Some people literally leave a trail of slime behind them. I don’t want to think about what that slime consists of, but you’ll often find it concentrated in and around the bottle-and-can redemption area of your friendly neighborhood grocery store.
Sometimes, like today, several of these human snails find their way to the bottle room at the same time and spend up to half an hour nearly crawling over each other to move from one machine to the next, their piles of garbage and cartloads of recyclables packing the room to capacity.
As usual, I glance into the room with chagrin every time I walk by, waiting for the crowd to clear out so I can commence picking up garbage, carting away discarded boxes to the cardboard baler, sweeping the floor, switching out the trash bag, and finally mopping. Unfortunately the front end of the store is wildly busy today, and I, being the only courtesy clerk on duty until mid-afternoon, am repeatedly called away to bag groceries, provide carryouts, round up carts from the parking lot, etc. Meanwhile, I repeatedly miss my chance to clean up in the bottle room as wave after wave of people leave it more and more squalid…
…until that point when it has officially become a health and safety hazard. When this point is reached, I can without qualms respond to pages from coworkers: “I’m not available to do [blank] right now; I’m on a cleanup.” (At which point they’ll page someone from bakery or deli to do the other thing, which I’m sure they’re thrilled about.)
During this long-postponed and by-now-top-priority cleanup, I’ve long since made it my policy not to admit any further bottle room patrons until I’ve finished completely. Inevitably, they will come before I’m done. I think the record was a line of about seven people, half of them with carts overflowing with bottles and cans, all staring at me as I cleaned up, inching forward like a pack of hungry wolves with every swipe of my mop across the soda-encrusted tiles. This crowd accumulated over the course of just ten minutes or so.
There’s a definite satisfaction in restoring a disgusting hellhole to its former, relatively pristine state, however unpleasant the process itself may be. Maybe it’ll even stay clean for an hour or two! Dare I hope this could be the last time I need to clean the bottle room all day?
Not this time. Before I’ve even swept, along comes one of the worst of the worst with his cartload. You can literally tell whether or not this guy’s been here by his slime trails. They’re like a signature. Even on dry days. Who knows where it comes from. Everything he’s touched is sticky. I always have to wash my hands after assisting him for even a moment. He frequently feeds half-full beer cans and garbage-stuffed soda bottles into the machines.
He patiently waits for me to finish cleaning up, but even as I bring the floor to a shine, it feels like a halfhearted gesture. I know it won’t last.
Sure enough, walking by ten minutes later I note the stale soda dribbling from the doors of the machines, already forming a pool on my immaculate floor.
Oh, the futility…
Submitted by J.J. – Courtesy Clerk
