My job in the supermarketplace of humanity

It has been sad to read about the bankruptcy of the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co. The venerable A&P has sold or closed the last of its 51 Long Island stores.

When I was growing up decades ago, A&P dominated the supermarket industry in the metropolitan area. Just after graduation from Mineola High School in 1965, I started working at store No. 845 at Herricks Road and Hillside Avenue in New Hyde Park. There were so many A&P stores that employees referred to them by number.

I got the job because I could work 29 hours a week during the day while going to night classes at Nassau Community College. It's hard to imagine today, but that was a time when the store had limited hours. It closed at 6 p.m. on Saturday, for example, and all day Sundays. I also worked at the deli next door on Sunday and holidays when the A&P was closed.

So many scenes come to mind.

On Saturday mornings at 7, the part-timers would arrive, punch in and start filling the shelves with A&P brand bread and milk, all delivered fresh that morning.

Joe Wynne, the assistant manager, a man in his early 60s, let us in and then sat on a step stool to read the interoffice mail.

"Why don't you help?" we'd yell in jest.

He said he had to read the mail. "You never know; we could be closed today," he'd say.

The staff included women who worked as cashiers full time, as well as young college students like me who worked part time. Among my co-workers was another Mineola resident, Carolyn Cook, who years later was elected to Congress as Carolyn McCarthy.

The employees worked hard each day to make a living. Downstairs were guys we called "the mole people." We saw them only at the start and end of each shift. But they labored all day moving boxes of food, and would send up the odd case of ketchup or laundry detergent via a conveyor belt when it was needed on the main floor. The bookkeeper, a single woman in her 40s, had the particularly stressful job of filling pay envelopes with cash each Saturday afternoon (that was how most of us were paid then). A full-timer in produce was regularly on the phone with his bookmaker. When Mets rookie pitcher Tug McGraw beat Dodgers great Sandy Koufax in August 1965, the produce worker was particularly miffed and let co-workers and customers know it.

Part-timers got a good hourly wage with automatic raises. I was paid 95 cents an hour to start, and I got $1.05 after 30 days. As members of a union, we got a week's paid vacation each year (29 hours), and a Christmas bonus consisting of a $25 A&P gift certificate and a fruitcake.

We stocked the shelves, waxed the floors, and changed the prices on products for the following week. Joe always said to do the price increases first and then the reductions.

Sometimes I was called off the floor to work a cash register. In those days, registers didn't tell how much change to give. We had to figure it out ourselves. In case the power went out, and we had a crank to run the machine.

I admit now 50 years later that I cut corners to help a friend who was short of lunch money. He would buy Newsday and clip out $3 or $4 in coupons. I would cash them in without troubling him to make a purchase.

One day a salesman from Swanson foods came to introduce a new product, a whole chicken in a can the size of a football. We didn't think it would sell.

The salesman was a young redheaded Irishman, and he told Joe his parents had come over from Ireland. Joe, who also was Irish, was convinced that the store could sell two cases a week! When the manager, Tom Clifford, heard this, he blew his stack, saying would could never give the canned chicken away.

Joe said don't worry. He walked around the store with a canned chicken under his arm. He would stop a couple he knew (he knew everybody), start a conversation about the weather or something, then slyly slide a can into their shopping cart. More than once at the checkout, I saw a husband leave his wife to get the car, and as I rang up the order, the wife would look at the can of chicken and say, "What the heck did he buy this for?" But she reluctantly bought it.

After college, including some years at Hofstra University, I made my career in shipping and finance. But the supermarket job was probably the most enjoyable work I ever did. By night I was a student, but by day, I worked side by side with people of many backgrounds and dealt with customers. It was a great learning experience.

Reader Ed Ryan lives in Coram.