Name Droppers

The new stocker, Jared, announced at the start of his shift on Thursday that he was not Jared any more. “You four,” he declared, “aren’t who you are any more, either. I mean, if you want, I can tell you who you can be, instead.”

He faced his coworkers, who blinked at him, in utter bafflement — apart from Gwen. Who beamed back, with a big smile of radiant pleasure, which was the higher-wattage version of her default expression. A cashier, she had rung up purchases of food at a place called, appropriately, Grubs Market, for over one year. Her longevity gave her seniority over her soundalike coworker, Ken, the most skeptical of the four, and Jacqui, who was always dreaming out loud; “I could get a job as a croupier,” she would say, when the drudgery got to her. “A casino is always looking for cocktail waitresses.”

“Have to be twenty-one,” pointed out the bearish Mati, who was built like a dumptruck, with the proverbial heart of gold. He had trained Jared, who was not a joiner, to put it mildly; his use of big words, and his disdain for many of the Market’s procedures, marked him as at least a bit of a rebel, and worse, an artist.

This was not a point in his favor, in a place full of literal mines. Such was Elko, Nevada.

Now here he was, the employee most likely to be fired for insubordination at any time — depending upon how their store’s general manager felt about him — suggesting a bold new course of action, for them to choose. Mati, normally an amiable fellow, called him on it: “You want us to monkey with our badges? To do… what? Piss Kevin off? I get it — you don’t want to work here, but some of us —”

This rankled Jared, but something was always rankling him, as far as the rest of them figured. He was wiry, soft-spoken but unusually intense, and at only nineteen, he was the second-oldest of the five; he was younger than Jacqui, whose cell structure only seemed to infuse her with confidence and energy. She had been a high-school athlete, a runner; she lived over in neighboring Spring Valley, with a dazzling view of the Ruby Mountains in her front yard. So of course, it was Jacqui who said, “Wait a sec, Mati, I’m about to go front, and I wouldn’t mind hearing a good idea. This place has been a bit frownsy, lately.”

Jared frowned at the word, “frownsy” — but he was quick to offer his scheme for their consideration. “It’s these aprons,” he said, “and the time clock, and the same customers, day after day, and it’s so hot, and we know we’re never going to make our fortunes here. I have personally lost out on a couple of hot girls because they saw me putting cans of soup on shelves. Not good enough for them, not exciting enough. Mati, bro… when was your last date?”

“Hey, come on now, man,” said Gwen. “Matthias is sensitive.” She patted one of Mati’s swollen biceps gently, which he would have minded from any other employee, but allowed when she did it. “It’s just a dry spell. Did you read the temp this morning? We’re lucky we haven’t all evaporated by now.”

^^^^

“The dry spell is real, all right,” allowed Jared, “but it’s in our jobs, Gwen. It’s time we jazzed things up. I say we begin by becoming new people.” Reaching down into his apron pockets, he produced two pairs of new name badges. “I printed these up, on my last break. When the idea hit me.” He looked over at Jacqui. “You’re the fastest at everything. I think that’s your thing, Jacqui, so as of now, you will answer to the name, Speed.” Handing her a so-named badge, he looked next at Gwen. “You’ve got the touch with customers; they seem to relate to you.” He paused, while Mati and Jacqui agreed out loud with him. “You are the Face of our organization, as of now.” He handed her the badge bearing that monicker.

To Ken he said, “You’ve got the best memory, bro, for what things cost, where they go — which makes you, ta-da, the Wizard.” Another badge dispensed. At last he came to Mati. “What can I say, big guy? You’re a hard-rock champion. I can’t see a better handle for you than Power, ’cause that’s what you are.” Mati needed, or simply took, a few seconds to realize Jared was not mocking him.

Ken asked, squinting with unconcealed skepticism, “Did you pick out a silly name for yourself, too, or do we get to do that? What about you, Jared?”

“Well, I’ve come up with a fair compromise: we’ll take the best name all of you pick for me,” said Jared, shrugging as if he didn’t have much emotion invested in the outcome. So it was with some relief that he learned their favorite name, out of the several lame alternatives they had proposed to rebrand him, proved to be… Messenger. “I like it,” he proclaimed, and he wasn’t lying.

At first, their manager, Kevin, didn’t notice anything had changed. All five of his young charges continued to show up for work. Jacqui cleared her register drawer with her customary swiftness, scanning purchases so fast that some customers winced at the constant beeping from her scanner. Ken worked the occasional evening shift, especially when Jared or Gwen asked him to swap nights with him; they suspected that he had very little waiting for him at his apartment, apart from video games and TV dinners, but he claimed he had just started seeing a new girl, a claim he had not verified for them yet. Mati, who was having a romantic dry spell, hoped he was lying about her, and he said so, but not with malice.

“Where did you come up with this idea, anyhow?” Jacqui asked Jared, late on Friday night. When he had first started at Grubs, he had made it clear he had to have either Friday or Saturday nights off, but as the newest one hired, this was not a privilege he had earned yet. “I mean, it just seems kind of random.”

Jared stopped sweeping the floor in aisle seven, fixing her with a most sincere gaze. “Have I tickled your curiosity?” he said, smiling. “Well, as it so happens, a cousin of mine goes to college, down in Texas, and she said, this one burger joint had this evening crew, all naming themselves after legendary heroes, Greek gods and goddesses, that kind of thing. It said so, right on their badges, and their management was cool with it! So that was what started me thinking.”

“Well, it’s bizarre, but it’s sure working,” said Gwen, who was heading past the two on her way towards the front entrance, her shift over. “I don’t know what you did, but I feel better. Even Mati’s over-performing. Did you see him move those heavy crates yesterday? Like it was nothing. You’ve started something. Hope you’re cool with the fact that the place is jumping. I know you’d rather be somewhere else —”

^^^^

Which was never more true than the next morning, oddly enough, when he showed up a bit early for work, which was not his habit, to find Kevin, their manager, waiting to speak with him, and fuming about it, almost audibly.

“It’s not that you did it that bugs me, Jared,” Kevin said, trying to be patient, keep his blood pressure down. “I just wish you’d checked with me first. This may not seem like an important thing in your life right now, son, and maybe you won’t be here too long, but I’m invested in this place. It’s how I’m raising my kids, working here. Does that make me seem, I don’t know, boring to you, not special? Old? Because, I gotta say, I didn’t expect to be running a grocery store, either, when I was your age, but now that I do, I want to do it right, be the very best at it that I can, because…” He trailed off, unable to complete an analogy that the youth would comprehend. “Have you got anything for me?”

Jared was almost certain that Kevin was about to fire him. He didn’t dislike his job enough to want to experience another firing. It was humiliating — it made him feel like he had let his parents, and himself, down, each of the three times his supervisors had lowered the boom on him. “I’m trying, don’t you see? This is all about… you know, improving our morale. And, it’s working. Did you see how good we’re getting it done lately?”

As if to punctuate his point, before Kevin worked up an authoritative reason to dispute his logic, Jacqui’s voice piped over the store’s public-address system, “Station 2 to the back, we need some Power up in this joint, thank you very much.” Kevin pushed open the door to his office; the lights were still on; as Jared explained, this meant she wanted Mati to assist her — which he did.

Kevin warned Jared that this conversation was far from over, but did not raise the subject again, for the rest of the day. Jared got a ride home from Mati, and admitted out loud for the first time that he “may have really screwed us here.” Mati smiled at him as if to disagree politely, which intrigued Jared enough to poke him in his massive bicep weith one index finger. “You got something you want to tell me, dude?”

“Hell, yeah,” grinned Mati. “You might get boned for this, but I gotta tell you, it really did me a big favor. I’m all over that place now, doing stuff, and making a big show for Gwen, and well, we’re going out on Saturday, if you work for me. How do you like that message, Mister Messenger?” And even Jared had to grin right along with him, despite the twinge of discontent he still felt — where was his date for Saturday?

Saturday came, and Jared presented himself for what he thought might prove to be his final work shift. He made up his mind to have the best day and night on this job he could have, as he knew he had, for once, really applied himself to doing it well; not settling for the bare minimum, not isolating himself from the coworkers. Kevin usually clocked out around five p.m. on Saturday nights — Jared thought he would get his termination sometime before then.

So he was not expecting Kevin to grin like someone who had just won a prize, but there he was, telling his workers, “We had a mystery shopper in here, last week, who was working for one of the national chain stores, and well, it turns out they were very impressed with how Speed flew on the register, how Power moved the heavy boxes like they were nothing, how Face helped the shoppers, all of it. We’re keeping these new names.” Jared marveled at his boss — whose expression was classic cat-eating-the-canary. Kevin looked at him and said, “It looks like we got your message, big-time. Maybe we’ll keep you, Messenger?”

© Eric Wolf 2022.