The Last King of Pompton

So I used to work overnight at Stop & Shop. I worked at the Wayne Stop & Shop from 2016 to 2018. On a side note, I would finish my time there working in the dairy department and it was great. All the discounted yogurt I wanted baby. At this Stop & Shop, the night crew chief was Patrick. Now just for clarification, the night crew chief is basically a key holder and phone answerer. There is no real authority(Below a department manager) with that position and most any worker worth their salt wants nothing to do with that position. It’s certainly not worth the extra dollar per hour. Anyway Patrick rarely “asserted” his authority and basically gave us carte blanche to get the job done any way we saw fit. All we did was pick things up and put them down after all. Patrick would even tell me at one point “Hey pal you know I’d give you the shirt off my back if you needed it” which really sums up the dynamic of this ragtag group as a whole. I haven’t mentioned every single coworker I worked overnight with at this store but this could become a full-on essay if I did. Moving forward a year when I found myself short on some cash in the summer of 2019(having a girlfriend who actually lives near me is expensive I realized). I decided to go back to Stop & Shop. It required no training on my part, it paid decent, and I enjoyed the coworkers last time. Did I mention that this time I’d choose Pomptain Plains? I had two reasons for switching stores: The manager at the Wayne store had been transferred to a different store(oddly enough towards the end of my time at the Pomptain Store she would become my manager again) and also it may have been a bit awkward to return to the same store only a year later. If the Wayne store was like Full House or Family Matters this store was like Malcolm in The Middle or Married With Children. No one really talked to each other and just did their own thing, the exception being when Time transferred over. The main subject of this story is, Mike, the night crew chief. He’s a nearly seventy-year-old Italian man so that should explain a lot. He used to work in a butcher shop when he was a teen, loved Mickey Mantle and he even taught me the word “Marone!”. Really nice guy but as a night crew chief, however, he could be very anal and particular. A story was even recounted to me by Shawn, another coworker, that Mike had threatened that he “knew people” in the mob because Shawn had called Mike bumblebee for his yellow shirt once. Either way, he took his role as night crew chief super seriously. You needed to go through him to get instructions for your next task and if you didn’t oh boy. On one occasion I looked for Mike for ten minutes straight just so I could get my marching orders after I completed my aisles. I decided to just work on the baby food since everyone else was basically done. Well, when he found me he said “what are you doing? I didn’t tell you to do that”. I relayed to him that I couldn’t find him so decided to keep busy. He then responded sarcastically “well would you like to do the alarm checks? Or perhaps check the refrigerator temps?”. He allowed me to continue with the baby food anyway. On a separate occasion, he seemingly had a power struggle with Tim which I got in the middle of. Typically, as mentioned before, someone would need to go through Mike to get instructions on the next task. Well on this particular night Tim had requested my help and I liked him so I hopped over to his aisle to assist. Mike saw this and was not happy. He requested to speak to me and sat me down like I was Wally from Leave It To Beaver and after a brief sigh said “Is Tim the boss or am I? Who’s the night crew chief? So next time you’re gonna do anything who are you gonna ask?” I responded the same “you” to each of those questions at which point he sent me on my way. I was left thinking what in the Andy Griffith just happened?? I would end up leaving this store in September 2021 but at least I got to learn the word “Marone!”