the Regulars

After working at the candy-store for roughly eight months, I've compiled a mental list of "regulars"... the married couple who raid the British candy-bar section. The middle-aged man who samples every new gelato flavor. The two teenagers who come in twice a week after track practice. The frugal woman who argues about the tax-fare until I deduct it from her purchase and pretend it doesn't exist.

There is an ease about the Regulars that transcends other customers: they circle the store almost fluidly, cutting in front of the less experienced customers and swooping their hands into their favorite jars, for they know where their favorite candies are stocked. How the pricing system works. What day of the week the supply-load comes.

The Regulars often make conversation as if they are part of the candy store, abusing the pronoun "we" as if they are also paid to stock the shelves and dust the counters:

"When do we get in our Christmas candy?"

"Ohh, we have new decorations I see!"

"We stocked the British section!"

While this over-familiarity is irritating, it isn't until the Regulars come to pay that I notice a change in their routine comfort: as they approach the register, their conversational ease weakens, and they start making comments to rationalize their purchase: "I'm buying these for a friend from England." "Just another candy-bar!" "Long day at work, I need a pick-me-up."

As they watch me ring up the same candy-bar that they bought the day before, their eyes start to shift: they know they are candy store regulars, and they know I know they are candy-store regulars. I can detect this unspoken shame, because I am one myself.

Before I got the job at the candy-store, I showed my face regularly: stopping in for a "candy fix" (as I would soon begin calling it)--a mixed bag of Jujy-Fruits, Sourpatch Watermelons, and Confectioner's mints. I had developed a first-name relationship with my boss, and, quickly became familiar with her three children who were often in the store during my visits. If I passed her daughter with her friends on the street, I would say hello, and it didn't occur to me that if her daughter's friends happened to ask how she knew me, she would say she didn't. I was simply a regular at her mother's candy-store.

There are regulars at every store: we see them at coffee-shops, and nearly feel envious of their unspoken importance, as the vendor prepares their "usual" from memory.
We see them at record stores, where the cashier approaches them in the aisle to recommend a new album they know they will like, holding special material aside for their next visit.
There is something "hip" about being a regular at any other store...a sign of importance, or aged wisdom. But not the candy store. When frequenting a candystore, you are not seen for your knowledge of music. You are not catered to for your coffee-driven "on the run" schedule. While wading through a crowd of small children to sift through your favorite jars, you are seen as a juvenile and an addict; and when the store-worker addresses you by name over the crowd of children, you do not feel welcomed, but pitied, and slightly embarassed with your purchase.

"OUT you dirty thieves!"

There was a theft attempt in the candy-store. I did not actually witness the scene, but arrived shortly afterwards, creeping into my workplace on my night off to buy candy, only to find my co-worker pacing behind the register in a heated fuss, relaying the details to my boss over the store phone:


Three middle-school girls.

Three visits in one day.

Eyeing the same three jars.

Caught hoarding rootbeer barrels and Wax Bottles in their coat sleeves.

Eavesdropping on this conversation while filling a bag with Sourpatch Watermelons brought three questions to my mind:

1. Why do I insist on lurking around my workplace on my day off?
2. What kind of job am I working where Wax Bottles and Rootbeer Barrels are deemed crucial sources of income?
3. Why were these children so determined: making three failed attempts to thieve the two least attractive candies in the store?

While the first two questions were better left unanswered, I walked home pondering the third: Rootbeer barrels? Wax bottles? Did you really have to steal those?

First off, it should be understood that I am in no way a thief: moral obligations aside, the thought of stealing is a process that disagrees with my nervous system: the sound of the Wal-Mart door-alarm gives me a panic-driven headache, and the mere thought of having to burden my parents to bail me out of a Supermarket Humanities Office embarasses me beyond reason. Though I am not a thief, it is not to say I don't recall any instances where I have stolen, for I remember a rootbeer barrel incident of my own childhood:

* * *

I was with my mother in Shaw's, trolling three feet behind when we passed the "pick your own candy" bins: the wrapped peppermints, the bridge mix, the vanilla wafers, the gum-drops...I don't know what my thought process was at that age, but I felt a heightened motivation to swipe a piece of candy from the bin without paying the five cents. I had it planned in my mind: I wanted an orange fruit slice to savor slowly on the ride home, but as I bent closer to the bins, I felt my face grow hot and my hands shake: I grabbed the first piece of candy in reach, uncovering the sticky contents later to find that it was not a coveted fruit slice, but rather a Rootbeer Barrel: I hated Rootbeer Barrels.
While hiding the Rootbeer Barrel in the nook of the car door, I realized it was not the idea of eating the candy that gave me satistfaction, and it wasn't until my mother found the Rootbeer Barrel two weeks later that I noticed my attachment to this melted gem: she peeled it from the door. Blamed Stephen for never cleaning up after himself. And threw it in the snow.

***

I think about the three girls. I undoubtebly feel annoyed towards their persistence to steal something as trivial as candy, yet I also feel a strange pity as I envision my co-worker denouncing them from the store. Their victorious scheme had failed, and as I picture them emptying their sticky pockets in devestation, I see my own Rootbeer Barrel melting in a heap of snow: all credit for the thieving process pinned on my brother Stephen's laziness.

THE WALL OF SHAME

*If You Steal From Our Store We Will....*
1. Call your parents.
2. Call the police.
3. Add your picture to our WALL OF SHAME,ending your candy
store privileges.

~DO NOT TURN A GOOD EXPERIENCE INTO A BAD ONE!~

...This threat hangs above the Jelly-Beans and Cinnamon Bears, framed in vibrant pink construction paper.

When my boss pinned this sign to the wall, I can imagine her main intent was to haunt children with a bone-shilling fear of being watched while hoarding candy: similar to a perverse Santa Claus who would rather watch children steal quarters from their siblings' Velcro wallets than sleep. Customers are constantly asking to see this Wall of Shame, expecting me to lurk into the back room and return with a large bulletin board tacked with photos of red-faced children....these customers are sadly unaware that, similar to Santa Claus, the Wall of Shame doesn't actually exist.

Regardless of my boss' intent, this colorful sign is not seen as threatening, but rather entertaining for all age groups. Adults find it cute, in a pathetically helpless sense, middle-aged men often asking if I am really going to phone their parents if they steal a root beer barrel.

Teenagers find it incredibly corny, teasing me beyond the counter by tingling their fingertips and moaning like Halloween ghouls,while young children find it necessary to pinpoint everything theoretically wrong about this sign, bantering me with questions as if I were the mad mind behind the irrational procedure.

I never liked children with the confidence to question: their voices climb towards a nasally tone, and as I watch their mouths curl and their eyes narrow, they are no longer cute, but rather serpentine.

"How do you even know my mom's phone number?" they often ask in a sing-song fashion.

Depending on their age, this question is sometimes easy to answer with a simple "We just do," and, like the ever-present Santa Claus, I feel creepish and invasive: interfering with the home-life they once thought was "safe." While this question is easy to avoid, the second one is always a bit dehumanizing:

"How are you even going to get my picture?"

I envision myself locking the store doors and barricading the children into the Pucker Powder corner with a Poloroid Camera, snapping vehemently until they empty their pockets of thefted gum-drops. This disturbing mental situation causes my cheeks to flush, and as I stare into their beady faces, I know they have won. Our only form of punishment has been proven faulty, and slightly inhumane.

Where is this "Wall of Shame", you ask? Standing uncomfortably behind the register: defeated and completely defenseless.

Jumping frogs, Candy Corn and Waldorf Children

My boss hired a middle-aged woman to paint a fluorescent mural outside of our store. We are located beneath the sidewalk in a cramped space that was once a Wine Cellar:the chalk-board sign and helium balloons fail to draw attention to the fact that we do indeed exist, therefore this woman crouches in front of the building each day to paint a scene of blue skies, bubbles, a picket fence, and a vibrant red door, in hopes of attracting (if not blinding) walkers.

Every time this woman comes, she brings her daughter: a highly energized eleven year old who insists on helping us while her mother paints.

She is a Waldorf child. When being warned of this the first time, I did not know what "Waldorf" meant: I thought it was a physical ailment--come to find it was not an ailment at all, but rather a higher form of education, emphasizing hands-on experiences and morbid sing-a-longs.



"What should I do now?" "What do you want me to do?"
She followed me at the hip, repeating these questions until I set down a twenty-pound box of Candy Corn, instructing her to make "Dollar Bags" and tie them off with orange and black ribbon. This possibly violated every child labor law in the country, yet kept her occupied as she sang a creepish song about a foolish frog that jumped into traffic and died. She learned that one at school.

Her eager curiosity turned to pushiness. She was now following me around the store, directing "what bins I should fill", where I should rearrange jars, and what spots on the floor needed a good sweeping. When you find yourself growing intimidated by an eleven year old's structural commands, you come to realize how ridiculous your job is.

Every time she dropped a piece of candy, she asked what she should do with it.
"Eat it or throw it away," was my response, and, after catching onto this quickly, she persisted on dropping candy pellets until her teeth developed a coat of colorful dyes.

Every time a customer came in, I felt a bit foolish, if not criminal, as the underage child stood behind the register, telling the customer what to do in "our" store. When the store fell silent, she continued to sing again. About the same frog.

At the end of the night, we began to clean the store together. She picked up (and ate) the miscellaneous dropped pieces of candy as I folded boxes, my ears painfully raw due to the constant stream of questions and haunting amphibians.

When she had finished collecting the spare candy, I asked her to wash dishes while I counted out the register. For the first time in the entire night, she stopped completely, looking up at me with a heavy fear in her eyes: "I cant." she replied, somewhat bashfully. "I am afraid of dishes. I am afraid my hand will fall down the drain."

Dealing Candy to Minors

Candy has always been one of my guiltless pleasures, and after thrusting myself into the downtown candy-store in search of a job, the owner finally agreed to hire me.
I always liked candy-store clerks: they greeted me with a toothy grin resembling mint chicklets, and never commented on the questionable amount of Bottlecaps I planned on funneling into my mouth in one night. They never antagonized me for choosing the hideous candies like Jujy-Fruits or Anise Bears. They never told me to slow down on the sugar before my teeth fell out.
I imagined the children would view me the same way I viewed the candy-store clerks of my childhood: the rosy-cheeked woman with the pinched waist. The woman mothers envied simply because their children liked her more than them...Though things have changed. While working in a candy store during the "new parenting" boom, sugar is viewed as the devil's chew toy, and I do not see myself as an angelic figure at all, but rather a skantily dressed dealer selling Oxycotion to minors on the playground.

I watch parents enter the Candy Store with pained expressions on their faces, gripping nervously at the childrens' shirt sleeves while spewing commands to make this trip a "safe" trip indeed:
"You can have ONE gummy worm, Sharon. I said ONE."
"Do you know how much SUGAR is in a single SERVING of those?"
"Candy CIGARETTES?! Jesus, What message do THESE sell?!" (this comment is often accompanied with an offended glare in my direction, as if I've laced the entire "vintage candy" table with hints of tobacco and pornographic artwork.)

When these sugar-fearing parents arrive, I hear a chained repetition of the words"Carbohydrates" "Calories" and "Cavities": the three "C"s that no child took into consideration ten years ago while buying handfulls of Charleston Chews at the corner gas station.