make any difference what you whisper, that’s not important. You get the drift sweetie.”

“
You are so bad,” Ann said, giving Linda a gentle push on the shoulder; the back of her hand skimmed Linda’s breast.

“What a wicked little devil you are,” Linda said with a grin, squeezed Ann’s fingers and went on with her instructions.

“With the Bitches, screw’em,” She said. “Make them wait, just not too long. If they are with their husband, take care of her but concentrate your efforts on him. You want him to remember you, but not her. She’ll want to get the hell out of there fast, won’t wait for a receipt and won’t give a shit whether you ring up the sale or not. Remember not to do your thing when there is a crowd.”