“You will be nothing more but a grocery clerk,” is what I usually get in my email box but what if I want to be grocery clerk? What if I said I enjoy working in the grocery store? What if I told you I have been working for 10+ years and still planning on adding to that number? What about my co-workers who’s first job is still the same job they’ve been holding for 20+ years working in the grocery store?
We all have dreams of becoming something one day. Many of us want to be famous but it takes a lot of dedication, hard work, and a stroke of luck to get there… but what happens when you don’t? I still have dreams and aspiration to do something with my life while working as a grocery clerk. Just because we work in the retail grocery business for decades doesn’t mean our lives stops there.
Being in grocery, paid my bills, enabled me to go to school while working, have health benefits and having the opportunity to work with some of the most greatest people I’ve ever met. It’s a job I can say gave me the most stability in life and it’s a job I can say I’m proud to do because it’s what made me who I am today. I went from being a selfish and shy teenager to a considerate and outgoing individual because of how I was taught by my elder co-workers and dealing with customers on daily basis. When I “say have great day,” I really mean it. I hope the customers groceries make it home in one piece and if they don’t, I’ll be sure fix it.
So if I’ll “be nothing more than a grocery clerk,” then I’m OK with that but I’ll still be dreaming.
Hear are some great success stories of people who were grocery clerks.
Bill Cosby: Once worked as a stockboy in a grocery store.
David Letterman: When he was a high school student in the ’60s, Letterman was a mere stock boy at Atlas grocery store in Indiana, which is now closed.
Steve Carrell: Now we know where Steve Carrell gets his material: he admits to using stories about former customers at his Store 24 cashier job for inspiration.
Snoop Dogg: On The Tonight Show, rapper and actor Snoop Dogg told Jay Leno he was fired from his first job as a grocery bagger. “I was better at stealing the groceries,” he later explained, “than I was at bagging.”
Randy Jackson: Bagged groceries as a teen, a job that helped him learn a strong work ethic.
Oprah Winfrey: Oprah was a quiet grocery store worker. As a teenager, she landed her first job at a local market and she was forbidden from chatting with customers, a cruel restriction for a woman who eventually became a media icon by hosting a talk show.
Juliet Papa: After college, Juliet worked part time as a cashier (and then bookkeeper) in a local supermarket, a job she’d worked throughout her college years. When she got her first radio job, she kept the supermarket job on the weekends. “In the beginning, I made more money at the supermarket than I did in broadcasting,” she laughs. “But I loved the supermarket job and I was able to buy a car because of it.” Though it wasn’t very glamorous, Juliet learned work skills and people skills in the supermarket. “You needed to be fast, accurate and pleasant. I took those things with me.”
DJ Premier: Before he was making millions as one of the foremost beat architects in hip hop, DJ Premier worked a slew of minimum-wage jobs, like most of America’s youth. The legendary producer, who has been instrumental in the careers of Jay-Z, Nas and dozens of others, reminisced about his first few jobs as a teenager in an interview with Montreality.
“At 14, I worked at a store in Texas called Kroger. It’s a supermarket. I used to drive a forklift… I started off bagging groceries. I was so fast at that; they needed help back where the trucks unload all the new produce that comes in. So they asked me if I knew how to drive a forklift. I said ‘no,’ they said, ‘Do you want to learn?’ I said ‘yes’ because I wanted to drive it.’”
Kurt Warner: Kurt Warner was the guy who went from bagging groceries at a local Hy-Vee store to NFL MVP. His rise to prominence in the NFL is yet another one of those “Cinderella” stories that you hear about so much in the NFL.
Al Roker: Was a bagger in the grocery store who’s now a talk show host and weatherman.
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Scott McCreery: The 2011 American Idol winner was a grocery cashier in Garner, NC.
These celebrities were in the same position as we are, so there’s hope. Hopefully this will inspire some of us who are still dreaming. Always believe in yourself and don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t be something because if you don’t believe in yourself, no one else will.
