Walls and Reflections | Sage Caballero | Visual Art

Walls and Reflections, Sage Caballero, photograph

as a menace, a threat to society, never to be allowed into a grocery store again without being carefully watched by a dozen guards.

Or, you know, I would just be fired. That’s an option too.

I continue sending food along to Jack. As the customer’s groceries begin to dwindle, I grab an apple from the cart. I inspect it for a moment—a ripe gala apple. It would be so easy to take a bite. There’s no packaging, no bag, just an easy target.

“Sir?”

I look up. Jack and the customer are staring daggers at me.

“You’ve been looking at that apple for thirty seconds,” Jack says.

“Oh. Right, yeah,” I stammer. “I, uh, forgot the code for these.”

I actually have forgotten—or perhaps my starvation is eating away at my memory. I spend another minute finding the code.

The customer, with even more annoyance than the others, grumbles his thanks and takes his groceries away.

There’s a brief lull. I desperately scan my surroundings for a manager. If I find one I can plead my case for freedom from the trap into which I have unwittingly placed myself.

Alas, there are no managers at the front. I could just abandon my post, but I don’t want to risk angering management or putting undue pressure on my coworkers. I

am still utterly trapped.

I check the clock. It’s now… 6:01.

I laugh, delirious. It’s only been two minutes, but it feels like an eternity.

At that moment, my legs begin to give out. I stumble forward and lean on the item scale.

Jack glances over at me with concern in his eyes, his mind no doubt filled with thoughts such as, I don’t get paid enough for this.

I look at him and chuckle nervously, “Just stretching. You know how these shifts are.”

Jack nods. He does know. Far too well.

What feels like eons later, another customer approaches, pushing a well-stocked cart. At this point, I am on the verge of collapse. I can feel my stomach hollowing as each second passes by, my mind desperately pleading for an influx of calories that I simply cannot procure.

Then I see it, sitting atop their bountiful cart. An item that I may be able to obtain. The delicate fruit ever so slightly out of my reach, dangling off the branch of a tree, taunting me. Metaphorically, anyway, because the item is not a fruit and is actually in my hand.

A muffin.

It is contained within a small plastic bag, fresh from the bakery. A plan formulates deep in my mind. The plastic bag is unsealed, and if I were to simply drop it… well, I would have to pick it back up. That’s just good manners.

I could, hypothetically, apologize quickly before bending over to grab the muffin. As I do this, I could simply reach into the bag and tear a chunk of the muffin away, before returning it to the conveyor belt. If I’m fortunate, nobody will notice the missing chunk, which will remain in my left hand to be scarfed down once the customer is out of sight.

This is a desperate ploy, I know. Also an unsanitary one for the poor customer. But I’m out of options. My hunger is almost unbearable.

I raise the muffin bag in the air, “inspecting” it, and as I’m about to let it fall, the customer suddenly says, “Actually, how much will that cost?”

I blink before responding, “A dollar and forty-nine cents.”

The customer glances at their total on the monitor and shrugs, “Eh. I won’t get it.”

Before I can even process this development, Jack strides over to me. “I’ll take it to the returns section,” he says, and grabs the muffin from my hands. In doing so, it feels as though he steals my very life away from me. My one hope for survival, my glorious salvation—is being carried over to our customer service counter.

Feeling defeated, conquered, and quashed, I finish checking out the customer’s groceries. He thanks me and walks away. Jack returns and gives me a thumbs up.

I have exhausted all possible options. I am doomed to toil in my prison of starvation forever, or at least for…

I check the clock on my monitor. It reads 6:03. 117 more minutes.