How to run into your archnemesis at the local gourmet grocer
Article by Esa George Art by Gigi Perkins
And what is so odd about working in a grocery store? You might ask. The tasks of scanning, bagging, and directing customers to specific aisles where they might find organic cat food or Alaskan smoked sock-eye salmon reads as pretty self-explanatory, which I will agree with, but it was another aspect of the job which made me weary going into work each day. When you live in Palos Verdes, Torrance, Redondo Beach, Rolling Hills, or the bordering cusp of San Pedro… the part with all the winding roads sending you down to catch a glimpse of the port, the containers, the boxes, the colors, it is all a cloister you know of gigantic serene things. Yet the human eye portrays them just far enough from the freeway to be picturesque. When you’re just trying to cross the Vincent Thomas Bridge into Long Beach, you will all of a sudden run into neighbors of elementary school classmates who became middle school classmates who left to go to PV or Penn High.
Now you’re ringing them up and pretending you didn’t notice them when they first walked in. Or you’re doing that thing once you start bagging their groceries after they’ve already paid, where you say, “I think I recognize you,” but you’ve suspended the truth a little. In truth, you saw their Instagram post last night about their dog of 13 years whom you met and threw sticks to on the soccer fields, who just died. If you’re me, this job is about lying, and a trial of who can last the longest without admitting we totally know each other’s first and last and maybe even middle names. But you don’t say that part out loud, you just finally narrow in on how you know each other, pretending you don’t know exactly where. It had to have been the “Bumble Bees” when you were 10 and made it to AYSO’s 'Queen of the Hill' tournament. That’s how it felt every day going to work at a neighborhood Gourmet Grocer. You live with that anxiety of figuratively running into someone only to remain completely still; you can’t avoid their aisle nor look down, and you’ve already taken your 10-minute break.
I didn’t think I’d ever encounter my archnemesis at work. This visitor caught me off guard about a month in, when I saw those automatic doors strike ajar. (You know it’s a good store when you swear you can even see the air conditioning seeping out when the glass separates.) In walks… we’ll call him Neville. He looks so British, oh my god. And his wife, who I still really like and don’t blame for everything that went down is standing beside him, and of course she’s pushing the cart.
You might think, Esa, aren’t you a little too young and peaceful, or non-confrontational (as I often describe myself), to have an archnemesis? And well, yes, my arch nemesis is a married man, but his maturity level is of someone who should still very much be in the courting phase, as he would call it, and be avoided by women at all costs.
I got myself into a bit of a feud in my sophomore year of high school. The theater program at my school consisted of people at the very top of the social hierarchies; no one gave a shit about the so-called 'jocks.' I hate to perpetuate the narrative of high schools having a social ladder, but this one was extraordinary – it was like a continuous loop of that Glee Halloween episode that aired right before the Superbowl in 2012, where the football team is forced to perform at halftime with the Glee Club, as punishment for their continuous harassment of the acapella singers.
No one attended football games; we all pitied the President of the Parents Association for the impossible job of rallying the student body to show up for games. The events with the largest attendance were always the theater productions: the fall play and the spring musical. Those were the glory days, before the downfall of our theater director. I may have been the catalyst of his demise.
Auditions were fucking intense. Our eight-man football program couldn’t have mustered all the toxicity in the world compared to how competitive those auditions were. When you started singing, you just knew everyone was hoping you did poorly. You couldn’t be involved in a fall sport if you wanted to make the fall play, and you had to fill out an intricate conflict sheet, indicating every single potential conflict you could have with the auditions. It was terrifying to have such an obligation, and so I kept myself available in preparation for the fall.
During the week leading up to September auditions, I was invited to have coffee with the theater director, Neville, when he spotted me sitting at an outdoor table at our local Starbucks, a place it was common knowledge you could expect to see him. Nervous, of course, I sat across from him, and he got right to the point, ensuring that I didn’t sign up for Girls Volleyball this year because he was really “looking forward to [my] involvement in this year’s Fall Play.”
All of this dramatic setup… for the play to be announced as Puffs the Musical, a Harry Potter spoof, parodying the first four books/movies. Regardless of the unseriousness of the play’s contents, the campus-wide energy reflected a ruthless, merciless sentiment. I would leave that audition process a changed person, as would everyone who dared to try out for a role.
It was pretty clear to me after my Starbucks one-on-one with our theater director that I had a role secured, or at the very least a cameo. I would at least make the casting cut. The loyal following he had assembled by being so terrifying, so good at his job, yet so unphased by the emotional agony he placed on teenagers, was enough for parents to constantly salivate in his presence and enable him. No one challenged this tyrant. No one countered his toxic environment, even in the monthly parent council meetings for all parents whose children had somehow become involved in the performing arts department.
When I spotted him in Gourmet Grocer, sporting a button-up and looking like he had really aged since I’d last seen him, I remembered the ways he would categorize the female body types of young girls, speaking of the size of their “busts” and “behinds.” What a 64-year-old can dish, he couldn’t take!
The power trip he was on was brought to a bitter halt, and it may or may not have been because of my social media post which a former friend of mine had sent to him. I posted it when I didn’t make the cast list for the fall play, as implicitly promised. And I had lost it all.
So from my little corner of the store, aka register number three (my lucky number), I prepared for the performance of my life. I rehearsed what to say to someone who put me on academic probation and further suspension. I rehearsed what is visibly vengeful yet civil. I considered the things I could get away with as a grocer without losing my job. But then, it no longer mattered, for he was the real loser. He had finally been “let go” from our school and exposed for a series of teacher-student violations, while my life was taking off.
So really, how bittersweet a surprise it is, coming out of something that used to feel like it meant everything to me while years later spending my day-to-day in a comforting grocery store, to be reminded that the world is small. Yet not as small for me as it must be for him; bumping into former students who secretly can’t stand the thought of him, their performative gratitude for what he did for them, and knowing that everyone around him is performing for him for the rest of his life. Cheers to drama!