Performer: Led Zeppelin
Songwriters: Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, John Paul Jones
Original Release: Physical Graffiti
Year: 1975
Definitive Version: None
In the fall of my senior year, I was listening to Physical Graffiti a lot when I got a gig as a bagger at Food World, the local grocery store (now a Staples), back when customer service was thought of as something grocery stores would provide.
The work was OK, but being part of a two-person bagging crew on weeknights meant I was on floor-cleaning duty, which always took place after the rush died down about 9 p.m. You had one of two responsibilities: driving the cleaning machine or mopping the spillover behind it. Obviously, driving the machine was the fun part. I got to be pretty good at it, spinning it on a dime and driving it down each side of the aisle without knocking anything off the shelf or (God forbid) crashing it into the Crisco display at the end of the aisle.
I worked with a great crew. I was surrounded mostly by college students or other 20-somethings, who showed me there was a whole world beyond the closed-in walls of Upper Arlington. The best part would be break time in the back room, away from customers’ prying eyes, where the stockers would joke and swap stories. It got so those 15-minute breaks were the highlight of my day.
And there were fringe benefits, too, such as the fact that everyone—including the hottest of hot women—comes to the grocery store. Everyone eats, right? So, now and then, you might hear the murmuring from stockers, “Aisle 5,” and—coincidentally, of course—you realized that the cereal on Aisle 5 needed fronting (stacking it up at the front of the shelf). There was this one girl in particular who had strawberry blonde hair who would come into the store with her mother … But that’s a story for another day.
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