Week of Mar. 27 – Apr. 2 - Special Dairy Edition!

This week out dairy guy, Pete, decided to go on vacation, and I was nominated to run the dairy department in his absence. Maybe it was because of my recent “can do” attitude that led to my nomination. Perhaps it was my personal experience as a diary clerk. Heck, it might have been just because I already have the long sleeved shirts necessary to work in a giant cooler all day. Whatever the reason, I was taken off the stock crew and off Aprons, again, so I could work all day in a 38 degree cave and oversee all things milked, cultured, or pushed out by chickens. Good times.

In point of fact, I really don’t mind working dairy all that much. Usually it’s pretty quiet, and there’s only one other person who works over there, so if a job doesn’t get done, it is immediately apparent who dropped the ball. What I don’t like is having only one week to fix the massive screw-ups that Pete left behind. Pete is something of a paradox: he is both Greek and retarded. I blame his New Jersey roots, which have long since diluted and eroded his Greek heritage. In any case, he left me with a monument to his inability to handle the dairy department in the form of more stuff in the back than he had on the shelves.

Working in dairy is not without its perks. First and foremost, managers pretty much leave you alone. Also, the milk case has doors to fill the milk from the back, and is the perfect vantage point to watch the occasional shoplifter or Spring Break beach bunny. Sometimes people try to ask me questions through these doors, and that’s when the real fun begins. Just to add a touch of humor to my day, I pretend that I can’t hear them, and they invariably speak up. To anyone outside, though, it looks like they’re getting very pissed that the milk will not tell them where the cream cheese is. These things make me smile.

One thing that most customers simply cannot wrap their brains around is the fact that we keep orange juice in a separate cooler located somewhere else entirely in the store. The tasty beverage that they seek is a derivative of a fruit, and therefore is located in the produce department. People seem to think it should be by the milk. Why? Because it comes in a jug? Because you usually consume it at breakfast? Because you have to keep it cold? People actually get bent out of shape when I tell them that the orange juice is in the produce department. Maybe I should stop calling them ‘morons’ and they may take the news a bit easier. We’ll see about that.

Anyway, by the end of the week I had that dairy department back into a functioning element of the store, just in time for Pete to come back and mess it up again. Easy come, easy go I guess.

Winner & Loser!
Special Dairy Edition!

Winner: Yoplait, for coming up with new and exciting ways to repackage the same crap and still manage to whip people into a frenzy over! You can buy the same flavor of yogurt in ‘Thick & Creamy,’ ‘Original,’ ‘Light,’ ‘Whips,’ and ‘Mousse’ style. And the kicker is, people claim they can taste a difference!

Loser: Anyone who still “can’t believe it’s not butter.” Some forms of the product come in a pump-action spray nozzle. It’s time to let go of the fantasy that you’re surprised that this butter-like substance is not in fact butter. Butter doesn’t spray, whether you believe it or not.