 And we're back for a live on a given Tuesday, I'm Jay Fiedel. This is Think Tech. And the handsome young man is Adam Kat. Hi, Adam. Hi, Jay. You're joining us from Denver to talk about your book that you wrote, Life on the Grocery Line. This is an unusual book. It's very autobiographical. And my guess is that it's available for sale on Amazon, am I right? Yep, it's on amazon.com. All right. So you wrote this about your own life. So before we get to the book, let's talk about your life. What were you doing that made you write this book? Well, so in 2019, I decided to take a break from corporate life. I was in a bad situation, and I wanted to take some time off. So I quit in about, I think it was August or September of 2019. And to cash out my 401K, took a few paychecks and wrote out the rest of the year to work on a novel that I've always wanted to write. It's something that I am passionate about writing. It's a big thing in my life. So I kind of wanted to just take that break and enjoy some time off. And so it came to the end of 2019, and I was pretty broke. Like I had some money, but I needed more. So I started working at a grocery store. So it could be like a mental break, but like a physical, like you might be physically busy. But so that was in January of 2020. And then by, I mean, by March of 2020, everything changed. You know, like it was, I think it was March 15th, the weekend of St. Patty's Day that schools closed. And businesses started to shut down. And like my job went from just kind of casual fun. I thought of it as fun anyway, that like I would, you know, joke around with people and just check them out, you know, check out groceries and hang out. And it turned into something else. I became like a therapist sometimes. There was plexiglass and masks overnight. So all of a sudden, all the fun of communicating with people went away and it turned into a very isolating and confusing job. There were so many people so upset and scared, and it's still confined in you. So I decided to start writing all the stories down on a blog called lifeonthegrocheline.com. And over time, I collected those stories over the course of the summer and into all the way into this year and put them into a narrative and created a book called life on the grocery line, front line experience in a global pandemic. So it's almost real time because you were writing a blog almost real time. And then you put the blog stories in a book and now you have a book that's normally biographical but current at the moment of the story anyway. Yeah, it was definitely happening in real time. It was a really interesting, and I turned it into a narrative that's more fictionalized because that's the easiest way to explain the story and to present the needs that are present the narrative and the things that were going on at the time. But yeah, it really resembles my life and other people that I worked with. Well, I wanna get into that, but before I do it, my question is why did you A, write the blog and B, take the blog and make it into a book? Why did you feel the need to go public on this? Well, you know, writing is my passion. It's what I always, or what I wanted to do the last 10 years. And I- So you went to school for it? I went to school for communication. So I just went to college because that's what I was supposed to do. It wasn't really, it wasn't a writer then but I began to pick that up as I went through college. I think it was the best way for me to work through the stress and the uncertainty of the times. And to share it publicly is my hope that other people would connect. Like I know that when someone writes something that I connect with it makes me feel easier in the world. It relieves anxiety in a way that someone relates to you that you may never know. And that blog really turned into a community of sorts. People were sharing stories with me, telling me like about their fears and anxieties about their family members that worked in the industry. And I like, you know, it helps bring about a community and it helped bring happiness to certain people. And that like, that made me think that, you know, maybe I should make this into a bigger story. I should tell the story about this time because it's unprecedented in world history really. We didn't expect this to happen. So it definitely needed the story. People from the work through the grocery industry during the time deserve have their story told. So I thought maybe since I'm living through this and I got nowhere to go, I can't go to another job because there was no one was hiring. There's nothing like that. So figured I'd turn it into a book and see where it goes. Well, let's take a snapshot of say March and the spring anyway of 2020. What was it like in a grocery store? You know, because I mean, people outside of grocery stores were wondering whether there would be food on the shelves, wondering whether the supply lines would hold up. And of course the people in the store were, you know, you say that they, the customers talk to you sort of like a bartender, right? I tell you their stories when they feel, you know, that you'll listen to them. At the same time, I recall incidents where customers would harass people in the grocery store would act out against people and other customers. So can you describe for us the environment that existed at least in your grocery store in the spring of 2020? Yeah, so it like, I mean, the shelves started to get empty right away, right? So rice, toilet paper for some odd reason, right? And paper towels were all gone, but canned food, frozen goods, it was so bare and dystopian looking like even the individual drinks were gone. And I worked at a high-end grocery store once they had the name, but like it was definitely, you know, in a very affluent neighborhood. So I had that kind of clientele too who expected certain things out of their local grocery store. And it was intense, because I feel like a lot of people didn't, like they never really had dealt with their life in a real way, like having their kids stay home with them and they have to all of a sudden take care of them all day and they have to teach them online and help them teach, like go through their homework and do all these different stresses. And it was so intense. It was like for a while. And some people were really nice, but yeah, we had a fair amount that would like flip out or start crying. One lady in particular, I remember, so I was checking her out and we were running out of bags along with everything else because we were so busy. And she asked me if I could double bag her groceries. And I told her, we can't because we weren't supposed to at the time. I knew immediately that that wasn't gonna go well because you could see it. She started grabbing things off the conveyor belts. She grabbed the bag out of my hands, ripped it out of my hands and she was throwing her groceries into the cart and she even missed some on the floor. And as she's storming out, I'm watching her do this thing and like kind of in awe or shock and she stops at the last catch register, licks her hand, lifts it up towards the sky, says something to me and smacks it down on the counter. And I knew right then that like people were so close to the breaking. Some people were. That was in May, I believe that that happened. April or May. And it all came home in a very real way. I remember I didn't take a break and at the time you almost thought like, is that like a biohazard or something like that? It was sketch and everyone was at the breaking point and you just can't as a grocery store employee just kind of had to take it and keep going. Yeah, I must have, did you lose staff in that period? And people say, I don't want to come in here. I don't want to deal with this. I don't want to deal with customers that are losing it. I don't want to deal with the risk of getting COVID myself. You know, it wasn't that we lost staff, but they had a, they have a attendance policy that you can only miss a few days. Well, they got rid of the attendance policy for a while. So a lot of people would call in and that would definitely short staff us all the time. We were extremely short staffed. Like on top of everything else, we didn't have enough people because, you know, I understand it's stressful and you needed extra days off for, so yeah, it piled on. But we, I think everyone's stuck like stayed with it because there weren't many other jobs out there, so. And there wasn't much money for some people. I mean, the disadvantage, I don't know if you're high-end store service, the disadvantage, but, you know, if I don't have any money, that's going to reflect on the food I buy. Did you see that happen? Did you see a trailing off of business? Did you see credit situations where they weren't able to pay? No, my store specifically, I didn't see anything like that. It's definitely the nicest neighborhood in, or not the nicest, but maybe the ritziest neighborhood in Denver and it, people had carts piled like above the brim. So you're talking about like $500, $600 worth of groceries. And a lot of it was perishables. So like, you know, they'd buy a bunch of vegetables, things like that, which only going to last a week. It was like hoarding at a pretty scary level. And luck, one of the nice things about working there is that I could get stuff after hours and like we get it from when we get a new shipment in, you could get stuff to just cover to you for a week. They stockpile a little toilet paper for us so that we could have some because you couldn't get it anywhere. I never saw any like people missing out, but I did see like this fear in people's eyes. You have that kind of look when you've ever been in a hospital where someone's been all up all night worried about their loved one. You saw that like bags in their eyes like intense fear, uncertainty all the time. And it didn't matter, you know, rich, poor, like we didn't make, I didn't make much money, you know, the minimum wage in Denver is $15 an hour. So that's what I was making. And, you know, we were all, it was a great leveling experience in a way. You were very much on their level a lot of times. And then, you know, other ones break you or ask for ridiculous things, but it was fascinating that way. And when you think about it, you know, people are isolated at home. The only place they really have to go out is for food, you know, otherwise they stay at home. So you become their life experience outside of the isolation. And these are the moments of their life when they're actually interacting with other people, otherwise really not. So I like to get a handle on the dynamics. And that means, you know, from the time it first started in March, April, May of 2020, you were there, what, maybe a year after, for a year later. How did it evolve? How did it change? Did you continue to see the bags under the eyes? Did you continue to see the outbursts? As the pandemic wore on, everything just kind of settled back into the strange normal. Where, like, how people were calling us heroes at the beginning. I was. Yeah, you know, like I never thought of myself as a hero and I know no one I worked with did. It was kind of a running joke inside, but I understand it comes from a good place. And I know that people really appreciated us being there. And even more than the food, like you said, the, just the interaction with someone besides, like you're just your family or the inside of your walls and your empty apartment, you know, or Zoom meetings, which aren't the same thing. You know, just having someone to talk to, someone that even for a two minute conversation, they went a long ways. And as the time, like the lockdowns and things wore on, I feel like it was more people, they just lost patience quicker. Like at first everyone was like, could be really nice at moments and patient with you. But over time, I mean, everyone was so sick of it. And I was tired of having a plexiglass screen, you know, having my mask on. So I feel like I'm in a bubble away from everyone. And in no way, I can make connections like I would want to. So that's what I saw the most was just it wore on and it wore down everyone. And I was very grateful to get out of that situation and go into the inside of the store. Yeah, enough is enough. But you know, it strikes me that at the beginning, we're all in this together kind of mentality that changed somewhere along the line. And it became politicized and people didn't want to wear masks. And I recall seeing a number of articles in the newspaper about altercations where, you know, a retail clerk in some retail establishment would say, you know, you need to wear a mask in here and the customer would get into an argument or a fight about it. And it was really awful to see that. Did you have that experience that happened in your store? Yeah, you saw it with certain people. I remember this one man came in, this older gentleman and he like, this was right. We hadn't got masks yet, but a lot of people were coming in with it and we hadn't got plexiglass. And he was, he stood as close as he could in the checkout lane, like the self-checkout. And he was kind of yelling at me about how my CEO wasn't treating us properly or our company's not taking care of us. And he sat there just breathing heavy on me. Like everyone knew that this was an airborne virus, but like we were not getting all, we hadn't all the safety things in check yet, they hadn't been in place. And he just stood so close. And I just remember him like bearing over me, telling me something that I have no control over. And it made me like think, you know, he's so used to like this having control in his life that this loss of control, he was like basically projecting on me in this moment when he should not be this close. Like we don't know anything about the virus. We don't know how this works. You should not be breathing all over me and lecturing me about things. And it was startling because like some people just don't see beyond like what's in front of their nose, you know, and yeah, it was, we saw quite a bit of that. And I eventually just didn't really, I didn't tell anybody to put him on a mask. I wasn't gonna do that. I'm not gonna argue with someone or fight over it. So like you just kind of go through the motions and get through your day. Interesting, you know, I had an accountant once and you would ask this accountant, what do you do? And he would say, I practice psychiatric accounting. And so what does that mean? Well, you have to take every client on his own merits and you have to look at this person and understand this person if you're gonna do good accounting for him, personal accounting. And I guess I would say that what you describe is a psychiatric retailing, psychiatric food selling, so to speak. You have to look and see who you're dealing with. Oh man, that's so true. Well, you know, during this whole continuum, 20 to 21, we had two significant things. One was the Delta, which I guess came after your time. And of course, you know, Omicron came much more recent than that, you know, people forget, but Omicron is, you know what, it's a month old, maybe six weeks old, that's all it is. And yet it has completely occupied our lives. So my question is, I know you're not there anymore, but I wonder if you have a view or, you know, people who you talk with who are there to describe how these changes in COVID may have affected the environment, the phenomenon that you're talking about in the grocery store. Yeah, I've been on this podcast a few times that call the retail war zone, so I'm pretty connected to a lot of people that still work in there in the industry. And it feels like it's kind of forever. It's gonna be that way forever, but they also, I think, like I know that there's some, we have King Supers here, which is a Kroger offshoot, and they're going on strike, or they might go on strike. And I think like, if anything, people are, the work in the grocery industry are like seeing their conditions and they want it to be better. So they're mobilizing. Now, whether or not it's successful or if it's beneficial for them, I don't know, but like the, I think it's helping them realize their conditions. And it's, I don't think anything's changed for them. It's still just as intense and just grinds on and on. And it's already a hard enough day. I wasn't, my store was so busy. I'd see a thousand customers on a really busy day, just through my line. And you're on your feet the whole day, you're taking care of people, their problems, their leaky bags of whatever that they hand you, the dismissive attitudes. There's a lot of things that were there beforehand that COVID only magnified. And now you have two years running of this, that it's gotta be brutal on them. And retail war zone does a good job of like highlighting their day-to-day struggles that they go through and thinking about mobilization and stuff like that. Yeah, well, that leads to a question I was going to ask you. You know, the grocery industry changed and some of those changes are permanent. Now the retail industry has changed and some of those changes are permanent. And I wonder if you can speak to that because you know, we're not out of this yet and frankly, you know, we're not gonna be out of it for a while and when we get out of it, it'll be no better than an endemic, right? It'll be sort of an ongoing infection. So the question is, how does all that you think in the long-term affect the industry? Well, in the very long-term, I can see it's definitely affecting the supply chain. And we've already seen the supply chain issues like globally as a result. I work in supply chain now. I work for a big consumer packaged goods company and you know, our orders are, we're filling it less than 50% on a lot of stuff. Then that's going to big organizations. Like we feed into Kroger in places like that. So you see those empty shells and the word around like industry, talking to my manager, talking to my director is that we're gonna have to expect that for, you know, the next four or five years that it's gonna slowly get back. And hopefully we don't have another major thing that goes wrong. Hopefully I'm optimistic that it comes back sooner. But those empty, those empty shelves and not having what you want is always gonna affect the customer on the customer level too. That they're gonna, you know, be more upset. Things are gonna be tighter. There's, I don't know if the mask thing will go away. I don't, it's hard to say, to be honest with you. It really depends on how far we get along with everything and like government officials and what they decide to do. I don't know, I think that one of those things that will definitely come out of it maybe as awareness of like conditions of retail workers and grocery store workers that they strive for better or better, try and better their lives and not work at a grocery store forever. I hope those sort of things. And I've seen a lot, like grocery industry specifically is very transient. A lot of people don't stay there for that long. It's probably more transient now than it was before. Nobody in the room is gonna say, oh yeah, I wanna make a career out of this, right? Yeah, yeah, that's been fading for a long time too, I think. I know they just kind of constantly short staff you. Anyway, where I was working, it was always short staffed. I worked in the prepared foods department as a manager later and it was, we were always, we never had enough staff because no one gets paid a great amount of money to just kind of grind it in, grind it out. And I mean, the holidays were kind of cool in a way because it's really like a lot of energy but we were so busy all the time and you beat down for basically minimum wage. So I don't know, the future is pretty uncertain, I feel like. Yeah, well, if the situation continues where people limit their daily activities and they limit leaving their homes, they still have to go to the store and get food. And therefore it becomes sort of a central place and the smart retail organization is gonna have more staff, they're gonna find a way to be better staffed and be competitive. And I suggest that the retail of food in the future is going to be kind of a mecca in the commercial life of the community because that'll be one of the only things where you have a commercial life in the community. Yeah, that was kind of a big revelation for me when I never really thought of a grocery store as that essential to my community in the way that interacted. People were so grateful that we were open. I was grateful that we were open so I could go in and get groceries and then I had a job. And before it's just a lot of times it's just the place you go in and you leave. You don't talk to anybody, you maybe don't even talk to the cashier. One of the things I've been trying to tell people as I've been promoting this book and gaining media is that treating grocery store employees just like they're human. You don't have to tell them they're heroes, you don't have to overchat them up but just that they exist and that, hey, how's it going? Hey, how's it, like smiles, things like that even if you can smile only with your eyes because of the mask, it goes a long ways. It really does, it makes your life a whole lot better. Well, I wanna ask you more about the book. You've been describing certain situations which I'm sure were included in the blog and in the book but can you think of a couple of that were special where it sticks in your mind that this is really the kind of story you wanted to tell that has a special meaning for you? Yeah, so like I said, it was a very fluid neighborhood that I was working in. So there was a brain surgeon that came in and I relate this story into the narrative in the book. He would come in, he had like six or seven kids, I think and he would come in and he ended up in my line like two or three times and then he came in like four or five, about like four or five or six and he'd come in like pretty frequently like every two weeks with $700 worth of groceries or 600 bucks, it was a lot. And he would always talk to me about what's going on in my life. And I told him that I was working on the blog at the time and I told him book story and all that stuff and he was like, that's amazing you're writing a book. That's amazing. And I mean, that's coming from a brain surgeon. There's probably like 10 of them in Colorado and there's a few hundred in the country, I would say. And he was fully engrossed in like talking to me about life and about all these other things. And it takes a while to check out a huge cart of groceries. So we had like 10 minutes together on a pretty regular basis. And I just, I thought that was so impressive. And it made me like reassured of humans a little bit when you start to get downtrodden, you get lucky. And he was like, didn't have to take the time. He was like an elite person, very elite in so many ways, but he was more interested in my life and my coworkers' lives than he was about his own stuff. So it was really nice. And it will always stick with me for sure. Yeah, so the other side of the equation you mentioned about how people should be kind and reasonable to retail clerks and the like. But it changes people. If they are, if they recognize what you're saying, it changes people, it changes the way they deal with the world. Clearly whether the brain surgeon would have been exactly like that before COVID. Maybe it's a special feature of COVID. But the other thing I was going to ask you Adam is what about your pros? I'm so curious about your pros because you are a writer and I can tell from talking to you that you're a writer, by the way. So if you have the book handy, I hope you do. Yeah, could you just turn to a page that you like and give us a paragraph of it so we can examine your pros? Sure, man, I'll just start from the beginning. Okay. It's my second day at work. The pace is starting to pick up. From the express lane, I look over the aisles and islands filled with food and patrons. The grocery store is a lightning rod of energy and commotion where the world ends and begins in spectacularly mundane fashion. Children are running from their mothers and fathers. In every direction, people are yelling and complaining and laughing. It's controlled chaos in a sense held together by invisible norms forged through evolution and social conditioning. I absorb this curious institution or curious and lively institution of Americana with accidental ease like a toddler learns words. That's hard to keep up. I walk towards the registers, my head on a swivel as people come to me with all manner of questions. They see dream grocers prominently displayed in bright orange on my black apron like a beacon to all those hopelessly lost in search of the items they need. Where is your European style braised veal chops with those delicious potatoes? You know the tiny ones? I look at the woman for a moment with wide eyes. She stares back at me, clearly annoyed. I don't know where her item is located. I'm sorry, I'm new. Here, let me ask my supervisor, Alejandro. I don't, don't worry about it. I'll just look around. Before I can ask for direction, she's gone. Just yesterday in orientation, Alejandro told me that my first few shifts would be a flurry of information and sound. The client tell that at this particular location doesn't have patients and they will assume I know what they want before I even speak. You know, the thing about it is I feel that you speak of changes. Changes in the way the customers react. Changes in the way the clerks react. Changes in the way you react. Changes in the supply line, in the way the grocery functions. And it doesn't only apply to groceries. It really applies to all retail. Just a grocery is such an intense example of retail. But it also, it also touches you, Adam. You know, you find that you need to express yourself in a blog and then a book. So I guess my, you know, running into the ninth inning here, I guess my question to you was, how have you changed because of this experience? It was not what you expected. Yeah, interesting. How have I changed? Well, one thing that I realized right after the pandemic hit was that, because I figured my job there is an in-between job. Like I had my draft in my first novel. I was just going to do this for a while. You know, like until I got a full manuscript and I can pitch an agent, do all those things. And I really, I thought of it as a throwaway kind of situation and I don't think I ever really looked at it as a vital part of not only the community and everything, but my life. And as a result and like the daily conversations you'd have of people and the weird like level of bonding that I grew with different co-workers became good friends. And we had this, like you're all, like you're, it's us against them sort of thing, or like you're in this together, but in this, in this together, like much closer to the nerve. It made me appreciate all the like retail workers, the grocery store workers, the forgotten people in many instances, they're forgotten. And society and I hope with the book that people like it connects with them and they can see themselves. It's a dark comedy. I want it to be funny because it should be funny. You need to be able to laugh as yourself and at the world and the absurdity that you live through. And it makes me laugh. Like I'm so, I'm grateful that I went through that even though I wish we didn't all have to go through a pandemic and there's lives lost and there's all this horrible things around you. But like, if you can grow from it and find a reason to go on and connection with people, I think that that's what I got out of it and I hope people do too. Oh, that's great. Did you finish the novel? Is there another book about, you know, business and commerce in you? Well, I have a second book that I'm working on right now, but it's a sequel to this. So it goes into more into the life of Daniel who's the protagonist. So I want it to be about everything I loved and hated about working in a grocery store. So the, like the camaraderie you feel, like how everyone, it's like almost like high school again in a way, but it was also, you know, you get paid for it. It was definitely like a phenomenal experience, but that's where I want to go next. I want to show the world what it's like in retail and what it's worth in our lives, I guess. As much more to come, there's a lot of material coming. You know, we've had a lot of material, but there's a lot coming in my opinion and therefore a lot of content for you to write about either in direct fact or in fiction or in satire. You've got to have a sense of humor. Adam Kat, who has a sense of humor and who wrote this great book called A Frontline Experience, whoops, Life on the Grocery Line. And you can find truth on a grocery line. Thank you so much, Adam. Thank you so much, Jay. I appreciate it. Aloha.