There once was a time when I worked a less, how shall I say, rewarding job. Like many people, my first venture into the workforce was at a local grocery store. I was sixteen, a sophomore in high school, and looking for money. So, I turned to the “we hire everyone” mentality of the local store. They signed me on as a bag boy — wait, I’m sorry — front service personnel. I’m sure the fancy title was intended to raise the morale among our measly ranks. Fancy title or not, I was now part of the working world.

For three years I worked pretty hard at not working at all. For the majority of the time I worked, er, spent at at the store five or so of my friends from school were also on the payroll. We had that store wired. I could walk in there right now and tell you which aisles have “dummy” surveillance cameras and which have actual ones. I know the managers routines, how much money the store takes in each day, I know… well, now that I think about it, I know some pretty valuable information should someone have less than ideal motives.

Anyway, we used our knowledge for good, not ill. Mostly good.

I would start the day by clocking in exactly seven minutes late because the system was programed to round to the closest seven minutes. Seven minutes late was rounded down to being on time. In turn, I would also clock out exactly seven minutes early, thus maximizing my pay per time “worked”.

A good majority of my on-the-clock time was spent in the parking lot, “collecting carts.” This is where the magic happened — and by magic I mean trouble. We often played a game in which we would dare each other to do things; we called this wonderful game “I Dare You.” We were so clever. It started simple with things like setting off our car alarms for a period of time to see if anyone reacted or to lie down in the middle of traffic lanes, but things tended to escalate quickly.

I don’t want to say that I once got a friend to urinate in the parking lot median while we aimed our car’s headlights at him and honked our horns, or that we collectively hung a cart vertically from a tree in the middle of the lot, but we did.

Though, sometimes we did actually do what we were in the parking lot to do: get carts. One night two other guys and myself brought in 148 carts at one time. It took almost an entire shift to collect and created a train of carts about 20 parking spaces long. The things was almost impossible to push and even more difficult to steer, but we brought it completely into the store. The managers weren’t happy we were forced to stop traffic in front of the store while bringing the train into the station, but what did we care? Other adventures in cart collecting meant taking leisurely strolls around the block to make sure our carts didn’t wonder off to various bus stops. These trips typically took a good forty-five minutes and resulted in maybe a cart or two.

When it became to hot to be outside, or if it was raining, or the managers decided to actually check on the parking lot (this almost never happened), I would return to the store and well, again do nothing. When we got really adventurous, “I Dare You” moved inside. I can neither confirm nor deny that there were once bare ass cheeks impressed on the frost covering the inside of the frozen dinner’s door. Instead, I can talk about the times the game led to juggling produce and racing motorized carts — that was a particularly interesting day since the managers actually noticed and weren’t happy, but were quickly redirected when we explained we were practicing for a video shoot for school.

Despite the professional sounding title, the majority of time spent inside the store involved cleaning things. Once told what to clean I would go back to the mop room, which is the last place a curious teenager should be allowed to be unsupervised. There was a pretty sophisticated chemical dispensing system containing every cleaning solution imaginable. No matter what I had been told to clean, I would mix up the same chemical solution which had been discovered by another inquisitive “front service personnel.” This magic formula consisted of glass cleaner, surface disinfectant, water, and the magic ingredient: floor stripper — the exact proportions of this perfect formula can’t be revealed due to obvious security concerns. According to the labels, the floor stripper chemical was solely to be used in these giant waxing machines because of it’s “extremely hazardous” nature, but whatever made it hazardous also made everything super clean and all of the “work” a hell of a lot easier.

After about ten minutes mixing chemicals, I would clean whatever I had been sent out the clean. No matter how small the task, I made sure the job took a good twenty minutes, even if it was just a simple window. A full bathroom cleaning took a good hour and a half, a checkout lane thirty minutes a piece. A friend of mine once spent an entire five-hour shift cleaning a single men’s room and it may or may not have included a nap in a newly cleaned stall. The managers — who undoubtedly hated all of us — were notorious for giving us ridiculous cleaning tasks just to keep us busy — and probably get back at us as much as they could since the store adhered to a very strict policy refusing to fire anyone for any reason whatsoever. These ridiculous tasks included cleaning the break room microwave, cleaning the tile on the side of the building in front of the store, and, wait for it, mopping the handicap parking spaces.

In case you are wondering, even using our amazing chemical mixture, mopping asphalt doesn’t accomplish a single thing.

Another fun and time consuming task was a little thing called blocking. This was basically pulling all items on a particular shelf to the front so that it looked nice and resembled a smooth wall, which is where the term “blocking” probably came from. I guess the wonderful managers thought that a more visually appealing aisle would cause people to buy more food, who knows. It was probably just a way to keep us busy and out of their hair. Either way, blocking took up a lot of time. Especially when you were blocking the paper towels so that your friend could lie down behind the stacked paper towels on the bottom shelf and knock them out at people passing by. Then, because you had properly prepared, when they pulled out a roll to catch whatever hooligan was down there, your friend was already a good twenty-feet down the aisle and remained completely unseen. As you can imagine, the paper towel aisle is one of the many without working cameras.

As you can rightly see, I did a lot of stuff other than my actual “front service personnel” title. Though, there were many times that I was able to provide services to the general public while on the clock. This included changing a tire for some old woman who didn’t know how, chasing a bank robber — you read that correctly—and throughly investigating a hit and run on a manager’s car that resulted in the bumper laying on the ground. Despite all of these side projects fulfilling the “service” component of my title, the managers were insistent I spend my time bagging instead. Maybe the store should have called us bag boys after all.

But alas, my time at at the store ended senior year when I moved on to bigger and better things — though, come to think of it, I never actually quit. Upon clocking out, I told a manager whom I know hated me that I had a new job and I just never went back.

I wonder if I’m technically still employed?

Anyway, I don’t share all of this to encourage current employees of the supermarket “Where Shopping is a Pleasure” to put my former practices into action — I can’t have that hanging over me — but I do encourage anyone working a boring job to go and have fun. Create your own ways to spend time and, above all, keep the managers under the impression that you are not only doing what you are supposed to, but you are throughly enjoying it.