Big Man On Campus Is Small Boy In Retail

I used to be a grocery employee and was almost always chained to the express lane.

I wasn’t ever one of the “popular girls” in high school, but I wasn’t a wallflower, either. Most people in my class knew me by sight if not by name.

One day, I was chugging away at my store, which was only four blocks from the school, when a guy known to be the Big Man On Campus — handsome, fawned over, popular, etc. — and his posse showed up in my lane.

Big Man On Campus: “Hey, you go to [School], right?”

Me: “Yes.”

I scanned his friends’ purchases. Knowing he was a Big Man On Campus, I suppose I was meant to be impressed he was even speaking to me. I wasn’t.

Big Man On Campus: “And your name’s [My Name]?”

Me: “Yes.”

Big Man On Campus: “Would you sell us alcohol?”

Seriously?! Let’s just suppose I was swooning over the fact that he knew my name; the managers’ station was literally three feet behind me. Any one of the four managers on duty could have looked over my shoulder and seen exactly what I was doing.

Also, all of us were underage for alcohol; I couldn’t sell it, and he couldn’t buy it.

Me: “Uh, no.”

The badgering began. I kept refusing to sell him any alcohol, and he kept trying all the VERY convincing lines like “doing him a solid” and “c’mon.” I saw the manager lift his head and squint at us, so I told Big Man On Campus that he was NOT worth the consequences.

He looked furious but shut up. Right after they left my lane, [Manager] came up to me and asked if I knew them and what they wanted.

Me: “They go to my school, and they wanted me to sell them alcohol.”

Manager: “What did you say?”

Me: “I told them ‘no’ multiple times.”

[Manager] just nodded and walked away, a suspicious scowl on his face. Not two minutes later, he was chasing them out of the store. They’d tried to steal what I wouldn’t sell them.

I never saw any of them in my store again.