It so terribly entertains me how trying to embody the standards of customer service and decency a corporate grocery store like Jewel Osco expects of its employees is what got me fired yesterday. At first I was rather tempted to doubt the merits of being a good person and their alleged benefits in day to day life, but I decided such thinking would be self destructive and useless.

Amidst my brief training I gleaned a practice not uncommon to most food markets; the concept of a "sample". One slice of meat or cheese rings up to a neglible thirty cents at best, even on the priciest of choices, thus the company feels it is okay to give away such quantities in order to entice the all important customers to make the purchase.

In no time I had the nuences of the deli mastered. The occassional customer would come bother us for something while we tried to get our daily mandate of work done, but we were always ready to help them with a nice crap-eating sales smile.

It was on one particular day when a fellow Jewel associate approached me to slice him some meat for his lunch sandwhich, and then a sole slice of cheese. (Quite the feast, I must admit.) Being the brotherly, generous, attractive and extremely modest guy that I am, I found it in my heart to bag it up and give it to him on the house. "Call it a sample" I said.

He refused of course, for low and behold he was none other than the produce manager! Yet I remained unaware of this at the time and thought it odd how people seem to so often reject the easiest of free gifts the universe offers them.

At this point however I had already sealed my own doom. For several more days I came into work completely unaware my attempted kindess had been ratted out to the even higher ranking managers.

In social circles this behavior would normally be rewarded, but amoung rulers of the corporate world treatment of employees and customers are in completely separate moral universes. At this point I also feel compelled to mention that while the entire store recently received a big remodel, the employees' break room remained for the most part unchanged and unimproved.

Surely the price of training a new employee to replace me must be a bit higher in time invested and capital than that single slice of American. Then again, I must be mistaken, for otherwise I would surely already have been promoted to the rank of manager for my knowledge in effective cost analysis.

In mind my customer happiness reigned supreme, just as Jewel asked. Wouldn't the lay person surely stop in to shop again at a store which was so generous and friendly? I would think so. My father owns a restaraunt, a small business which he started, and that was how he taught me to do business.

Generousity toward fellow employees however was considered the gravest of sins. This behavior which is acceptable, even encouraged with customers was "stealing" as technically defined by company standards in that scenario.
Henceforth my manager saw fit sufficient reason for my swift and immediate termination. (Or rather forceful encouragement to sign a letter of resignation.) I don't have time to waste whining or complaining about these events, but I can't help but laugh at the ridiculousness of them. Perhaps I was in the wrong, it's not as if I own the business.

In the mean time though, I'll get my kicks from the apparent double standard. It surely has left a sour taste in my mouth for corporate environments as a whole. For future endeavors I'll pursue either small business opportunities or entrepeneurial options, instead of working for a bunch of professional douche bags with whom I clearly don't belong. Suck it, and thank you for shopping at Jewel.