Working at the A&P Store

Tom: When I got through with Young Harris, I came back to Avondale, and the only job I could find was at an A&P store.

So I’d work at the A&P store, worked for a man named Dan Lenders.

I was paid hourly. Twenty-five cents an hour, and then they raised me to twenty-nine cents an hour.

So they had a contest — which store sold the most cakes. Back then everyone came in and gave you a list, and you would run down the aisle and pick it up, bring it back to the counter. And they just stand there and wait for everything to be brought to them.

So they were having this cake contest. I had a lot of customers that I got along with real well, and I would tell them we were having a contest, and I sold more cakes than anybody. So they gave a watch to the store, to each of the employees, but they got around to me, and they said “Tom, you’re a part-time worker, so you don’t qualify.” So everyone got a watch except for me.

So I said “well, I can fix that.” So I asked Dan Lenders, my boss, “how much one of those watches cost you, you think?” and he said “I know exactly, it’s twenty-nine dollars.” So I just went down to work and knocked me down twenty-nine dollars, and went to Dan then and said “I can’t work for you any longer.” He said “why?” and I said “well, just leave it this way: I just can’t work for you any longer.” And he said “well, we’re going to miss you.”

So later on — I had left the store altogether then — and so later on he came to work for me while I was in the real estate business. And I said “Dan, I can tell you now why I had quit. I stole twenty-nine dollars which I think I earned, and I couldn’t work for you any longer after that.”

So that got me out of that, and then I went to work at the real estate office.