The Ghetto Grocer by James LaFond

Author:James LaFond [LaFond, James]
Language: eng
Format: azw
Publisher: UNKNOWN
Published: 2016-08-11T16:00:00+00:00

Langley Park

“Good God, what a place! It was surrounded by the dregs of the world: poor Koreans, poor Russians, poor blacks, poor Jews. A supermarket reflects the neighborhood. You go to an upscale supermarket, it is wonderful. You go into a low income store, God help you. We were in a shopping center that had a K-Mart. If you want to know what it was like back then listen to the song ‘Christmas in K-Mart’ by Root Boy Slim.

“My first day there the security guard tackles a shoplifter, puts him in an arm lock, and says, “Stop, or I’m gonna break it. He repeats this. The shoplifter continues to struggle, and he snaps the arm. You could hear it pop! Then he handcuffs the shoplifter to the railing in the doorway until the cops get there. In the meantime customers are navigating their carts around this shoplifter with the broken arm.

“I’m working on the night crew. It is three a.m., when these three heroin addicts come in and start raking stuff off the shelves—just trashing the place! The security guard is unarmed. The night captain runs for the phone outside the courtesy booth to call the police. One of the addicts throws a glass jar of citrus slices at him and shatters the phone. One addict begins yelling that he is going to go to his car and get a gun and kill everyone. Eventually the police got there to arrest two of them—the other having disappeared I think. In the meantime the security guard grabbed a fire extinguisher and beat one of them senseless with it. The cops told us later that one of the addicts had a gangrenous foot that had to be amputated at the hospital. Just disgusting!”

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