I work at a large retailer as a demo person. A demo person gives out free food samples to anyone who walks by their cart, whether they are hungry or not. We go through six months of rigorous training to prepare for any and every situation we might come across in this highly complex job. It’s kind of like training to be a Navy Seal, but harder. Most of the new hires don’t make it.
People eat our food, because, well, it’s there and it’s free. And who can resist free especially when someone else is doing the preparing, cooking, chopping and serving? Not to mention the sanitizing. An important part of our job and a focal point of training is sanitizing our carts. This must be done often. I don’t sanitize my own kitchen counters in seven years as much as I do in one day at this job. And customers just don’t appreciate this.
I often demo fruit rope for kids and one of my typical customers is the mother with a young child or children. A typical interaction goes like this:
There I am, gloves on, wielding my knife and cutting up fruit rope with the precision of a surgeon, and I see from the corner of my eye that trouble is coming. I know this because the kid is standing in the shopping cart. This indicates a lack of parenting skills and a spoiled child who is allowed to do whatever he wishes.
“Hello, today I have fruit rope from Happy Kids Korner. Would you like to try some?”
Mom ignores my greeting.
“Oh, look honey. Licorice. Would you like some?” She asks her child who is apparently talking on a cell phone while playing with and covered in some other food they just got from the hapless demo person yards away from me.
“It’s not licorice, its fruit rope,” I tell her. Again, she ignores me.
Each full size wrapped rope is laid out to display the flavors, along with the cut up samples next to it. She looks at a full sized, wrapped sample and picks up one of those to take.
“NO!” I yell, a little too loudly. “The cut up pieces are the samples to try.” To my relief, she puts it down.
“Honey, which flavor would you like? The radical raspberry – that’s this one, or the brazen blackberry – that’s this one, or this one, the super cherry?”
The little terror pays no attention and has no interest in eating my product. But its there, it’s free, and it’s for kids, so she is going to make him eat it. I pray she’ll give up and go annoy one of my coworkers, who might accidentally say, spill mashed potatoes and gravy on them. But it is not to be.
The kid begins doing the thing all demo people fear, loathe and have been trained for. He reaches forward and his sticky little fingers touch my cart and are fractions of an inch from contaminating my neat, carefully arranged samples, which are cut up into nice even one-and-a-half-inch pieces. Touching my samples with dirty hands that have been places I don’t even want to think about can cause me a panic attack. I do the breathing exercises we’ve been taught in training.
“I can get through this. It will be okay. He is not going to touch my cart. It can be sanitized again. And again. And again.” I repeat that mantra several times.
Mom is not near the cart as she has gone to fetch the cell phone and the empty soufflé cup the brat just threw six feet away on the floor. I casually grab my knife and position it the way we’ve been trained to do.
“Thou shalt NOT touch my cart with your grimy, nasty hands!” I say through gritted teeth. He backs off.
Mom returns and I smile at her as she goes through the flavors again. I sigh and wonder what other jobs are out there. My mind drifts and I start thinking about a tropical vacation, my toes in the sand, drink in hand, the warm sun beating down on me…
The shopping cart bangs into my demo cart and I’m jolted out of my daydream as mom now makes a third attempt to describe the flavors, texture, colors, ingredients, calorie count and carbs, as well as the national origin of the product, the company history and stock prices as of last Friday, to her almost-toddler.
“Lady, the kid is not even two years old. Do you really think he knows the difference between raspberry, blackberry, or cherry fruit rope? In fact, I don’t think he even knows what fruit rope is. Why are you wasting 15 minutes of my precious time and yours trying to be a great parent by offering “choices” to your child, when he has no clue about, or interest in, what you’re forcing him to eat? Did you read that “giving choices” crap somewhere in a parenting magazine? Cause let me tell you honey, it’s not working for me.”
She stares at me open-mouthed. While my response to her was not quite what the training manual describes to do in this situation, it was close enough.
“I can’t believe you’re speaking to me this way. I’m telling management.”
“Please do.” I say. “And I’ll tell them how you are allowing your pint-size terror to stand in a shopping cart and throw random items to the floor. Do you not know he could fall out of it and hurt himself? Crack his head open and God forbid spill blood all over my clean cart, which I’ve sanitized every hour on the hour so I can serve safely? Not to mention the fact that you will be the first one to call one of those money grubbing lawyers that advertise on TV non-stop and sue this store because your kid got hurt, even though it is 100 percent YOUR fault for allowing your kid to wreak havoc every time you come into this store.”
She huffs and walks away – minus any fruit rope. That crisis averted, and just to be safe, I sanitize my cart again.