The Grocery Emporium opened at 6AM, every day. A mega store on the west side of town. Monday mornings were slow. Tuesdays were slower. It picked up around Wednesday and Thursday but died out again on Friday before hitting the busiest days of Saturday and Sunday.
Jeremiah desperately needed a job, but he had a problem. No one took him seriously.
Any time he applied to a company, he had to turn in his application in person, and his problem would appear again. The manager would take the application, but inevitably, they wouldn’t take Jeremiah seriously.
He’d applied to dozens of jobs for which he was qualified, places that said they were in need of work, but those places consistently opted to leave positions open rather than give him a chance.
Jeremiah also lived by a routine.
Every Sunday he would go to church.
Every Monday he would do his laundry.
Every Tuesday he would have a chicken parm sandwich from the deli down the street.
However, one Tuesday, the deli had closed. A power outage had forced them to close their doors for the night. His carefully planned routine had been broken. He’d stared at the door for minutes, trying to decide what to do next.
On Tuesdays, he ate his chicken parm sandwich in the booth by the window, walked around the park, went home and read exactly five chapters from his book, changed his shirt, brushed his teeth, and went to bed.
Without the chicken parm sandwich, the rest of the routine didn’t make sense.
Rather than panic, Jeremiah decided to go all out. He would skip his normal Tuesday night chicken parm, and he would go to the grocery store for dinner. He wouldn’t go to his normal grocery store though; if his Tuesday could not be chicken parm, he would go somewhere completely different.
He walked into the Grocery Emporium. To anyone else, it might have looked like a normal grocery store, but to Jeremiah, the store took on a world of possibilities for stationed by the door was a simple kiosk that read: “Become a part of our family.”
There would be no paper application. There would be no manager to take him not seriously. He could apply and be hired based upon the merit of his skills, not judged by the shape of his appearance.
He opened the application. It didn’t ask him how tall he was or what he weighed. It didn’t ask him what celebrity he most appeared to look like.
The application wanted to know his birthday, his work experience, his work ethic. All questions that Jeremiah knew he could answer with the best of them.
The application asked what hours he would be willing to work. The store opened at 6AM every day.
The answer was easy. He’d work any shift. Morning, afternoon, evening, holiday, or weekend. He didn’t care. He’d make it the best shift. He needed a job.
He hit submit and left the store. He was too excited to eat. Besides, if he stayed, he might run into the manager who might trace him back to the application and deny him the job.
He stayed up that entire night staring at the ceiling, dreaming about how wonderful it would be to have his first job.
Two days later, the phone rang. Jeremiah answered it without hesitation.
“Hello. This is Jeremiah,” he said, trying to sound like a man twice his size.
“Hello. This is the manager over at the Grocery Emporium. I’d like to offer you a job. Can you start tonight?”
Jeremiah agreed to be there and hung up the phone. He danced around the room, waving his hands in the air. He’d done it. He’d gotten a job. Now he had to prove the manager had made the right choice.
He arrived for his shift 15 minutes early, finding the managers room in the back. He knocked on the door, and the manager called him in.
“Hi. I’m Jeremiah. I’m here for the job,” he said, worried the manager would see him and tell him to leave.
The manager paused, looking at him carefully. After a full minute, the manager finally spoke:
“I’d afraid the work shirt I had for you might be a bit big,” he said.
“Not a problem. I’ll tie it off in the back with a rubber band,” said Jeremiah, straightening his back to appear taller.
The manager hesitated another moment.
“Works for me then. Welcome to the Grocery Emporium. Let’s sell some food.”
Jeremiah’s first job was to stock the shelves. He had a list every day, provided to him by the day shifts, and it was his job to push the new boxes of food to wherever in the store they needed to be placed.
It was an easy job. Jeremiah found he could stock the shelves in half the time as his coworkers. Much of it had to do with how hard he worked. He refused to take a break, stopping only for his mandated meal breaks. Instead, he worked with a dedicated focus. He had a job to do. The Grocery Emporium counted on him.
One night, a couple of teenagers came to the store late, when Jeremiah was stocking the shelves. They saw him and started laughing.
He ignored them, focusing his energy on stocking the shelf with boxed noodles.
The kids came closer, walking down the aisle.
Jeremiah squeezed closer to the wall to let them through. Still, the kids bumped into him hard, pushing him into the grocery aisle wall.
“Whoops, sorry little guy. We didn’t see you there,” said one of the kids, as the whole group ran away laughing.
Jeremiah didn’t hesitate.
“No problem. Let me know if I can help you find anything!” he called after them with a smile.
That moment wasn’t the first time Jeremiah was picked on, but he didn’t care. He’d found a job, and he was good at it. So good, that his name got drawn as employee of the month.
The very next day, his manager called him into the office.
“Jeremiah, I’ve got to say. You’re doing good work. You’ve got some talent.”
“Thank you, sir. I try.”
“How about you help me out by running the self check out lines?”
Jeremiah’s second job at the Grocery Emporium was running the self check out lines. It was a job he was good at. He got used to recognizing the foods that caused the machines or people trouble, and he would go out of his way to be near them any time he saw one of those items. Lemons were especially troublesome.
Using his size to his advantage, he could sneak an empty basket out from underneath someone before they even had a chance to pay.
He had found his happy place. He loved helping people and being involved in the store. During his breaks, he would walk up and down the aisles, looking at the different foods, wondering who had invented it.
He especially loved looking at the desserts. The magical cakes and cookies that lined the shelves.
People rarely brought the cakes through the self-check out. They were too important. The cakes needed to be handled with care. Jeremiah loved that an item so simple and fragile could be loved so instantly by a complete stranger. It was why Jeremiah loved cakes, and one of the many reasons why working at the grocery store made him so happy.
Even though he excelled at the self-check out lanes, it was a more visible location, and being more visible, opened him up to more looks.
People were more self-conscious near the cash registers, so he didn’t have to deal with being pushed into anymore walls. However, he could feel people’s looks when they saw him. He could hear their whispers.
“He looks so sad.”
“Look at his face. You can tell he is not all there.”
“His pants take up almost 75% of his body.”
The words didn’t affect Jeremiah. They couldn’t. He was too strong for that, and he was in his happy place. These strangers couldn’t take that away from him.
Jeremiah hadn’t always been so strong-willed. Kids had always been mean, and Jeremiah had been a kid for a very long time. He was an easy target. He had always been one.
As a kid, he’d come home crying many times, yelling at his mom to explain why he was being picked on. He couldn’t help how he looked. He couldn’t help who he was.
His mother had taught him to be tough. One day, he’d come home, face red from tears, unable to control his shaking, unable to shake the words from his classmates. She’d sat him down and told him to brace himself.
He did.
And she yelled at him. Screamed at him at the top of her lungs.
Jeremiah had never heard his mother scream. He didn’t know she was capable of it. He wanted to cry, but he didn’t. His mother shouting had surprised him so deeply that the tears wouldn’t come.
“Baby,” she’d then said softly as she held up a mirror to his face. “Would you look at yourself?”
He looked deeply into his own face. He saw his own eyes, his own nose, and his own mouth.
“Do you see any scars? Do you see any wounds?”
He shook his head.
“Those kids want to hurt you, and their words are painful. Their words are destructive. But you know what baby, their words… their words are weak. Even words shouted at the top of my lungs can’t pierce your skin. You have special skin, Jeremiah. The words can’t get to your soul unless you let them. You’re too strong, baby. You’re too strong.”
Jeremiah knew his mother wasn’t telling the truth. His skin wasn’t thicker than anyone else, but it was the last time he’d come home crying. It was the last time he’d allowed the words or look of someone to weigh in on his own self-worth.
His mother had prepared him well for life at the grocery store. He managed the registers, smiled at people that smiled back, not worrying about whether their smiles were genuine or driven by pity. To Jeremiah, he knew the truth. He was helping these people in their lives. He was helping feed them, their most vital need. Jeremiah had a purpose.
One day, his manager called Jeremiah into his office again.
“Hey Jeremiah. I wanted to tell you, I’ve been watching you. You’re doing a great job.”
Jeremiah grinned ear to ear. He knew he could do a great job. He only need a chance.
“I’m afraid I have some bad news though.”
Jeremiah’s smile dropped. He knew this moment would come. Someone had no doubt complained about his appearance. The manager was about to ask him to leave the Grocery Emporium. He’d come so far. He didn’t want it to end now.
“Sir, thank you for the opportunity,” he said, wanting to stop his manager before he had to hear the words that he was fired. He couldn’t bear the thought.
“It’s my honor… Jeremiah, you’re not getting fired,” said the manager.
“But sir, you said you have bad news.”
“Jeremiah, you’re work ethic is uncomparable to anyone else. Someday, I could see you as an assistant manager. Maybe even in my seat.”
Jeremiah’s mother had warned him that words couldn’t pierce his skin. Words couldn’t make him cry. Yet he wanted to cry right now. His manager’s words had reached his insides.
“But it won’t be here. The Grocery Emporium only has a few weeks left. Not enough people are coming into the store. Local organic markets. Online ordering. Rent bills. After 70 years, we’re shutting our doors. I wanted to give you a heads up as a courtesy so you can start looking for another job. I’d be happy to write you a reference.”
Jeremiah’s world began to spin. He knew what another manager would do with the reference. He’d take the piece of paper and then take one look at Jeremiah and not take either seriously.
Jeremiah thanked his manager and left the office.
That night at 10PM, Jeremiah offered to close up the store. He wanted some time alone in his happy place, which was being taken away from him.
He walked through the aisles, straightening the items so that everything would be perfect for the crew the next morning. Finally, he reached the baking section. He looked at the cupcakes and the cookies. He inspected the cakes, looking at the icing carefully piped along the edges.
Jeremiah couldn’t tell you how long he stood there looking at the cakes, but an idea started to form in his head.
He walked behind the counter, behind the cookies and the cakes. All the supplies he needed were here. He’d read many books on cake baking. He’d watched every show. Over the course of his breaks, he’d learned every trick the bakers did to get the grocery store machines to run properly.
Starting with flour and then sugar, lemon and then chocolate, he mixed together the ingredients. He poured the cake into molds and put the icing into bags. When everything was ready, he layered them all together, and began constructing his masterpiece.
To Jeremiah, a cake was so much more than a square in a pan. It was a chance to express his feelings, to capture the thoughts in his mind he so rarely expressed in the real world. He built his cake high, winding and wrapping around itself in ways that didn’t seem possible, but for Jeremiah, inevitably worked flawlessly.
When he was done, he stepped away. In front of him was a recreation of the Grocery Emporium inside his heart. The cake had been transformed into a grand castle, with explosions of yellow and blue. It was the most beautiful cake Jeremiah had ever seen.
He cleaned up after himself so that the morning crew would have a kitchen ready to work.
He took out a pen and wrote a price sticker for the front of his cake.
“Best Offer.”
Rolling his cake to the front of the store, he admired his creation one last time before locking the store up and going home for the night.
The next day when he returned for his shift, Jeremiah saw a news crew in front of the store, cameras and everything. Not wanting to be captured on camera for fear of becoming an internet meme, Jeremiah went around to the back entrance to get inside the store.
He found his manager. Perhaps he knew what was going on.
“Jeremiah, you’re here. It’s unbelievable.”
“What is unbelievable, sir?” he asked.
“You haven’t heard,” said the manager, looking at Jeremiah with surprise. The manager turned on the television, and Jeremiah saw the same reporter he had seen in the front of the building.
“Unbelievable. Little known local grocery store, rumored to be going out of business, apparently, decided to try something a bit more unconventional. They priced a cake best offer, and believe it or not folks, I’m not making this up, a bidding war started. The grocery store refuses to comment on the final price, but this news agency has it from a reliable source that the cake sold for $10,000.”
Jeremiah couldn’t believe it. Surely, the cake he had made couldn’t have sold for $10,000.
The manager hadn’t stopped looking at Jeremiah through the entire news story.
“Jeremiah, you wouldn’t happen to know what this is all about, would you?” he asked.
“No sir,” said Jeremiah, scared of what his manager might say if he found out that Jeremiah had used the store’s supplies without permission.
“Hmmm…. Interesting. Hey, Jeremiah, can you do me a favor? How about you lock up for me again tonight?”
Jeremiah agreed.
That night after his shift, Jeremiah had another idea. He suspected his manager had known that the first cake was his doing, but he’d let Jeremiah close the store for a second night. Perhaps the manager was okay with Jeremiah’s baking endeavors.
Either way, as Jeremiah stood once again in the baking section long after everyone had left, another idea formed in his head. A tall mountain with roaring water cascading down the side, and the sun peaking up in the distance, glistening off the water.
Jeremiah mixed and melted, pushing the edible ingredients to form to the vision in his mind.
Exhausted, he cleaned his last spoon and pushed the crystalized mountain out to the front of the store.
“Best offer,” he wrote on the tag.
The next day, the crowds were even larger. Jeremiah struggled to even skirt around them to get to the back entrance to the store. This time, a man and woman stood near the reporter, the same reporter from the day before.
Jeremiah couldn’t help but over hear the report.
“Welcome back folks. Hopefully you’ve recovered from the best offer on today’s cake, but I know Twitter is blowing up right now. People agree the cakes are beautiful, but does the taste justify the cost? I’ve got with me today a News 4 exclusive. The buyers of today’s cake, Mr. and Mrs. Johnson. Mr. and Mrs. Johnson, tell me. Did the cake taste good, or was this all an elaborate gimmick with no substance?”
Mrs. Johnson spoke first.
“Let’s just say. We’ll be back tomorrow with another check ready.”
Jeremiah walked into the store and headed to the self-check out lanes. His manager called after him.
“Hey Jeremiah, can you do me a favor?”
“Close up again tonight?”
“Yup.”
“Be my pleasure, sir.”
A week later, Jeremiah got a call from his manager.
Worried that the day had come for the store to close, he answered the phone, bracing for the bad news.
“Jeremiah. You there? You ready for your shift?”
“Sir, so the store isn’t closing today?”
“Closing. Jeremiah, you really don’t watch TV do you? Closing? Heavens no. I wanted to offer you a ride to work.”
“Sir, I appreciate that, but it’s not necessary. It’s a short walk, and the weather is nice. I check every morning.”
“Jeremiah, I insist. The police have put up barriers around the whole block. They’re hardly letting anyone else near the store. I wanted to offer to pick you up so you can get in.”
Jeremiah reluctantly agreed and stood near the curb until his manager arrived to pick him up.
Jeremiah could hear the crowds before he saw them. Flashing lights illuminated the people. More news crews were there now, not just the reporter from the first couple of days. Jeremiah couldn’t believe the excitement.
“Sir, what is happening?” he asked.
“It’s the cakes, Jeremiah. It’s gained national attention. The entire country is tuning in. People want to know more about the cakes.”
His manager parked behind the store, and they walked in. To Jeremiah’s dismay, the cake he had created the night before was still in the front of the store. Police were directing people passed it to inspect the cake.
Jeremiah had been proud of the design. The cake was a perfect sphere, balanced delicately on its bottom tip. The icing had been smoothed so delicately that it was possible to see a reflection in it.
The cake was perhaps his most jaw dropping, yet it was still here unsold.
“Sir, why hasn’t it sold?” he asked, lump in his throat. Despite the crowd, he’d let the Grocery Emporium down. His cake had failed.
“Jeremiah, cakes are priced best offer. We simply haven’t reached the best offer yet,” said his manager.
The crowd erupted in a roar.
“Strike that. Looks like we have a sale.”
One of Jeremiah’s coworkers ran to the back of the store.
“$1,000,000. $1,000,000. Can you believe it? The cake sold for $1,000,000.”
Jeremiah couldn’t believe it. $1,000,000 was more money than he had owned in his entire life, and someone had spent it on his cake. The cake he’d made the night before.
“Jeremiah,” said the manager.
“Yes, sir?”
“What do you say we introduce the crowd out there to the baker of the most expensive cake in Grocery Emporium history?”
Jeremiah shook his head. He didn’t want anyone to know he had made the cake. He didn’t want to be in front of the cameras.
He knew words couldn’t hurt him, but his mother, even at her loudest, had only been one person. At the other end of that camera was a world of millions. He didn’t know if his skin was thick enough to block out all of their laughter when they saw him. He didn’t know if he could survive the attacks of the whole world at once.
“Jeremiah, look at me,” said the manager. “You’ve got nothing to be afraid of. Jeremiah, I know you made the cakes. In one week, your cakes have saved the store. Do you hear that Jeremiah? You’re a hero. The world needs to know what you did, they need to know what you are capable of. Jeremiah, I promise you. Today, no one will be looking at you. They will be looking at the possibilities of what you can accomplish.”
Jeremiah walked towards the front of the store, the store that had given him a chance, the store that he had saved. The cameras could see him now. The crowd was looking. People were wondering who he was. He could feel their judgment. How could anyone of value look like him?
His knees turned to Aisle 6- jello and other baking ingredients.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I want to introduce you to the Best Offer baker, the finest baker I have ever met, Jeremiah.”
Jeremiah braced for the laughter. He braced for the name calling. He braced for someone to “accidentally” push him into a shelve.
Instead, he was met by applause. People were cheering his name.
“Jer-e-miah. Jer-e-miah. Jer-e-miah.”
“I’ve got another announcement to make,” said the manager, holding up his hand to silence the crowd. “Today was the last day the Grocery Emporium ran the Best Offer special.”
A collective groan arose from the crowd.
Jeremiah didn’t understand. He loved working for the Grocery Emporium. He gladly would continue making cakes.
“Before you all get too mad, I’ve got a third announcement to make. Effective immediately, the Grocery Emporium would like to offer its kitchens to Jeremiah, the owner of the Best Offer Bakery, for as long as we are open, letting him sell his cakes for whatever price he deems fits.”
The crowd erupted again. Everyone waved their hands and gave Jeremiah thumbs up.
“Jeremiah, what do you say?”
“I’ll have to speak to my lawyers,” said Jeremy, and the whole crowd cheered.
Jeremiah looked at his manager, his coworkers, the store that had given him a chance. He looked at the crowd. The people. People that were not looking at him but looking at what he could accomplish.
The Grocery Emporium opened at 6AM, every day. A mega store on the west side of town. Monday mornings were busy. Tuesdays too. Wednesday and Thursdays were busier still, and the weekends were nearly impossible to get in the store.
Each morning people lined up by dawn for their first chance to bid on the newest creation from the Best Offer Bakery, and each day, Jeremiah was there to greet them, shake their hand, offer them a sample, and listen to their suggestions for his next one of a kind creation.
