Expect It When You Least Expect It Read online

store. He also started doing his math homework and reviewing material for the final exam.

  Wally got a 68% in Geometry that quarter and passed the final exam with a 75% which helped bring his grade up for the entire year to passing.

  How Wally Got His Name

  Wally’s real name was not Wally. It was Ted.

  The other store clerks and cashiers at Tops just started calling him Wally one day because of his cheesy ‘Wally the Walrus’ mustache.

  The nickname stuck and quickly caught on. By the end of eleventh grade most people at work and school called him it.

  The developing cluster of stubble that surrounded his mouth on three sides wasn’t quite peach fuzz or a fully grown Fu-Manchu. It really needed to be shaved off, but Wally’s vanity discouraged him from doing that.

  He basked in the novelty of being able to sport a pseudo-stache. His sixteen year old girlfriend Laura liked it and the look made him feel more mature, regardless of what others thought.

  Even with illusory facial hair Wally didn’t stand out that much in a crowd. Unless you knew him personally he resembled most teenage boys his age.

  He stood about 5’10”, weighed about 175 pounds and wore size 12 shoes.

  His shaggy brown hair was parted in the middle and feathered back on both sides of his forehead.

  There was a scar above his left eyebrow from when he was five. Festus convinced him to jump off the garage roof while they were pretending to be superheroes.

  Wally had brown eyes and wore large, tortoise shell glasses, whose frame was slightly bent in spots from all the stuff that fell on his face while building displays.

  The waist length company issued smock that Wally was obligated to wear while working was kept in an employee locker that he shared with his girlfriend and brother.

  Laura worked in the deli. Festus worked in the bakery.

  The raiment smelled like curdled milk, jarred spaghetti sauce and sweaty armpit. Its zipper was missing teeth and only fastened together half the time.

  The garment was only washed when Laura thought it smelled bad and brought it home to clean with her department apron.

  The stained and tattered red, white and blue polyester uniform coat had a Wally nametag pinned on it. One of the cashiers made it for him as a joke and he wore proudly. He lightheartedly referred to the badge as a ‘jester of self-deprecation.’

  Wally had a tendency to waddle when he walked because of an old ankle injury from fourth or fifth grade. He and Festus were sledding down the big hill behind Brooks Hill Elementary School. Everyone loved going down the hill because of the speed achieved on its 45 degree incline.

  Festus accidently landed on Wally’s left foot when they tried using a makeshift ramp at the bottom of the knoll. The pair missed the jump and slammed into a snowbank.

  The dislocation never healed properly after being reset. Afterward, Wally’s foot would frequently point outward and hit stuff or wretch if he was not careful about how he walked.

  Mitch Grashole

  Michelino or ‘Mitch’ Grashole (pronounced Grăsh-ōlee) was an assistant manager at the grocery store Wally worked at.

  Grashole grew up in East Rochester and helped run both the Panorama (Penfield) and Village Landing (Fairport) Tops locations as far back as anyone could remember.

  When people think of mangers who work at grocery stores images of Mr. Whipple from the Charmin toilet paper commercials or Jerry Landers, the character played by John Denver in the movie Oh God might come to mind; Mitch’s persona was neither of those portrayals.

  Mitch was Sicilian and always bragging about his heritage to anyone who was unfortunate enough or compelled by circumstances to listen to his amateur diatribes on the history of Sicily, Sicilians in America and the Mafia.

  Gossip amongst store employees alleged that his illiterate great-grandfather came to the United States from Messina sometime around 1900.

  The processing clerks at Ellis Island, who were of Northern Italian descent, hated Sicilians. They Americanized the original spelling of the family name by changing it from Grassoli to Grashole, fully knowing that people who spoke English would pronounce it phonetically (Grass-hole).

  Wally thought Mitch was full of shit and pathetic, but was smart enough to keep his opinions to himself at work.

  Grashole was in his early to mid-thirties. He stood about five foot tall and was predominantly bald accept for the short cropped band of brown hair that wrapped around the base of his round skull. The man was also chubby, had a bushy mono-brow and a well-trimmed porn-star mustache underneath his large bulbous nose.

  Mitch was lazier than Hell. The only time he ever exerted himself or made any noticeable effort was when a district or the store manager was in eyeshot; which is why he preferred to work late afternoons and nights.

  When he was in charge of the store he’d usually bully clerks and cashiers into doing both his and their regular workloads.

  While everyone else busted their asses off, he’d talk on the phone to his mother in the manager’s office or walk around the store eating bulk food and bakery goods.

  He also liked trailing naive female customers from a distance. He’s ogle them from the ends of store aisles, pretending to block product, but really hoping that he’d catch them shoplifting so he could frisk them for stolen merchandise.

  The guy was delusional at times. He honestly believed that he was a ladies man and that women appreciated his company. He was too arrogant to realize that most his targets were just young and clueless. They did not know any better and assumed that men (especially bosses) were supposed to treat women that way and just put up with his lewd and creepy behavior.

  Mitch had a habit of randomly calling cashiers up to the manager’s office alone to reprimand them (in private) about their appearance at work.

  During his interrogations he’d tuck their shirts in, feel their breasts to make sure they were wearing a ‘proper’ bra and smelled various places on their bodies to make sure they were clean. It happened to nearly all the young girls who worked at the store and was considered an initiation rite for cashiers. He nearly always ended his ‘critique’ sessions by slowly zipping up his victim’s smock before sending them off with a stern warning.

  Napper, the produce manager, said that Mitch acted that way because he accidently married a little boy instead of a woman.

  It turned out that Mitch’s wife really did look like a boy. She was only about 4 feet tall, had short hair, and no chest or hips.

  She came to the store to pick Mitch up for an appointment. No one outside management knew that Mitch was married; he didn’t wear a wedding band or talk about his home life at work.

  The androgynous woman just appeared that day and asked someone at the front desk where Mitch was. The cashier responded to the request by innocently calling for Mitch over the store loudspeaker, “Mitch Grashole, please come to the front of the store. A little boy wants to talk to you.”

  After the announcement was made the store manager looked out the office window to see who was looking for Mitch and recognized the woman. He was in tears laughing at the blameless slipup and quickly corrected it by restating over the intercom, “Mitch, your wife is here to pick you up, “which caused everyone working the front end of the store to look at who that person might be (and took the humor of the situation one step further).

  Wally’s Peers and School

  The majority of Wally’s coworkers acted indifferent towards him. They neither avoided nor sought his company.

  He knew most of them from school. He sometimes sat with several of his colleagues during his lunch period. Beyond that, Wally did not spend much time around those people outside of work.

  Fellow employees were friendly and talked to Wally, but he was almost never invited to their weekly gatherings because he was not considered part of their clique. For the most part though, their conduct didn’t bother Wa
lly because he usually hung out with friends who didn’t work at the store or go to Fairport High School.

  Along with his regular classes at FHS Wally was also enrolled in vocational school at BOCES for half the school day. Students from all over Monroe County attended classes at BOCES in subjects that their home school districts didn’t offer, such as food trades, cosmetology and welding.

  Wally had already completed one year of the data processing program and was looking forward to completing the second sequence his senior year because it would count towards college credits at Monroe Community College.

  The adolescent excelled in his studies at VoTech and met a lot of people from other eastside suburbs such as Penfield and East Rochester. He could easily ride his bike or walk to their houses after school if a car was not available.

  Wally did eventually befriend two of the more popular girls who worked at the store. However, the relationships were initiated more by circumstance rather than actual intention.

  He first became acquainted with one of the pair, Melina Hicks, on a Saturday afternoon after they both finished working a ten hour shift.

  Working Retail during the Eighties

  I will change the subject here for a moment:

  Back in the 1980’s child labor laws were not as stringently enforced like they are today.

  Retail employers like Tops, Fays Drugs or Gold Circle didn’t think twice about scheduling part-time teen employees for six to eight hours on a given day,