My Favorite Responsibility
"Love And Theft" Part One
When I was growing up, my uncle and his family were active and successful in breeding, training and showing Arabian horses.
He had a horse farm—named JimJac, after himself (Jim) and his wife (Jackie)—that surrounded my grandma’s house in the then-rural northwest side of Fort Wayne. JimJac was home to a couple-dozen horses, including my parents’ mare and gelding.
In exchange for room and board for those two horses, my dad would work on the farm every Sunday: feeding horses, cleaning corrals, stacking hay, building and painting fences.
Before my brother and I were old enough to help with that work, we’d spend our Sundays exploring the woods behind the property, hiking along its winding creek, and searching for snakes, crawdaddies, spiders. Some days, we’d shadow my dad and uncle. I still love the smell of creosote.
A few times each summer, from our childhoods and through our mid-teens, we’d attend Arabian Horse Shows around the region.
Horse shows featured competitive classes, in categories like English, Western, halter and more.
While I remember horse shows with fondness now, they were pretty boring to me when I was young. Sitting in the arena, I’d draw dinosaurs in my sketchbook, read comic books, and daydream.
When there was a longer break in the action for JimJac’s horses, my brother and I would wander the fairgrounds’ parking lots and look for cool cars and trucks. (I was a little young, but I got the sense my brother was looking for cool cars, cool trucks, and cool girls—especially if they were as bored as we were.)
The big event each year was in Columbus, Ohio: The Buckeye Sweepstakes.
This show—which was often home to the Arabian Horse Association’s national championship—drew competitors from across the country and Canada, and occurred over the long Memorial Day weekend.
As kids, the highlights of the Buckeye for my brother and me were two things:
Staying up late on Sunday evening to watch the tape-delayed airing of the Indianapolis 500, and
Our annual visit to Children’s Palace—a toy store that felt about twenty times larger than any toy store we’d been to before.
We’d look forward to that Children’s Palace visit all year long—saving our allowances, and doing extra chores around the house (or my uncle’s farm) to try to earn a few bucks to spend at the greatest store we’d ever set foot in.
I’d see a Godzilla or King Kong action figure one year—one that was not available in any of Fort Wayne’s stores—and wash and dry dishes for a year in anticipation of buying it the next summer.
A few years later, my first real job was tied to my uncle’s other business: the B&B Loan Company, a pawn shop on Calhoun Street in downtown Fort Wayne.
I was fifteen.
At the B&B, we worked six days a week.
Working at the pawn shop expanded my world-view, in ways that took me years to fully understand; what I saw and heard, what I learned, what it meant to a kid like me.
I only lasted a month or two at that job, and used the looming start of the school year as an excuse to step away from it all.
When I re-entered the workforce a year later, I followed my brother’s path into the fast-food sector. He’d been at Wendy’s for a year or two by that point. I applied to and was hired at my own favorite restaurant: Rax.
Rax was like Arby’s, except, well, better.
Like Arby’s, the chain specialized in sliced roast beef. But what gave Rax its edge was that it offered a terrific salad bar, a few sandwiches you wouldn’t find at Arby’s, and fresh-baked cookies.
Being sixteen, I wasn’t allowed to work the kitchen—you had to be eighteen to operate (or even stand near) the meat slicer.
Instead, I was hired to coordinate the salad bar.
I took a lot of pride in keeping it well-stocked and tidy.
Like the pawn shop, Rax helped expand my world-view.
My favorite coworker was Farookh—the first Indian, the first Muslim I’d ever met.
Farookh told me a little about his background, and pushed against most of the dumb stereotypes that had been served to me in the early-’80s comedies my brother and I grew up watching. Farookh didn’t seem anything like the way immigrants were portrayed in those movies.
When my parents came in to see me while I was working, my dad would order a grilled chicken sandwich. Farookh would put two chicken breasts on my dad’s sandwich, wink at him, and say, “I like your son.”
Another time, just after clocking in, I passed by our drive-thru station. Our recently hired cashier stood wide-eyed and frozen, holding the money a customer had just handed her. I questioned what was wrong; she dropped a smattering of bills and coins into my hands and asked, “How much is that?”
She hadn’t learned math in school. Couldn’t tally up the money that was handed to her, couldn’t enter it into the cash register, and couldn’t count-out any change that was due.
I was put on an emergency shift running the drive-thru register, while she cross-trained to stocking the salad bar.
Before then, I had no real understanding of the differences that were possible in our educations, no notion of the impact that slipping through the cracks could have on a student.
—
Managing the salad bar, I spent a lot of time in an immense, walk-in refrigerator/freezer unit.
One day, alone in the refrigerator, I noticed a large cardboard box marked “Chocolate Chip Cookies.”
I peeked inside the box, and a heavenly sight greeted me: golf-ball-sized dollops of chocolate chip cookie dough, neatly arranged in a 16x24 pattern. Below them, a thin sheet of wax paper, and then another layer of the cookies. On and on, a dozen or more layers deep.
Some people are born with a silver spoon. I was born with a sweet tooth, and my mom leaned into it throughout my childhood. I’m simply mad for sugar.
I glanced around.
Nobody.
I slowly picked up a ball of dough, and bit into it.
Like most forbidden fruits, it tasted even better than it looked.
I finished in a second bite, and over the course of my shift, gobbled up another four or five cookies.
Going forward, on days that I worked the salad bar, this became my go-to move.
A half-dozen cookies per shift, maybe up to eight, nine on a Saturday, discreetly devoured as I refilled salad dressing containers and restocked vegetables.
It was my favorite responsibility.
Later that year, Children’s Palace came to Fort Wayne.
This was well before Toys R Us—at the time, the only toy-focused stores we had in town were a couple (much) smaller retailers inside Glenbrook Mall.
Children’s Palace, housed in an immense new building on the corner of Coldwater Road and Coliseum Boulevard, was, well, palatial.
Even as a teenager, now far more interested in video games than monster-movie action figures, I loved Children’s Palace. I quickly applied for a job, and I was invited to join the team.
Rax was sad to see me go, and I was sad to leave.
I had a candid conversation with my manager, Brian, who appealed to me to reconsider.
Brian was a good guy. Wore large wire-frame glasses, a strawberry-blonde mustache, an off-white short-sleeved dress shirt and necktie, pleated trousers.
“But Brian,” I said. “It’s my dream job.”
—
And it really was.
I loved working in Children’s Palace’s Electronics department, advising kids on the latest video games.
I enjoyed my shifts in Outdoor Toys, too, where I’d climb a 20’ stairwell-like ladder to retrieve a bicycle hanging from the ceiling rafters, where we stored them. I’d look down and see a wide-eyed child watching me try to hold the bike with one arm and descend the ladder with the other, and think to myself, “This is far more dangerous than Rax’s meat slicer.”
I liked the job so much, I referred my best friend, Rob, to apply as well.
He did, and was quickly hired.
Each night, after the store closed and the doors were locked up, the closing staff would split up and spread ourselves across the store, making our ways up and down each aisle, cleaning up, stocking items, and generally ensuring the store was presentable for the next day. This discipline was known as “zoning.”
We’d front-face board games and dolls, re-hang G.I. Joes and Slinkies, collect broken, damaged or opened items to be turned-in and written-off.
On the far end of the store, Children’s Palace had a short, dimly lit aisle that focused on, of all things, candy.
One night, I found a vacuum-pack of pre-made cotton candy that had been torn open. The cotton candy itself was inside, and intact.
I glanced around.
Nobody.
I slowly placed an airy strip of the cotton candy in my mouth and let the sweet sugar melt over my tongue.
Like most forbidden fruits, it tasted even better than it looked.
I placed the empty package in my “write-off” bin.
Soon enough, zoning the candy aisle—eyes peeled for damaged or opened items that I might gobble up and finish off—became the highlight of each shift.
It was my favorite responsibility.
—
That July, for two weeks, Children’s Palace put up a large tent in the parking lot for the Summer Sale.
It was awesome.
Because I performed well at the cash register and was focused on customer service at the Electronics counter, our managers assigned me some solo shifts in the tent.
Working in the Summer Sale tent involved ringing up customers, answering questions and helping folks find things, and generally keeping the tabletops organized. At the end of the night, we’d close down the register, re-attach the tent’s side-walls and secure the perimeter.
As you may recall, the summer of 1990 was blazing hot.
On a busy midsummer Saturday, I reported for an afternoon shift that would take me to closing.
I immediately assumed my spot behind the cash register, which was placed on a long, tablecloth-covered folding table, to take over for a coworker whose shift was ending.
In front of me, there was a long line of customers, ready to check out.
The tent was busy enough that day that it felt like I never got out from behind the register, never stopped ringing folks up.
It was scorching outside.
At a certain point, I looked behind me, and there was a case of Coca-Cola. The soda-pop was room temperature, which is to say tent temperature, which is to say sweltering. But I was struggling—parched.
Figuring the case of Coke was behind our makeshift register station so that our team members could have a beverage as relief from the heat, I popped the can open, and drank down the warm cola.
At the end of my shift, the store manager came out to close down the cash register. I started zoning the tent’s aisles. He ran the register’s report, counted the cash, the personal checks, the credit card slips. Then he called me over.
“Hey, I can’t reconcile this register. We’re short.”
“We are?”
“Yeah. And I see this case of pop is open. How did you ring up the Coke? It’s not showing up on the report.”
I was puzzled.
“Ring up the Coke? I thought that was for us.”
“No, the Coke is for customers. We’re selling it.”
He walked around the table that the cash register was sitting on, and pointed to a hand-written sign that had been attached to the front of the table. It said: ‘Summer Sale – Coke $.50!’
I said, “Oh, man. I never saw that, and nobody told me. Why would we sell warm pop? Well, here, let me buy it.” I fished for my wallet. “Or can you take it out of my check?”
“No,” he said. “No, it’s too late for that.”
—
Later that night, Rob shared that he had the following weekend off, and with our friend Rick, we hatched a plan to go to King’s Island.
I just had to make sure I could get that weekend off, too.
When I reported for work the next day, the manager greeted me at the door.
“Hi!” I said. “I was going to come find you. Is there any way I can get next weekend off? I want to go to King’s Island.”
“Oh, you’re not working next weekend. I’m afraid we’re ending your employment here. You’re being terminated for theft.”
“Wha-?”
“Yep. You stole that Coke. We can no longer trust you. I’m not taking this any further than termination, but I hope you’ve learned a lesson. And I hope you don’t make the same mistake again.”
I was dumbfounded.
I dragged my feet to my car, slumped into the driver’s seat. After awhile, I mustered the courage to drive home and tell my parents.
Then I called Rob, and told him I was good to go to King’s Island after all.
On the trip, I told Rob and Rick what happened to me, how I got fired.
The following day, back in Fort Wayne, Rob went to Children’s Palace to report for his next shift.
Instead, he quit on the spot: “If you fired Matt Kelley, then you fired Rob Cook. I hope you learn a lesson and don’t make the same mistake again.”
We were seventeen years old.
I applied for a new job.
First, I applied at the Target across from Glenbrook Mall: T-114.
At Target, I interviewed with Elaine Davis, the executive who was in charge of Human Resources.
Elaine asked my about my previous employment, and why I’d left Children’s Palace. I said, “Elaine, well… I got fired for theft.”
She raised her eyebrows and lightly shook her head.
I told her my story.
She thanked me, and said she’d be in touch if anything became available.
After a couple weeks went by without a phone call, I applied for a job as a bagger at the White Swan grocery, about a mile from my family’s house. This small, independent grocery is where we shopped all through my childhood.
At the end of my interview at White Swan, I was hired on the spot for $3.85 an hour. I started immediately.
Two weeks later, Elaine Davis called.
She said she couldn’t stop thinking about my story, appreciated that I told her and didn’t try to conceal it, and thought I should come join the team at Target T-114.
I told her thanks, but that I had just started a new job at the White Swan.
Then Elaine shared that Target’s starting wage was $4.40/hr.
Two more weeks later, I started my new job at T-114, working in ‘Hardlines Two’—toys, sporting goods, hardware, automotive, lawn & garden, sometimes even electronics. I was stocking, zoning, and helping customers.
I felt bad about leaving the Swan after just one month, but, they understood. The family-owned White Swan struggled to compete with the big box stores, the national chains like Target. This had never occurred to me before, and I felt a tinge of shame to be a part of the problem. Another lesson.
—
Getting fired from Children’s Palace really stung, and I was humiliated by it.
My parents didn’t raise me to be a thief.
And while I (and they) thought the Coke thing was bullshit, in my gut I knew the truth: I knew that my termination for theft was simply karma for the cookie dough at Rax, for the cotton candy at Children’s Palace.
And here’s the thing: I’m quite glad I got terminated.
In fact, it’s pretty much the best thing that ever happened to me.
I became a lifelong zealot who never even wanted to feel like I was ripping anyone off.
And I worked at Target for the next seven or eight years—including every summer or holiday when I was back from Indiana University.
I was a shy kid at Northrop High School, with few deep friends beyond Rob and Rick.
Target became my social network, and it was there that I made real, lasting friendships, and there that I fumbled my way into meeting my first girlfriend. And my third one, too.
Most of us worked there to get paid, yes, but more importantly because we liked it, and we liked each other.
Plus, though I didn’t know it at the time, Target is where and how I started to understand branding.
It was at an all-team meeting in 1993 that Elaine Davis introduced a novel idea, saying, “We don’t have customers anymore. We have guests.”
It seems common now, but it’s difficult to convey how radical that distinction was.
Target even introduced a new role, the GSS—Guest Service Specialist—and I was invited to become one. When you were on the GSS shift, you wore a red vest that had giant letters on the back that said, “ASK ME. I LIKE TO HELP.”
I did like to help.
Still do, really.
Target’s brand also came to life through elaborate seasonal signage and environmental displays, many of which I assembled and hung from the ceiling.
As a young design student, I studied the craft and detail of each campaign.
You know how Target just feels different? I was there when that feeling first started taking hold.
At my current job, I was in a meeting just last week where we counseled a client, “Your brand is the sum total of every experience and every interaction someone has with you.” And it’s true. Sometimes I think I should wear around a vest with that emblazoned on the back to prove it.
That was all really good, really beneficial to me.
But that’s not it.
—
The real reason I’m so glad I got fired for theft doesn’t have anything to do with Target.
The real reason is that because after I was terminated from Children’s Palace, I worked for a few weeks at the White Swan.
My job at the White Swan is the most important job I’ve ever had.
I was a bag boy, carrying groceries out to shoppers’ cars.
I met a cashier.
And though it took exactly ten years before she finally agreed to go on a date with me, I was in love.
A few years after that first date, we got married.
And today, there are three thermonuclear beams of light in this world—Henry, Ruby and Charley—that exist because of that marriage.
—
Sometimes, alone, on a long run, or on a long drive,
I start to wonder if our souls were predestined to be here,
that it’s not the facts of science nor the randomness of biology that lead us to being born at all,
but that instead there’s some kind of cosmic purpose or spiritual fate that put each of us in this spot at this time.
I imagine it’ll be too late to care by the time we can answer that.
But today, when I hear the sound of my kids’ voices,
saying my name from two rooms away,
whispering near my ear before a mutual-favorite band takes the stage,
yelling out “Dad!” when they break free on a hitch-and-go route and we’re in my parents’ backyard and I’m all-time QB,
or even just in my dreams and my memories,
I thank the heavens that it was so blazingly hot on a midsummer day in 1990,
that it was so blazingly hot in the middle of a toy store parking lot,
that it was so blazingly hot in the Summer Sale tent,
that it was so blazingly hot that there was no way I could make it through my shift without popping open a can of warm Coke that I was never—or always—meant to drink.
Thank God for summer jobs. Lessons we could never learn in school.
….The only thing we knew for sure about Henry Porter…
As usual I enjoyed these heartfelt musings from you.
Keep on keeping on.