The man who manages my late husband properties has worked for our family twenty years, and he knows my voice the moment I speak. I asked him one quiet question. Did the grocery chain in my plaza have a lease coming up for renewal, and what did it say about conduct on the premises.
He called me back within the hour. Yes, he said, their lease was up in four months, and yes, there was a clause, the standard one, about keeping a respectful environment for the community.
I am not a cruel woman. I did not want to put a whole store of hardworking people out of a job over one rude young man. My husband built his company by remembering that every storefront is somebody paycheck, and I have never forgotten it.
So I did not threaten to end their lease. Instead I asked for a meeting with the regional manager, in person, and I wore the same mended coat I had worn the day the clerk told me the store was not a soup kitchen.
He did not recognize me. Why would he. Just a plain old woman in a worn coat. Then my property manager introduced me as the owner of the plaza, the landlord his company had paid rent to for nine years, and I watched the man face change.
I am not here to cost anyone their job, I told him, I am here to make certain no other grandmother is ever made to feel the way your clerk made me feel in front of a full line of people.
I told him the whole of it. The dented cans. The eye roll. The words soup kitchen, and the laughter. He was mortified.
We came to an understanding, all of it written down. The young clerk was not fired. I asked them not to fire him. A person can learn, and firing him teaches him nothing but resentment. Instead he was to spend one day a month, on the clock, volunteering at the actual food bank two blocks away, so he might learn who really walks through those doors and why.
And the chain agreed to one more thing. Every one of their stores in my plaza now runs a quiet program. Damaged and dented goods, perfectly good food, sold at half price to anyone on a fixed income, no questions asked, no line held up, no shame in it.
I went back to that store a month later, in my same old coat, and did my little bit of shopping. The young clerk rang me up. He still did not know who I was.
He called me maam, and he meant it kindly, and he told me to have a blessed day.
I told him I already had.