Will You Can It!

Grocery Store, Jerk, Michigan, USA | Right | May 9, 2019

(In Michigan, cans and bottles can be turned in to a recycling center for a credit of $0.10 each. As customers, we pay a deposit to cover this credit — i.e. a 12-pack of pop would cost an extra $1.20 when you buy it — so it highly encourages you to recycle to get your money back. However, it’s a great way to make some quick money if you can get ahold of someone else’s cans and bottles. As such, our youth group is knocking on doors asking for people’s cans and bottles to raise money for an overseas trip. I have to leave early to go to work at a grocery store, and most recycling centers are inside grocery stores. Part of my job is to fix these machines when they break and to empty the big bins in the back when they fill up. When a bin gets full, the sorting machines stop running, and we have a doorbell customers press that rings a buzzer up front as our center is in the back of the store. Since they know I’m working that day, the youth group brings all that they’ve collected from hours of knocking on doors to my store during my shift. There are about 20 kids and adult leaders, and each of them has a cart — some two carts — full of cans and bottles as they come into my store. This happens a few minutes later. The buzzer rings.)

Supervisor: *to me* “Can you get that? Those people brought in so many carts. You might just want to stay back there. They might fill up the aluminum bin by themselves.”

Me: “Yeah, I’m pretty sure they just want to see me in my uniform. I’ll probably be back.”

(I go back and say hey. I check the bins and they’re all fairly empty, so I go back up front. However, the buzzer rings again, and this time they lay on it and it won’t stop buzzing, annoying cashiers and customers alike up front.)

Supervisor: *yelling on the loudspeaker heard throughout the store* “To the customers in the bottle return room: we hear you and are sending help. Please stop pressing the doorbell! It is very annoying and we’re trying to work here.”

(They still rang it a bunch of times until I got back there and scolded them for embarrassing me. They did have a jammed machine, but that was a bit much. To top it all off, it was one of the adult leaders pressing the button so much, not another teenager.)

This story is part of our Recycling roundup!