You Think It Strange by Burt Dan;

Author:Burt, Dan; [BURT, DAN]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: BIO026000
ISBN: 5772356
Publisher: ABRAMS (Ignition)
Published: 2015-08-04T00:00:00+00:00

Pennsauken’s counter – ten cases, each four-foot high and three-foot wide, packed with sixteen kinds of thinly sliced deli, cuts of beef, veal and pork, chickens, turkeys, hamburger and sausage – ran the length of two buses down the Mart’s north aisle. I was taught to work it a few months after starting in the back room: how to stand, greet shoppers, weigh, bag, make change, and read a scale. Each cut’s price per pound fronted every platter in the case, but when the counterman weighed an item, the scale showed the customer only the weight, though the counterman could see weight and cost in the magnifying window on his side of the scale. The customer knew the correct cost of what was weighed only if 1) the weight equalled the per-pound posted price, 2) you told her, or 3) she could multiply and divide fractions handily. Few could.

My father taught me to steal after I learned to read scales. He told me we advertised lower prices than the chain stores to compete, and, at those prices, we might well lose money or, at best, break even. To make a profit we had to add five percent to every sale. Then he showed me how.

We eschewed the crude methods he’d used in the Store: holding down scale-paper, sliding boxes of lard onto weighing pans, short-changing. At Pennsauken Meats we cheated customers by exploiting their difficulty with fractions. The trick was to avoid even weight. Boiled ham was $.89 a pound, i.e. 5½ cents an ounce; if asked for a pound, you laid enough on the scale so that, even after removing a few slices, more than a pound remained. “A little over OK?”, and if so, you charged for a pound and three ounces ($1.05 with rounding), not the pound and two ounces ($.99) the scale showed.

Were odd weight opportunities lacking, you estimated the bill as you began toting, calculated five percent, and added that amount to the total. Sometimes you used both methods. If caught using either, you apologized, corrected the bill, and fixed the customer’s face in mind, in case she shopped there again. Most walked away unaware they’d been cheated.

Every week I stole, from every customer I could steal from, and mostly got away with it. Few expected a boy to fleece them. I chattered so as to ingratiate and distract; studied clothes, faces, conversations to guess those brighter or more alert and harder to cheat. A fair few became regulars and trusted me. From them I stole ten percent, to keep my average up. Almost all were working-class women in shabby clothes, thin coats in winter, with poor teeth, squalling infants or puling toddlers, faces smeared with chocolate or lollipops, tugging their mothers’ skirts.

I flushed with shame, not embarrassment, whenever I was caught, once or twice a week, making hard lots harder. I was ashamed each time I cheated, and I waited on tens of thousands in those eight years on the counter. The sense of guilt stayed with me.

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