One customer, “the witch”, (Updike, 18) as Sammy calls her, is described as a serious looking woman one who diligently watches the register he is on, eagerly waiting for him to slip up and make an error. Not only does Sammy see the customers as leading a dead end life, he also sees this in his co-workers. His fellow clerk “Stokesie”, (Updike, 20) a twenty two year old, married father of two who’s biggest dream is to one day become the manager of the A&P grocery store. Sammy sees this as an unfulfilling dream and predicts that it will never come true. Finally Sammy defines his manager Mr. Lengel as a dreary old Sunday school teacher who seems so unsatisfied with his own life, that he makes a point to tend to everyone else’s business.
Collecting the ingredients for the fruitcakes would be easy, but both Buddy and his friend never knew where they would get the money to pay for the assortment of things that have to go into the fruitcakes. Buddy’s friend decides to create a Fun and Freak Museum. Buddy believes that it is their, “only really profitable enterprise.” This idea of showing off their three legged hen that came from the mind of Buddy’s friend shows her thoughtfulness, which helps them to earn $12.73 to spend on ingredients. Buddy’s friend also shows thoughtfulness after she gets upset from the relatives yelling at her for giving Buddy the last few sips of whiskey. Instead of pouting in her room all day, Buddy’s friend decides that she knows a perfect place to get a tree and some holly for Christmas time.
"Young ladies, this isn't the shoreline," is the first thing Lengel says to the young ladies when he sees them (Updike 1028). Queenie clarifies that her mom sent her to get some herring snacks, inferring that since her mom sent her it is flawlessly fine for her to be in the store with just a swimsuit on. While Lengel and Queenie are contending, Sammy pictures himself at Queenie's home amid a gathering. In his creative energy he sees, "her dad and the other men were remaining around in frozen yogurt coats and neckties and the ladies were in shoes getting herring snacks on toothpicks off a major glass plate and they were every single holding drink the shading of water with olives and sprigs of mint in them" (Updike
He is in the Photo department and stocks the shelves while he is not printing pictures, good job Dan for the promotion and 15 cent pay raise. A customer looks at him and asks, “Do you work here?” Dan looks at the customer, puts down the nuts he was about to put on the shelf, and responds, “no, I just like stocking the shelves, and wearing the ugly blue shirts and name tags that say Walgreens on it.” Now if only he said that. After only a few months, he has now started the transformation to becoming a bitter retail employee. The onset of this syndrome is fairly soon after you discover you don’t like the job your currently
“Guess I’ll finish this tomorrow; hey, I wonder where that old guy went?” He looked around as he loaded his tools into the wheelbarrow and pushed it back to the house. His father met him inside with a cold glass of lemonade; it tasted cold and sweet and was just the thing he needed, after his morning labor. “Dad,” he said, “have you ever seen the cemetery so empty as today?” “What do you mean?” His father replied. “I saw plenty of people around; it’s just as busy as always. How far did you get before the rain started, son?” “Uh, I got about half of the front and right sides cleared.” He took a long drink of the lemonade and watched his Dad laying out some lasagna noodles in the bottom of a glass casserole dish.
Persuasive/Argumentative A&P Throughout the short story of “A&P”, the main character Sammy makes a few decisions that reflect on him as a person. Sammy is a grocery clerks man who works the cash register at the store called the A&P. Physical attraction, going about quitting his job, and lack of responsibility shows just who he is. One might say he is nothing more than a foolish immature young man. To begin, the way Sammy describes the girls at the “A&P” shows just how immature he is. “With the straps pushed off, there was nothing between the top of the suit and the top of her head except just her, this clean bare plane of the top of her chest down from the shoulder bones like a dented sheet of metal tilted in the light” (540).
My understanding of the ending of the story is that the young man Sammy quit due to the fact that his boss was rude to the young ladies. Lengel felt that the bathing suits that the girls had on was not decent and should have not been worn in the A&P store. There was no harm done to anyone in the store. The workers there on a slow Thursday received some enjoyment while the girls were walking around the store looking for the herring snacks for Queenie’s mom. The girls should have had respect and covered themselves up going into the store.
Kevin Rodriguez ENC 1101 Profesor Lisenbee September 23, 2012 Homework Essay 1 Crosswalk by Deborah Tannen This essay is basically about cross-gender miscommunications that happen in everyday life. Tannen explains the types of communications that men and women have. In an example, Tannen says that a woman who owns a bookstore needed to speak to the store manager. The owner spoke to the manager about helping the bookkeeper with the billing. But after a few days the manager never did anything.
In one supermarket, they placed a few beers on a top shelf in a cereal aisle and it sat unnoticed as shoppers picked up cereals around it. When asked after they checked out, every shopper stated that they were unaware of the beers that were there. It is vey important that items are placed correctly in a supermarket because the markets for beer drinkers are not going to be looking in the cereal aisle for beer. The film also illustrates a young teenager and a young woman that are very frequent shoppers. This young teenager is only thirteen years old and has the need to go shopping almost every weekend, and the young lady is grown but has an addiction to a specific designer named Chloe.
In the short story “A&P” by John Updike, check out boy Sammy stands up for the “mistreatment” of girls dressed in bikinis who came into the grocery store that he worked at. While practically drooling at the girls as they walked through the aisles, his mind had essentially put them on a silver platter. When his boss told the girls to not come back without some proper clothes on, Sammy quits his job saying to his manager, “You didn’t have to embarrass them.” Sammy’s abrupt decision to quit showed how much he was caught up with the girls, of whom he didn’t even know. After handing back his apron, he ran outside expecting to see the girls waiting for him in order to thank him for standing up for them. Obviously when he got outside, they were long gone.