The job: Tischler Finer Foods – stock boy

My age: 13

Hourly wage: $3.35

This was my first paying job.

My neighbor Mike worked at Tischlers and told me I could make some money being a ‘stock boy.’ Mike drove a Monte Carlo SS and I think half of why I signed onto this job was to get a ride from Mike in the Monte Carlo which was really fast. Growing up in the Chicago land area, we raced at every stoplight.

Mike didn’t tell me much about what would be required, but I do remember I had somehow had to get a work permit to be able to work at 13. After I secured my work permit, I must have filled out an application and done an interview? I was hired.

Tischlers had a location in my hometown, Western Springs, and it was about 1 mile away from my home. It was a busy store right near a train station that took commuters to downtown Chicago for work. It was a busy store!

Mike took me to the store and I have memories of huge pallets of food and snacks in the aisles, and our job was to take that food, unbox it, and put in the on the shelves. After we were done we would take the boxes to a compactor which flattened all the boxes down – that was fun.

Stocking took forever to complete.

While stocking the shelves customers would ask us where things were, and I hardly had any idea of how to help them.

Every once in a while the store would get really busy and some announcement would ring out and we would all have to go become baggers.

If you haven’t bagged groceries – it’s like an underrated sport or real life tetris. How much can you fit into one bag as fast as possible and keep the customers from yelling at you? That was the game. I have no idea how good I was at it, but I am sure I got yelled at from time to time. Sometimes we would help older customers out to their car, and once in while they would give us a dollar.

I now use these bagging skills at the self service checkout at my local King Soopers here in Colorado and I can still bag.

After the rush, we would go back to stocking the shelves and at some point we would get a break. Back in those days some people would take 15 minutes and go ‘out back’ and smoke cigarettes – or, if you were like me, you would just hang out in the break room. The break room had an old coffee pot and a fridge with food that wasn’t yours.

What did I do for 15 minutes? I have no idea, as there were not any cell phones back then. I probably talked to whoever else was ‘on break.’

After break sometimes customers would break things and we would hear the announcement, ‘cleanup in aisle 3.’ That meant one of us had to get the mop and bucket and clean it up. That was as fun as it sounded.

Years later I broke a spaghetti jar and slinked away before I caught the glare of the stock boy who now had to clean up my mess.

Is it stock person now?

I think because I was only 13, there were limits to how long and how much I could work.

Probably 4 hour shifts a few times per week after school?

At some point our shift would be coming to an end, and since I worked after school we had to help close down the shop. After all our other work we would sweep the floors, mop all the floors and front face the shelves.

Are you familiar with front facing? It is where everything on the shelves, in the entire store, is brought forward to look perfect. It takes FOREVER to complete. Sometimes when I am in stores I do a little front facing just for old times sake, to help out the workers 😊

After the store was made as perfect as possible, our shift  would  end and we would ‘punch out’ at the time clock

I think it looked something like this:

I miss the days of punching in and punching out – virtual work is great, but you don’t hear the machine stamping your sheet. It’s just not the same.

After a few weeks of being there I remember getting my first pay check. The check was paper and I probably had to go somewhere to ‘cash’ it, or maybe put it in my savings account at our local bank?

I had two distinct reactions to receiving my first pay check:

1. What were all those taxes being taken out? Social security? FICA?
2. $3.35 an hour did not add up to much.

I think my first paycheck was for $46 or something after tax.

This was demotivating to the 13 year old me. The work was hard, and the reward was not super high. I did not see a future as a stock boy.

I can’t remember how many months I lasted, but it wasn’t many – I told Mike I wanted to just do after school activities instead – he shrugged and kept his job at Tischlers – probably to fuel up his Monte Carlo.

This isn’t the last time you will hear me working at a grocery store, but I should have learned – it’s hard work and the customers are really demanding.

This job taught me work is hard, and making minimum wage does not add up very fast – both things are still true. But, $3.35? Goodness that was low, even for me at 13.

I checked and the Tischler store I worked at is no longer in business. But, they have a few stores left in the Chicago land area – if I started now, I’d get $13 an hour, which still seems low.

What about you? Did you ever work in a food or grocery store? What stories do you have? Did your paycheck disappoint you? What did it teach you working there? Do you ever front face for fun?