Tony
I’ve been meaning to write little character blurbs about all the regular shoppers.
My motivation for finally doing this is that I think maybe Tony died. I haven’t seen him in about four days.
Four days is nothing for normal people. But Tony, four days not at the grocery store means he probably died or got really sick. The man is perhaps in his seventies, wears a pair of big glasses, usually dressed in a button down shirt tucked into his pants. In the winter he wears this brown hat with a brim. In the summer he is just bald.
Sometimes, I start work at 7am. At 6:50am as I am sitting outside with my coffee and cigarette, I will see Tony walking into the store.
At 12:30, perhaps I’ll be taking my first 15 minute break. I will see Tony walking around the store.
At 2:30, perhaps I’m on lunch. He will be around… somewhere.
The man comes to the store literally four times a day. Once he came to the deli counter at like 7:55. I was busy setting up and I wondered aloud, “is it 8 o’clock?”
“You still have two minutes,” he answered me. So I said okay, and slowly went back to what I was doing… slowly cleaning the salad bowl, filling the coleslaw…. slowly walking back to the counter. Oddly enough, he is the only person I can get away treating like that. He just stood there and waited patiently for eight o’clock. Any other customer would yell out “aren’t you open?” or “it’s ALMOST eight… can’t you just get me something?”
No. I cannot. It isn’t 8, I ain’t open.
Anyway, Tony likes to spend hours in the store, studying packaging and prices, determined to find everything that is mislabeled and wrongly priced, so that he can take it to customer service and get it for that price.
Tony likes to return things a lot. He buys with a credit card or debit card or something, and then returns it, gets cash from it, and buys lotto tickets with it. I don’t know why he didnt just go to the atm, take out cash and buy the lotto tickets to begin with. But that’s what he does.
Last week, before he disappeared, Tony got into a mini fight with one of the early morning cashiers. She was screaming at him because she caught him going through the new newspapers and stealing all of the coupons out of them.
But, that’s Tony. Looking to save money with coupons, so he can buy lotto tickets, and have gas money to drive to the grocery store four times a day.
People need hobbies.
