I don’t want to become a crotchety old man but I feel the pressure of time and weather bending and twisting me like some gnarled old tree that can only survive long spans of drought and sudden onslaughts of torrential rain by pulling in, tightening its cells and clinging fast to the rocky soil with roots like talons.
Last week at my favorite corporate pet food store where the employees seem to genuinely like greeting me when I enter, I went to the bagged cat food aisle and pulled our favorite crunchy off the shelf and slung it over my shoulder. The green bag features the picture of a crouching mountain lion on an outcrop and an attentive stag looking on in the background. I like to think of our two cats, Ruby Lou and Buddie, getting a “Taste of the Wild” just like that cougar. I paused to look at the price tag on the edge of the shelf–$37. That’s seven dollars more than the price just over two months ago when I last bought it and $12 more than it was a few years ago.
As I strode to the check-out counter I debated whether to bring up this price hike with the cashier. On one side I thought, why bother him with my disgruntlement? There is nothing he can do about it. But on the other side I thought, well maybe he can’t do anything, but he will be better off being informed. He might even engage me with his theories about the price hike. Was it due to the labor shortage brought on by the pandemic? Did people get a taste of not working and decide they like it? Is this the dawn of a new era in society whereby we value time over money and possessions?
I resolved to apprise the cashier of the price change in a somewhat neutral voice.
“Wow the price of this has gone up seven bucks since I last bought it,” I said.
“Yeah, I know. I get that kind for my cats too,” he said.
His simple answer took all the steam out of me. I didn’t want to work someone up who was in the same shoes as me. He was dealing with it in a rather graceful, matter-of-fact manner. More to the point, I could tell he wasn’t going to engage in any theoretical guns and butter discussions, nor was he agitated enough for serious commiseration.
It was barely topmost on my list of micro-aggravations anyway. That placement belongs to the pile of human shit in a corner where the bike rack is at my local Safeway.
Actually, it is now merely a slice of shit, the top nine-tenths of its crumpled, pyramid having been removed after a steady campaign of complaining on my part. I suppose I should be happy with the nine-tenths removal, but I am not. Instead I’m boycotting the store and planning my next action.
It’s all very bothersome. I’ve spent more effort trying to get the store to do the job than it would have been for me to simply take cleaning supplies and the necessary tools there myself.
It all started about three months ago when the poop first appeared. It was fresh then with a glistening sheen and sat on the concrete ledge which I can best describe as a thigh-high wall facia that runs all the way around the exterior of the building. Presumably this concrete facia is there precisely for the purpose of being able to engage in heavy duty cleaning without damaging the more delicate finish of paint and stucco which is above.
It is not hard to imagine how a person managed to shit on the ledge. It is the right height to catch the bowel movement of someone leaning against the corner with their pants down. A smaller portion of the poop fell on the sidewalk below with accompanying streaks where it slid down the wall.
This corner is not visible from two-thirds of the Safeway parking lot. It cannot be known whether it was an act of vandalism or necessity. There is a significant homeless population that camps in an open space across the street. I often see shoplifting in the store and imagine that some of it is done by this group. Safeway policy does not allow the security guards to physically engage with shoplifters. The most I’ve seen was a short female guard harassing a large, tall woman draped with a blanket, walking steadily, unhindered toward the front doors. For every one of her steps the small guard took three, some of which were sashaying cross steps. It was a bit like watching a songbird go after a crow that has stolen an egg from its nest. I appreciated the guard’s efforts.
Anyway, back to the feces. At the time it appeared, I thought that’s a shame. When I came back later that week (I do a lot of shopping at Safeway for basics like organic eggs, milk and bread) the shit was still there but it had been covered with cat litter. It seemed like a temporary solution to a problem in need of a permanent one, but I acknowledged that it might help contain the mess, speed up the process of desiccation and make it easier to clean up later. That was three months ago and every week when I came back to the store and parked my bike at the rack, it was the same.
After two months I realized nothing more was going to be done, so I decided to talk to someone at the “customer service” counter where lotto tickets are sold. Several visits later it was still there. I talked to a worker putting carts away. He promised to talk to a manager. Still nothing. Finally I talked to a manager. She was appropriately appalled and promised to have the whole area power washed. Guess what? Weeks later and still nothing.
I decided to call corporate. I was awake one morning at close to five a.m. A message said the customer care office opened at five, so I waited and called again. No answer. I waited until 5:30 and called once more. Going through the phone tree to the appropriate spot I ended up on hold. After 15 minutes I talked to a real person. He was a American sounding man who I imagined was sitting in an office at corporate headquarters in Pleasanton, CA, 30 miles away. In reality, he could have been at home in his underwear in Ohio.
Safeway has 906 locations in the United States with 246 in California. It was bought by Albertson’s in 2015. The man took down my information. That afternoon I got a call at work from a manager at my store. He was confused about where in the parking lot the shit was.
“It’s not in the parking lot. It’s in the corner where the bike rack is. Someone covered it with cat litter about two months ago and it’s been there ever since,” I told him.
He talked about not seeing it, but I didn’t say Are you blind? I didn’t say It’s just ten feet from the front entrance. I didn’t say Do you ever walk around the outside of your store? I thought I was pretty nice about it. He said it would get cleaned up.
Now going to the store was like waiting for a surprise. Each time I went was like opening one of those little nesting boxes and finding a smaller box inside. I was imagining the day when I would arrive and open the last box and instead of finding a smaller box would find no shit. The absence of shit was going to be the greatest gift of all.
No luck. A few weeks later I called a different number that was specific for customer care. I waited on hold again. This time a non-Indian sounding woman trained to sound like thousands of other non-Indian sounding women who are Indian answered the phone. She apologized over and over again for laughing at my story. I couldn’t blame her although I would have felt completely in the right to have tried to sober her up a bit and tell her this was no laughing matter. Between laughs she apologized on behalf of the company and assured me that she would escalate this to a higher level.
I recognized a call again that day at work but I was too busy to answer it. What was there to say anyway? There was no voice message, but because of some peculiarities of my phone (another of my micro-aggravations) the voicemail left that day showed up two days later. I stopped on the side of the road on my bike ride home to call the manager back. It was a different manager. This time I went off.
“Why do I need to talk to you,” I asked? “There is shit behind the bike rack. I don’t want to see that or smell that when I go to your store. I don’t want to put my bag on the filthy ground when I load my groceries onto my bike. The whole area needs cleaning. I like your store. I like having a store in my neighborhood, but I’m not going to shop there anymore until the shit gets cleaned up. This isn’t brain science. If you can’t get someone to clean up the shit then as the manager you should clean up the shit yourself.”
I felt bad about saying shit so many times, but he seemed to receive the message and respond appropriately. He promised that right then he would go out there and take care of it.
I waited more than a week before I went back. There was too much at stake. I was still feeling the vibrations of my anger a few days after the phone call and I needed even longer to have less attachment to the outcome. When I finally did go, my reaction was simply—
figures
The bike rack had been moved about four feet from the corner. 90 percent of the shit was gone, but there was that slice of 10 percent that was still there. In the center of the 10 percent was a bolt and nut that had prevented a bladed tool from removing it efficiently. The cat litter was still embedded in the remains. The smaller amount was still there on the ground too and the nasty streak down the corner remained as well.
I guess some people might call it a victory, but it just felt like a half-ass effort that would allow any further complaint to be dismissed as coming from some winey-assed man.
That’s where things stand now. I’ve pondered next steps. First thoughts had to do with spray paint. The possible legal ramifications played out with me happily explaining my reasons before a judge. Fines for damages would be a small price to pay to have my airing.
Then I thought about washable window markers. Could I even be charged with vandalism for that? I revisited the idea of simply cleaning it up myself, but that just seems entirely too passive, although arguably the most adult-like solution.
Finally, as of this writing, I’ve decided on a message written on the wall with sidewalk chalk. “Please clean” with an arrow pointing to all the contaminated areas which will also be circled in chalk.
As a proponent of direct, non-violent action I should do this in broad daylight and take full responsibility for it just as many people who have advanced important causes over the years. Of course, it’s debatable how important this cause is.
It’s a shame that my sense of urgency for this affront isn’t equal to the needs of the homeless people across the street. Maybe it’s knowing that writing “Give them homes” on the wall will likely not have any effect or it may be that I just have a lack of imagination. Curmudgeonly old men are mostly only concerned with themselves, but it’s often true that what concerns oneself matches with the concerns of many others. In that sense maybe it’s an important cause after all.
I don’t really want to be a curmudgeonly old man. I want to be a luminescent being filled with a generosity of spirit.
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Speaking of spirit, this last week I attended two big life events—the wedding of a friend in Philadelphia and being present with a friend after the death of his partner in Oakland. It would seem there is much distance between the two. There are few things quite so joyful as a wedding and nothing so sad as death.
The flatlands of Oakland and the San Francisco bay are like a broad valley between the San Bruno Mountains and the Oakland Hills where I sat yesterday morning pondering existence. I watched the profile of a jet plane head north through this valley several miles away and at eye level to me. The distance was so great that the plane appeared to be moving very slowly…and it was silent like the death of the loved one we will never hear from again.
Just a few days before I had been in such a jet. We like to think it is quiet inside a jet, but it is actually very loud. We are fooled into thinking it is quiet because we hear the ping of the fasten seatbelt sign so clearly, but our ears are stopped up with pressure and the roar of the engine is right outside the window and if you need to fart there is little chance the person next to you will hear it or even smell it for all the filters sucking in and blowing out air. All this noise of life is short lived. The sound of a glass wrapped in a napkin crushed under foot. Two people lifted in chairs with loud music and cheers. It’s all rather fleeting and hard to make sense of the contrasts.
To Julie and Dave I say mazel tov. To Paul, it’s hard to know what to say about Lyn. She was one of the few people who consistently left me encouraging messages about my blog. When I left a cliff hanger for one of my posts this past summer she wrote me a simple one. All it said was Dun dun duuunnnn. She was so damn good at not taking things too seriously and that included her own inevitable demise. We could all learn something from that. The more I got to know Lyn the more I realized what a special, kind, funny, unique, forthright and thoughtful person she was. I will miss her.
Spotty West Goes East 