Workin’ Up The Ladder

Picture it: Tupelo, Mississippi, 1982. I was a teenager working as a stockman at the local Wal-Mart. It was my job to unload trucks, stock the store, fix whatever was broken (lights, shelving, etc.), and to clean up spills. One day in the skin care aisle, this kid of about five years dropped trou and proceeded to take a dump on the floor while his mother looked on. I was called to the scene of the accident, by which time someone had knocked over a bottle of shampoo, which had rolled through the doo. It was a nightmare. I reluctantly cleaned it up while a manager watched, then told the manager that I would no longer be working as a stockman for Wal-Mart. He didn’t fire me, but promoted me to Electronics. If I had been the manager of that Wal-Mart, however, they would surely have fired me for making that redneck skank mom clean up her son’s dooky with her bare hands. Oh, well.