Once a Grocery Store Clerk, Always a Grocery Store Clerk
The other day at the grocery store, I found myself performing a peculiar task. While in the canned vegetables and fruits section, I started resorting the shelves. Literally, I started repositioning each out-of-place object back to its proper space and lining up each item front and center. I was not trying to raise suspicion or somehow earn a nominal discount. In fact, this was hardly even a conscious act. I was simply reliving my days as a night clerk grocery store stocker.
I worked full-time night crew for a grocery store chain for five years(and seasonally part-time for five years before that). In the second store I worked(one of the largest in the company) we employees of a 24/7 establishment were responsible for ringing up customers, stocking the large product shipments coming in weekly, and then facing. The previous store(much smaller) was all about helping the customers and then facing the shelves.
Facing the shelves is grocery or retail store lingo for bringing all of the products “about face” to the front of each shelf and rack — left to right and top to bottom. In other retail environments, a synonymous term might be zoning. A common methodology is making sure to stack products two-high and two-deep. This gives an allure of plentitude and fullness to bustling shoppers’ eyes, giving the impression that no product is lacking in quantity, newness, or freshness.
Experts point out how facing shelves helps boost customer experience, regulate inventory, and increase sales. Common understanding may realize facing to be as old as human marketplaces themselves. Imagine the streets of ancient cities where produce or merchandise sellers always worked to organize their products in such a way as to lure in buyers. And my colleagues and I were often able to realize our part in that larger unfolding commercial saga. After facing the products on each shelf, it was rewarding to go back and savor the fruits of our hard work. Each morning the shelves would give the allure of walls at a museum, until business as usual would take them back to some natural state of ordered disorder.
Almost a decade has passed since I have scaled the floors and shelves of grocery stores at half-past midnight. Somehow, the basic task of facing is still second nature to me. It is in my bones almost as much as my favorite songs I performed in choir groups or memories I made decades ago with family and friends. We all have such habits or tasks we can perform almost subconsciously, stored in our minds from past roles we played. Perhaps our hearts and spirits archive those actions and roles in which we find ourselves most connected to what goes beyond ourselves.
