Today's Idiom

When was the last time you pulled a Foodtown? What exactly is pulling a Foodtown? Well, about half of my life ago, maybe a little longer, I used to work at a grocery store. I was hired as a stock person. My job responsibilities included stocking shelves, um stocking shelves and blocking the aisles (Target uses the more sophisticated term "zoning"). You know, pulling up all the cans and boxes and bottles to make the empty shelves look full.

This job drove me crazy. First of all it sucked. Secondly it sucked, and most of all it sucked. Another problem I had with this job was overstocking the shelves. Suppose the Grocery manager ordered to many cans of Spaghettios with meatballs. This would mean that I would have to put the extra cans in an available space that was designated for something else, like spaghettios with franks, for example. This drove my obsessive mind crazy. Let's not even talk about the pay.

Still, I worked at this job for like a year. It did have some perks. For one, I got to work with the likes of Eric Palmer, Dominic Ianone, and this is where I met the infamous Grimace. Grimace was a bagger. He used to sweep and clean up broken bottles and grunt at people. Also I got to listen to "Silent Morning" every day. I was also very fortunate to meet a coke fiend named Clanky. On Clanky's last day I watched him steal over 400 dollars worth of grocery's. Clanky's performance was brilliant I tell you. He would wait till no one was watching and exit the store with a carriage full of steaks and assorted beefs and chickens. He did this like three times. There was also a procedure for placing dented cans in a chute that actually went outside. He launched tons of cans out through the chute. That was a fun day.

The absolute best perk of this job was that I got to carry a price gun tucked in the back of my belt. I knew I looked cool like this. It's what separated me from the Grimaces. Rob Carvasio looked a lot cooler with his price gun then I did.

After sacrificing one too many Tae Kwon Do test's for this place I finally quit, without notice. There was something very cathartic about quitting a job in this manner, especially since this job sucked so much. Hence the term pulling a foodtown was born. The only drawback to pulling a foodtown was that you had to go back in one last time for your pay check and receive dirty looks from the lifers. As a result I usually don't go back into a place where I had pulled a foodtown for at least a year.

I wonder whatever happened to Clanky.