Scenes From An American Grocery Store

by Andrew Michael Flynn

John Updike’s “A&P” is the story that I personally connect with more than any other in this course. The author attempts and succeeds at painting a vivid picture of both an entirely relatable cast of characters against the backdrop of working a lower-tier day job. It’s also pleasing that he includes a protagonist that makes a snap and astute moral judgment based purely on heart, as opposed to thinking through a situation’s possible ramifications. The story is based in early 1960’s America and feels autobiographic in nature, making it more effective especially since true storytellers write the truth and what they know to be concrete in this life, even if they have the benefit of hindsight as Updike did when he wrote it in his thirties. While there are universal aspects to this story, it could easily have been composed anytime in this country’s history where there was a similar setting of commerce and mundanity interrupted. This particular short story serves as a kind of brief education of life in the world which it inhabits, that of the early 1960s service-based workplace, give or take a half-decade. During the first bouts of employment in a young person’s life, they come to understand the customers that they serve, along with the various dynamics at play with their co-workers and upper management. The co-workers that they’re in the same class system with, performing the same functions for the company and workplace. These are people you generally become friends and compatriots with. This is not to say that you won’t befriend your supervisors and upper management, but the daily grind will likely see longer-lasting relationships and allied forces with those you work closest with, and on your same level. Through Updike’s story, the truth of these dynamics is crystallized.

There are many devices to tell a sympathetic story, and the author’s choosing of an older teenager as its protagonist (Sammy) is a useful one. Now, Sammy is certainly not a complete adult, but they are beginning their working life and are now in the world of the American economy, even if they are just starting out and sponging up knowledge on a consistent basis just exactly how everything works or doesn’t work. One way that young Sammy interprets this world are the unique ways his co-workers exist in the same grocery store bubble that he does. His store’s butcher, McMahon, creeps on the bathing suit-clad girls, “patting his mouth and looking after them sizing up their joints” (Updike 95). As the grocery store has many departments, as does this country, and this is just one glimpse from one worker as it pertains to a short episode during one shift in the long workweek of their lives. While there is the innocence of Sammy and his learning about the world, there are sharp edges nonetheless. The grocery store they all work in could be said to represent the neighborhood that you grew up in, along with also being a picturesque snapshot of the era, that being of the post-World War II through mid-1960s era of growth and consumerism. McMahon would be one of your shifty, perverted neighbors that your parents tell you to stay clear of regardless of how alluring their house lights and Nativity Scene are at Christmastime. Updike’s story is weighted with conflicts such as this, even if they’re not loud arguments, but rather softer acknowledgements. Now, nothing ever happens in this story to the girls at the hands of the butcher, but the odds are you would be first to suspect him if something had.

So while McMahon was being creepy in ogling the teenagers who were out for their brief adventure inside this grocery store, the three girls serve as the story’s focal point of action and attention. Wherever they go in the store, the employees of the A&P react to them. Stoksie is Sammy’s co-worker on his level, and plays the role of another archetype, the side-kick. Stoksie is one of those friends at work that many of us have, the kind who play against the protagonist’s straight man persona, saying goofy-yet-earnest things like “Oh Daddy, I feel so faint,” (Updike 95) when the girls make an impression on him. Aside from the excitement of the cabbage delivery outside, you just know there’s nothing going on in this store, as there usually is nothing going on in most grocery stores. So even though they’re risk-takers in the conservative world of the early 1960s, they know it somewhat the taboo nature of their existence in swimsuits inside of the store. Whatever they do, wagging tongues and an eventual act of virtue by the protagonist will follow when he calls out his manager’s inappropriateness, “You didn’t have to embarrass them.” (Updike 97). The gloves are thrown down, and the gauntlet is met with Sammy versus his boss, Mr. Lengel. The much older Lengel is weary from the world and the absolute mediocrity of experiences in 1960s grocery store management. Yet, he still writes the rules of his little world that is inhabited by his subordinates. This is his castle after all, and probably the only place he can act out any kind of authoritarianism. When Mr. Lengel calls the girls out for not wearing more than their swimsuits, Sammy calls his boss out in a reaction that most valiant humans would do if they switched places with him in that day, that moment. Sammy demonstrates a slight rage against the machine, and he follows through by quitting his job right there (Updike 97).

Whereas you have the behavior of the employees of this particular A&P grocery store, we arrive at the boss, Mr. Lengel. The archetype manager of the story, one who could easily be dropped into any story that tells a similar tale of a boss exercising what authoritarian tendencies on people that he honestly didn’t need to thrust his title at, as they were not really doing any harm in the first place. In fact, the girls were just there to buy one or two things and would have left without incident. “We are decent,” (Updike 96) the leader of the three girls (Queenie) states when challenged by Mr. Lengel. They came innocently enough to get a package of Fancy Herring Snacks. And if a mild stir was caused by their not-entirely-dressed appearance, well, that would at least give everyone something to talk about in the usually dull atmosphere of front-of-the-house customer service. Folks who work at places like these usually come in to punch a clock and collect a paycheck, much to the constant detriment of their direct supervisors and managers. But sometimes they work together, and that is in stark contrast to Updike’s “A&P”.

Every well-written story will hopefully make the reader pause and consider their own personal history as it relates to what you’ve just enjoyed, even if it the memories are sour and not ones you’d like to revisit willingly. A few days after Thanksgiving 1994, I was caught stealing a package of pogs (with a big slammer!) at my local Bashas’ grocery store in my hometown Mesa, Arizona. My 13-year-old self wasn’t slick in the least in pulling off this Ocean’s 11-level heist, and the manager of the store was quickly made aware to my lame attempt at shoplifting and wrapped his large arm around me before I had the chance to exit the store’s only automatic double-doors. He had been signaled by the bakery chef, who saw my dastardly deed getting done since the pogs were near the store’s glass case of fresh cookies and donuts. So I met my Mr. Lengel: tired from the world, stuck at his current station in life, and holding onto any bit of authority that he could before his district manager tossed a gold watch at him and showed him his final set of automatic double-doors. Once caught, I was wordless and he brought me on a short perp-walk to his own office labeled MANAGER, much akin to the one Mr. Lengel got to after he had finished haggling with a truck full of cabbages (Updike 96). The difference here was that my store manager, Brian Poltwizer, had a kinder heart and only called my parents to come pick me up instead of a local cruiser from the Mesa Police Department. Which he absolutely should have, but luck was on my side that day aside from my complete stupidity in committing the misdemeanor in the first place. This wasn’t the first example of empathy from a grocery store employee in the history of commerce, nor would it be the last. I suspect that Sammy’s high character moment in standing up for Queenie and her small gang wouldn’t be the last occurrence of this type. Leadership is built from moments like these.

A person’s first few jobs are quite valuable to their understanding of the adult world. There are dynamics at play which may be familiar to the household where someone grows up and the schools they attend in their formidable years, but the first jobs in a young adult’s life impact them in countless ways. Serving customers every day in person yield new experiences, even if they’re just one-off situations that are sometimes forgotten mere moments later. The smart gambler would bet large on the favorite that the memories a person has from these primary bouts with employment will serve as incredible lessons for the lives that they will lead and the respective identities they will build, the people that they become. We’re all here getting our daily education in this life, whether we know it or not. A person’s brain isn’t fully formed until their mid-twenties, but even then there’s always more things to learn. The ongoing education from the school of hard knocks and the streets of our lifetimes is pervasive, and only when we reach a certain age do we even begin to truly understand what we have been taught.

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Work Cited

Updike, John. “A&P.” Literature: The Human Experience, edited by Abcarian, Richard, et al., Bedford/St. Martins, 2019, pp 93-97.