Good Work

It’s the little things that matter.

During our last overseas posting in a Central Asia former Soviet republic, we had many chances to experience the customer service for which the old USSR was known. We shopped, once, in an old G.U.M. department store. Once was enough. Fortunately, after the fall of communism, private companies took up the slack from the state-owned stores, but the old Soviet disdain for customer service still remained.

A chain of Turkish grocery stores opened a store near where we lived, so we mostly shopped there. One feature we appreciated was a bulk food department, where they stocked a fairly decent range of dried fruit, nuts, and the like. The only downside was the officious clerk who would glare at us from behind the counter. I never figured out why, but because it was like buying dried apricots from a DMV, I liked to use the local government nomenclature for the department, so it became the State Committee for Retail Distribution of Bulk Dried Foods to the Peoples. They sold a Corn Nut-like product we often bought from the glaring clerk from a bin we called the Ministry of Corn Nuts, which is how the State Committee level of administration was subdivided into sub-levels.

Guffaw if you must, but this was our lived experience.

In fact, the only person who we looked forward to seeing when we went shopping was a little old lady who sold a local homemade bread that was like a cross between a crepe and a tortilla. Each time my son bought out her inventory, and we always bought out her inventory whether we needed it or not, she would utter what we understood was a blessing, so we called her the blessing lady. Once, she grabbed Switter, Jr., who towered over her, and planted a big kiss on his cheek instead of giving him a blessing. The boy returned to the car with the blessing lady’s inventory and bright red cheeks.

Fast forward to last week. I am the husband-hunter-gatherer who does the weekly grocery shopping from a list put together by Mrs. Switter based upon the layout of the store. The weekly shopping has all the wasted trippage squeezed from it by her hyper-efficient mind. I turn right at the entrance and proceed east to the State Committee for Retail Distribution of Fresh Stuff to the Peoples, but without the DMV ambiance, and begin there. The people who work there are friendly and tolerant of my perennial question about whether they ever found any tarantulas in the banana boxes. Because I finally cracked the code on how to open the thin plastic produce bags, a secret I am loathe to share for fear it will create problem solving dependencies among my readers, I much more efficiently bag the required items.

After the first State Committee, I head directly to the State Committee for Retail Distribution of Bulk Dried Foods to the Peoples. This is where things fall apart for me. I, as a civilian member of the buying public, have direct access to all the bounty in those bins. There is no bitter hireling between me and the Corn Nuts. Sometimes I stand and stare at it all with a sense of gratitude and awe at the abundance, the variety, the orderliness, and the cleanliness. Also the freedom to gather what I am instructed to gather. But mostly, I am grateful for the kind, helpful, and always cheerful non-DMVish, non-officious, non-General Secretary to the State Committee for Retail Distribution of Bulk Dried Foods to the Peoples young woman who is almost always there when I perform my shopping duties.

A few months ago, as I stood and stared in a Zen-like trance at the beauty and the bounty before me, she asked me if I needed help finding something. I said something about gratitude, something, something, places I’ve lived, something something, something Substack Switter’s World, something, free subscription. She said she would enjoy signing up to Switter’s World. That was about the time I wrote a piece called July 4 and the Grocery Store, and I was actually thinking about the State Committee for Retail Distribution of Bulk Dried Foods to the Peoples, except it was the good one in Idaho.

Last week, Mrs. Switter went with me to the store and I was happy to see my friend and now reader working to make her little corner of the universe and grocery store even better. I was watching her fluff up some boxes of dried fruit rolls when she saw me. She even took time from her busyness to say hi to me, Ol’Switter.

Then she told me how she enjoyed these stories, and on a recent trip to her mom’s house, they read a bunch of these stories and said they laughed and laughed, which hurt just a little because I am trying to achieve serious creative non-fiction here. But despite that, I felt two deep gratitudes. First, I am grateful for all the little things she does that makes that part of my shopping life wonderful. Secondly, I am deeply grateful that I can share these stories that are important to me and that sometimes makes people laugh and laugh, even when I am aiming for profound seriousness. We all have stories, those stories are about who we are, and many of us never get a chance for the world to know us. It’s good to be known, and thought of as good enough, and to be a member in good standing in the great human family. This time, I get to thank someone who does a lot of little things to make the world a better place.

So dear General Secretary of the State Committee for Retail Distribution of Bulk Dried Foods to the Peoples, I salute you for your good work and for all the small but important things you do, and I thank you for taking time to read about Switter’s world.

It means a lot.