Let’s start with the commercial again this week. This post is brought to you by Jewel-Osco produce. It’s Fresh! Exciting!

My first real job at 16 was at the Jewel Food Store, where I was a produce clerk. I was really awful at it. I got written up a couple of times for not getting the job done right, and after a while I wished they’d just fire me. The money was good, sure, but the reason it was so good was that you had to deal with rotten and moldy produce and bugs, especially spiders. Everything, for whatever reason, had to be put in trays and shrink-wrapped, and I was just no good at that. Apparently, that was the law in Illinois for all produce except bananas, where you could get away with holding the hand (that’s what you call a bunch of bananas, apparently) together with tape, and watermelon, which could be sold whole, though we did used to cut it up and wrap it in shrink wrap, too.

Now, of course, if we need apples on the sales floor, you just bring the boxes out and arrange the apples nicely into a decorative pile. Same with everything else. No shaving the butts off the lettuce and wrapping it in plastic, just bring the whole heads out. Let the customer deal with their own produce, right? Made sense to me. Apparently not to the lawmakers, though, who were probably getting kickbacks from the manufacturers of shrink wrap and cardboard trays.

I should have quit that job when it became obvious that I didn’t have the aptitude for it, but Mom whipped out the old "J-O-B does not spell F-U-N" line and I stuck it out. I stayed with it until I was given a 37.5 hour week, when she decided that I needed to ask for fewer hours. I got the hours reduced to zero when I quit.

Linda brings us Stream of Consciousness Saturday every week. Now, George Formby with "I Like Bananas."