Up All Night in HEB

HEB celebrated its 50th anniversary in La Grange a couple of weeks ago.

I read a story recently that HEB one of the top grocery chains in the entire nation.

And here we are, blessed to have one in our little community.

I have a warm spot in my heart for the La Grange HEB.

Other than parking cars at the Fayette County Fair, working at the HEB here was my first job.

I actually got my start at the old HEB store here, which faced Jackson St.

I was working there when the transition was made to the Travis Street-facing location nearly 30 years ago.

I started by bagging groceries, and eventually worked my way up to being a cashier.

My favorite memories of being a bagger was when I would help little old ladies take their groceries out to the car.

We had a strict rule about not accepting tips, and I followed that rule seriously. But everyone once in a while a lady would not take ‘no’ for an answer and force a couple of quarters or a dollar into my hand. One time a lady grabbed a peach out of her bag of groceries and insisted I take it as a tip.

As a cashier my most vivid memory was getting called to the high school principal’s office one day during class. On the other end of the office phone was one of the store’s managers, Ray Ann Michalsky, who wanted to know why my cash drawer was missing $500 from the night before. I nearly passed out, and told her in a squeaky voice that I had no idea why there would be such a discrepancy. We ended the call and can’t imagine I got any work done the rest of that school day. When I showed up for my shift that night (fully expecting to be fired, arrested or worse), Rae Ann informed me that they had made a mistake and there wasn’t any money missing from my drawer after all.

Later in my La Grange HEB career they were having trouble finding people to work on the overnight stock crew and store manager Robert Svrcek asked if I could fill in.

So some weekends, and summers I would work occasional overnight stocking shifts from about 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. (it was so much easier to stock the shelves when there weren’t customers roaming the aisles).

The night crew was filled with older guys who were a little rough around the edges. They teased me a lot, but I loved being part of their team.

When the store closed for the night we were essentially locked in the store (though someone had a key and there was an emergency exit).

Working overnight took some getting used to.

It was sometimes a battle to stay awake.

I remember stocking some toilet paper packages one morning after a long night and using one pack as a pillow, falling asleep right in the middle of an aisle.

The cat food bags made good pillows too.

After working all night, sometimes the drive home was harrowing, even after having some caffeine. I remember calling my mom on a couple of occasions to come pick me up because I felt I was too sleepy to drive home.

The work on the night crew was hard, but every once in a while we had fun in the cavernous, otherwise empty store.

More than once we used frozen turkeys as bowling balls, knocking down two litter bottles of soda set up in the aisle as bowling pins. One time one of those bottles busted open on impact, spraying soda everywhere.

That was the last time we played frozen turkey bowling.