"Mornin', Charlie," he said to the store's manager.
"Vince. Hey. Congratulations!"
"Oh, right. Um...thank you, sir!"
"Hey. Stop by my office before you leave today, okay?" the store manager demanded more than asked.
"Okay. Will do," came the reply without a request for additional information.
Vince Barrow pulled on a green Publix apron, complete with his name tag, and got ready to to what he'd been doing for the last five and a half years—bagging groceries. It didn't pay much, but it was still a great little job for a recently-graduated college student, and especially now before he really got serious about looking for work in in his chosen field. In the meantime, he planned on working as many hours as he could to put some money aside for the proverbial rainy day.
He started working there back in high school, and once he was in college, it was his way of helping out. His parents had sacrificed so much to pay his tuition, room and board, and everything else associated with going to school, so working as many hours a week as he could on weekends and during breaks to help out seemed like the least he could do. It took some of the burden off of them, and it also allowed him a very unique opportunity he'd enjoyed since he started working there.
From the many conversations he'd had with other baggers since his first day, he was quite possibly the only one who appreciated it—or even saw it—but it was one of the things he loved most about what he called his 'jobette'. The only exception was a 76-year old man named Wilbur, a widower who'd served in Vietnam, and like Vince, he loved interacting with people of all ages.
Vince took a look at himself in the mirror hanging on the wall in the break room where he kept his apron, smiled approvingly, and headed out onto the floor, ready for another eight hours of fun. It had nothing to do with him being a good looking guy with sandy-blond hair and an athletic physique. Vince wasn't a 'gym rat', but he'd played two sports in high school and still took very good care of himself. That, plus the very attractive face he'd been blessed with, made him a hit with the fairer sex. And that, as he'd learned, was both a blessing and a curse. The self-approval came from his having stuck with this mindless job all that time and for never once having been late for work.
"Vince! Over here!" his favorite cashier called out as soon as she saw him.
"Be right there!" he called back as he headed her way.
He got to her register, grabbed a rack of plastic bags, set it on the counter, opened a couple of them up, and started dropping the customer's groceries into them.
Vince had just graduated from the University of Florida in Gainesville, but lived in the city of Ocala some 40 miles nearly due south. Ocala was a mid-sized city with almost 60,000 residents. It was large enough to have some of the big-city feel he occasionally liked, but small enough not to feel cold and impersonal, something he liked even more about his home town.
It wasn't unusual to bag a full load of groceries for someone he'd never seen been. Over the years it did had happened many times, and this was one of them. A man of about 60 was picking up what looked like supplies for a barbecue, and this time of year was perfect for being outside—assuming one liked Florida's hot, humid weather, of course.
Vince dropped the last bag in the man's shopping cart then asked him if he'd like some help, only to be taken aback by the man's terse reply.
"What? Do you think I look too damn old to take out my own groceries?" the man replied, his tone heavy with indignation.
"No, sir. Not at all. Just asking," Vince told him with a smile.
The man shook his head, snorted, then pushed the cart out by himself.
"Well. That was pleasant," Vince said just loudly enough for the woman running the register to hear.
She was Margaret Clark who was in her mid-40s, had shoulder-length red hair, and wore plastic, black-rimmed glasses. She was always friendly, and Vince couldn't help but think she saw him as more than just someone who bagged groceries for her. She was single and raising two teenage boys, and at 23, Vince realized she could be his mother had she had a child at around that same age he currently was.
Margaret was also a good 40-50 pounds overweight, and as much as Vince liked her, the thought of...well, the thought wasn't something he cared to think about. But he'd gotten used to her flirting a long time ago and let her do so anytime she wanted without any possibility of a complaint. Vince was an easygoing guy who didn't take things too seriously, and occasionally, he even flirted back, but it wasn't Margaret who made the job so interesting.
What he loved was the never-ending parade of women from between 20 and 50 who shopped there. And more specifically, it was the fact that many of them were somewhere between cute and downright gorgeous. Most were just average people, and he enjoyed the friendly banter with them as much as he did with the 'beautiful people', but it was the latter group that made the job so enjoyable.
Publix attracted people from all social and income levels, but it obviously wasn't money that held his interest. It was the enjoyment he got from talking with the women he found attractive, and especially those who flirted with him. It wasn't that he was any less polite to those he didn't see as beautiful. Quite the opposite was true. Vince treated all of them respectfully, and enjoyed talking to anyone who was sociable. But there was just something about meeting beautiful women he'd never seen before and getting to know them that made this job worth his time.
He'd hooked up with a fair number of younger, unattached women over those five-plus years, but only a couple of them more than twice, and none of them from the store. Sure, he had all kinds of opportunities on campus, but he'd never gotten serious with any college girl he'd hooked up with. After 'falling in love' in high school and getting his heart broken, he'd stuck to no-frills relationships ever since.
Something else he found interesting was how his tastes had slowly changed over the last five years. Initially, any woman over the age of about 21 seemed old to him and had no appeal. But over time, he began appreciating just how beautiful women in their late 20s and even early 30s were. And now, he couldn't help but feel the same way about quite a few women who were even in their mid-to-late 40s. Just not Margaret.
He laughed when he wondered if there would ever be a firm, upper-age boundary, but for now that seemed to be someone near 50. That said, he knew he'd be willing to at least hook up with a very attractive woman over his self-imposed age limit were he given the opportunity.
As far as the older women he found attractive, most of them were married, and having been raised by good, decent parents, married women were strictly off limits. That still left a fair amount of those who were either divorced or widowed or the very few who'd never yet been married.
Most of the unmarried types were under 30, but Vince didn't really care about how old they were or why they were unattached. He just enjoyed talking with them, and once he got to know them, it was amazing the kind of things they would tell him on the way out to their cars.
He'd also learned that many of these older women were lonely and often very lonely. Again, the ones who shared that kind of information tended to be married, and more often than not, there was an implied invitation for him to...stop by the house sometime. The 'sometime' clearly meant when their husbands were at work, and although he'd never do it, he normally joked along saying, "Yeah, sure. One of these days."
Every now and then the invitations were more direct, and at least twice before, he'd been given a phone number and told he could have 'anything he wanted' in the way of a tip. On one of those occasions, he'd been given a $20 bill in a...very creative way. Had he known, he'd have declined the cash because of Publix's no-tipping policy.
Vince laughed when he recalled how that particular woman came up behind him as he was putting her groceries away. He knew she was very, very close to him, and when she reached around him, he just smiled. What he didn't know was that she'd reached underneath his apron and placed the twenty in his jeans. Not in a pocket, though, but somewhere...in between them.
He'd learned back in junior high and had it confirmed many times in high school that he was a good looking guy, and that was something he never took for granted. Another thing his parents had instilled in him was that he'd done nothing to earn that and to always remember it could be taken away in an instant via some kind of accident.
And were he to be fortunate to live long enough, time and old age would eventually take it away no matter how hard he tried to hold onto it. It was purely the luck of the draw, and while it was often an advantage in life, he'd been taught to never get full of himself or treat anyone not so genetically blessed as though they were any less important due to their lot in life's 'lottery of looks'. And, when the attention became obsessive, as it had two or three times, those same looks felt like more a burden than a blessing.
So as the grumpy, old man snorted and pushed his way by, Vince did his best to stay cheerful and upbeat knowing that there were good days and bad days, and that applied to customers, as well. For all he knew, the man may have just lost a job or even a loved one. It was more likely he was just an unhappy man, but because he had no idea what the truth was, he always gave people the benefit of the doubt.
For the next several hours, there was a steady stream of customers, and Vince knew nearly all of them by face, and most of them by name. He could also predict who'd be there depending on the time and day of the week, as many shoppers had a strict routine they adhered to.
"Mrs. Harris. How are you today?" Vince asked halfway through his shift when the attractive, mother of two came through a few minutes later. She was the older woman who'd 'slipped him the twenty'.
She smiled at him, leaned closer then said, "Me? Oh, I'm...still waiting."
