I have become known as a writer to the extant I have largely thanks to my Harm City work, primarily dedicated to urban violence and the survival lessons to be learned therein. Years ago my father, disturbed by my subject matter, suggested I write supermarket handbooks for employees and customers. I responded, “The employees can’t or won’t read, and the owners would never put something out for sale that would educate their customers, as they depend on their ignorance. It is a non-starter Dad.”

Four years ago, as the general manager of a ghetto supermarket, I did write a handbook for my perishable grocery crew. One of them actually read it, and then read it to the others. They all seemed pleased that their education in the finer points of their trade, lowly though it may be, rated such attention from ‘The Man’; the aggregate mythic status of all white oppressors having been attached to my person by the inhabitants of the tiny indoor plantation I ran on behalf of some spoiled middle-aged rich kid. ‘So much for my illiteracy theory’, I thought, glad in this instance to be proved overly cynical.

The owner though was enraged, that he, with his master’s degree, had not been consulted. When I noted that he had been working on his own handbook for the past 15 years, and that I desired a functional crew ‘yesterday, not fifteen years from now’ he became unglued and began snarling as his tiny fists beat on the table and he whined about ‘giving them [employees] the wrong idea’ [as to their worth, or lack there-of]. Even as he bemoaned their cataloging skills and rudimentary customer service gutturals, he still clung to his lone educated status as something separating himself from the 104 of ‘them’ that he found his self-doubting identity threatened by at that most primal level. Andy could not bear to think his staff was even capable of reading, let alone willing to take a part in educating themselves in the high art of retail food management…

So here it is; my belated piecemeal guide to your ghetto shopping experience. Oh yes, Andy, and the rest of you literate suburban primates are surely mumbling under your repressed breath, “I do not shop in the ghetto, so what exactly is your point?”

My point friends, urbane snobs and bland suburbanites, is that wherever you shop, short of the overpriced gourmet shopping experience that less of you can afford with each shopping year, that you are in fact shopping in a ghetto export outlet. If it ends in ‘Mart’ it is a slice of the ghetto, designed to bring the ghetto to you and the ghettoites to it. If it is a ‘supermarket’ anywhere financially south of Half-million-dollar Prefabricated McMansionville, than you are shopping with an outfit that could not stay in business without the EBT cash, food stamps, WIC vouchers, and ‘independence cards’ that constitute the modern Welfare Mamma Carbocracy.

If you are just a blog reader, and have not made it to the Harm City page, think of the Ghetto Grocer as a public service to you; my humble attempt to keep you in the low know. If you have any questions concerning shopping for your food feel free to address them to me, your Hood-friendly Ghetto Grocer, via the comments function at the bottom of this and every other Ghetto Grocer installment. In the meantime, Welcome to Ghetto-Mart, and enjoy your purchase—“Wait, what you got in your pocket son!”

“’Arrcka’: A, R, R, C, K, A—her mother should be shot! This came through on the Money Gram receipts this morning. Can you imagine that illiterate bitch—sitting there in the maternity ward waiting to drop this kid so her mother can raise her and she can go lay down with another man—thinking to herself, ‘How many consonants can I use to misspell Erika?’”

-Miss Ezz, Cheap Guys R’ Us

Being a bus patron I strive to keep neatly folded one dollar bills in my wallet to facilitate ease of boarding; not wanting to be the fool that spends five minutes trying to shove crinkled up bills into the fare meter. Toward this end I ask the cashiers that wait on me in various ghetto-marts for ‘good ones’. This has recently resulted in various stories being related to me by these cashiers as to the foulest bills they have been called upon to handle. If ever you see a cashier handling money with gloves on, you might want to keep the following tales of ghetto exchange in mind.

“We had this one smelly old dude—thankfully I was just bagging—who peeled down this sweaty sock that was so dirty it was the color of his leg, and pulled out a flap of folded bills. They were soaking wet and had to be peeled apart slowly. Jen showed it [the twenty-dollar bill] to me when she closed. It even had crystallized body salts stuck in the crease. I don’t know what he was going to do with the bills she gave him as change: I guess start a new sock wad of cash.”

-Decker

“I was at the fireman’s bull roast with Woody. We had a naked stripper on each table and hookers in the bathroom stalls blowing you for twenty bucks—blowing hundreds of guys. You could not even piss there were so many cops and firemen lined up for blow jobs. Well Nadia was dancing on our table and Woody fell in love. She picked up all the bills with her ass and her snatch; just throw them on the table and ‘whap, snatch’, it’s up her cooch. So Woody is all drunk, lays his head back on the table, spreads a five dollar bill across his mouth, and thrusts his tongue through the bill—fucking murdered Lincoln all over again—and Nadia squats down on his face and the bill is gone. I was done eating, I can tell you that.”

-John

I did have one run in with a stripper at a black night club that Duz took me to. She was about six foot and 250. Duz thought she was the greatest and described her in the following glowing terms, ‘The girl with the giant jelly ass and tits like trashcan lids’. She was pretty, and had a nice soft voice. But when a girl that big is dancing for an hour in a crowded bar, and she presses up against you to get her tip and put it in her felt Crown Royal bag she has a tendency to stick to you. The girls in this club were also rough. The giant Amazon chick actually threw Duz to the concrete floor and molested him while the drug dealers tipped him!

So, while my bodyguard was being ravaged by this gigantic Tina Turner knock off the big sweaty girl slid up to me looking for a kiss. I was actually afraid that my face would get stuck between her breasts and I would die of asphyxiation. I just pressed the bill against her upper breast, and she smiled, and wiggled away, dancing, the bill never leaving its place. I swear George was smiling at me as he bounced away…

Recently I discussed this subject with a ghetto cashier: “The breast money is not only nasty, it is more common this time of year [summer] than purse money. I had this welfare mamma earlier who had her smart phone, her pack of cigarettes, her independence card, and her cash all in one breast cup of her bra. I wouldn’t have been surprised if she pulled ten items or less out of the other one. It is so disgusting because it is always wet, and you have to handle it twice, once to count it, and once to sort it, and then again to count out at the end of the night. Thank God for hand sanitizer!”

-Mary

“Okay, you get a lot of balled up sweat pants money, but it isn’t wet.

“The breast money is disgusting and is probably the most common form of storage. When you are wearing tights and your ass is as wide as the register lane, where the hell are you going to put a wallet? Most breast money is sweaty or even soaked—thank God I don’t work afternoons! The breast money you get in the morning is usually powdered. They do powder up. The sistas do have their pride when it comes to their gigantic boobs.

“What kills me though, is crotch money. Every once in a while—I’d say one in ten—you get a sista who has either got too much other shit jammed in her breast, or is flat, and has to fold her money up in her underwear. I suppose if you are wearing tights or sweats and you aren’t equipped with the standard giant boobs, then you have no choice but to put you nasty money in the sweaty poof pouch of your nasty panties! And there I am unfolding this crotch money, which is not only wet like breast money but crinkled up like sweat pants money! Get a life—or better yet a job—you muffin top cows!”

-Miss Ezz

Thanks for shopping with your ghetto grocer, and please ladies, remember to purchase your smart phone covers over at the courtesy booth for only nine-ninety-nine.

This story and 49 other can be found in The Ghetto Grocer, available via the link below.