THE BANANA WITH NINE LIVES

[Mark Joel Lane]

While working as a merchandiser in one of my supermarkets last week, I noticed that a peeled half banana was laying on the floor a few yards from me.  It was probably dropped by a customer eating it or more likely a kid sitting in a shopping wagon who dropped it, totally oblivious to his or her parent.   I've seen babies too dropping or spitting up food on the floor. The adult with them rarely picks up any mess.

 Anyway. I wasn't picking up the banana.  It's not that I want a customer to slip on it.(maybe I do) or just mush it into a shoe  but this banana seemed to have an invisible shield around it like the alien spaceships in the movie, Independence Day. Even shopping carts seemed to avoid crushing it and I doubt people were avoiding it intentionally. It was a few inches away from the gondola and nowhere near the center of the aisle. I was doing a pasta reset watching the banana every now and then while flipping the Barila  and Ronzoni pastas. After a two hour period or so, the half banana was still intact miraculously.  

The aisle did have customers continuously and the assistant store manager passed the banana a couple of times. I knew his chances of removing it off the floor or asking myself or other workers moving curly lasagna was slimmer than winning power ball. Either he didn't see it or did see it and didn't care (the latter I would suspect). I've been in stores with broken glass bottles laying on the floor off to the side of an aisle when leaving work and returning to the same store  the next morningi if on my schedule, it would still be there. You'd think that somebody working overnight might see the glass and clean it up. Well, you'd be thinking wrong if you thought that. 

I've found chicken bones and eaten dinners still in their styrofoam boxes buried on the shelves behind products we move. My thinking is that this unsightly and unsanitary garbage are from workers,perhaps night crew members who are just too lazy to dump their meal into a carton and dispose of it. ..much easier to hide behind some spaghetti sauce or bag of flour on the shelf. The worst I ever saw regarding unsanitary and unsafe conditions was in a supermarket in the Flatbush section of  Brooklyn. In the baking section, there were glue traps ON THE SHELVES with dead mice in them. Imagine the surprise a woman gets reaching for a box of Betty Crocker  or Pillsbury Angel Food Cake mix and instead gets a handful of Mickey and Minnie. That store was closed years ago. 

But getting back to our banana...sorry...not much of a story here. No. the store manager didn't slip on it and break his tailbone or tibia. I had taken my lunch break (Burger King) and once back in the store, the banana was mysteriously gone..Someone had apparently picked it up off the floor..maybe one of the maintenance guys who also had walked by it earlier but wouldn't touch it unless specifically told to as in a public address announcement "Maintenance to Aisle 8 for a banana pickup.".  The banana was gone with no traces of banana skid marks . No one had fallen in the aisle either during my break for some bacon cheese  burgers and carbonated livation. To be quite honest. a microbial sadistical part of me was hoping somebody had taken a flop stepping on the banana and would sue the hell out of the store.

 
Well. I've decided to bring in a pile of fresh manure next time I'm in that same store and dump it in the aisle a short distance from where I'd be working  with nobody around and no cameras working either in the aisles as the office rooms weren't opened yet. Hey, I need some levity and ways to humor myself while struggling to move shelves and products to new heights where customers can't find them or reach them. Maybe I'll dump my coffee container and half a glazed donut there too. 
 

[Westerly_2]

funny story. Odd it took so long. Cleanups usually go pretty fast around here.

[Mark Joel Lane]

THANKS for responding. The sad truth is nobody gives a crap most of the time in the stores I'm in..least of all the store managers.