One Very Unfortunate Day at Lucky’s. I needed mozarella. I’d put it off for more than a week. My reluctance to go anywhere at the peak of Covid was considerable.
I live in an area of five interscting city borders. Each of wildly different demographics, residential composition, law enforcement, road maintenance and commercial services in a small geographic space. The stores closest to me are in the area with a patchwork of massive apartment complexes with Section 8 housing and trailer parks.
I leave my tidy, well kempt, homeowning, elderly dominated HOA, pull out into lower middle class single family residences of trades people, small business owners and social climbing first generation Americans. Past the golf course to the intersection where apartments turn to trailer parks and turn further on past the “resource center,” read homeless shelter for single men, typically the most problematic houseless group for communties. Around the corner from the County jail. Unaddressed mental illness, substance abuse, felons and the deeply unlucky are among their ranks. This is West Valley City.
My home is tucked away from the majority of these folks but they are my distant neighbors, however indirectly. I live in a different city. Socio economically, I’m worlds away on the surface. Bad luck is always a possibility.
I go to Lucky’s supermarket. They have the best prices. Catering to the large Hispanic, Vietnamese, Pacific Islander and African commintites in the area. I can get nopales, tomatillos, papaya, cotija caso and much more for quite inexpensively. The parking lot is filthy, stained with large pools of noxious fluids from ill maintained cars with fingerprint coated interior windows.
I am, as usual the only white non employee in the place. Something I’m usually only vaguely aware of, until I hear banter in miscellaneous languages and the colorful garb or African nations unknown to me.
What make’s me uncomfortable are the unmasked employees.
West Valley City is a Covid hot spot. Communities of color are ravaged by Covid. Infection rates are skyrocketing and deaths of those infected are highest. I may not be a person of color but this is my community. From an epidemiologic standpoint, their risk of infection, is my risk of infection. Skin pigment, education and bank balances don’t negate that ICU’s and hospitals are beyond capacity.
Earlier that week, hospitals announced they now had to prioritize treatment for younger, healthier patients. Read let older, chronically ill, disabled and yes, brown just die of Covid. Based on the numbers this had been happening all along.
I just need my fucking cheese.
My pace quickens. I have to circumvent the store a few times, getting a few items while I’m there. Twice asking two different employees to put up their masks, both argumentative but compliant. At this time there was a legal order from Salt Lake County requiring masks be worn in public at all times.
With relief, I head down the freezer aisle headed straight for the check out, seeing few people in line. A young couple turned toward me as I proceeded toward them, on my way to check out. The young woman wasn’t wearing a mask but the young man was.
I gave extra room to avoid them. Avoiding everyone as much as possible. Increasing numbers of people were coming to shop unmasked. I was eager to go.
“You got a problem?”
I stop, laughing a bit. I thought this young man was making a joke. I turn to face him. Realizing he is not kidding. HE most definetly has a problem and it’s me and my cheese.
I don’t know precisely what I said but it was to the effect of, “no.” He became physically aggressive at this point. His female companion restraining him as he was lunging for me. I couldn’t make any sense of what was happening.
She is straining, saying forcefully, “Walk away! Walk away!” It’s clear this is now a violent confrontation so, I walk away. They also started walking toward the registers. He took my walking in the same direction as a sign or aggression apparently. He began shouting. I could hear him behind me as I proceeded 25–30 feet beyond. Frozen goods he was hurling out of the case landing at my feet as I walked.
I began putting my items on the conveyor. He continued to be very physically aggressive, his girlfriend(?) grappling with him. I turn and ask, “Dude, what is going on? I do not understand what is happening.”
He shouts, “You didn’t have to yell!” I have no idea what he’s talking about. By now the manager and several employees have noticed the skuffle. I turn to the manger, “Call the police, this guy’s out of control!”
The manager calls the police. I know I am stuck. My best shot at safety is staying put. If I run, I’m isolated without witnesses. If I back down, I’m getting a beating. I’m firmly standing my ground but making no aggressive moves and saying nothing. I’m watching to see balled fists or the tell tale shoulder pull back and waist rotation of an impending punch. Thus far it’s not happening but he’s in my face.
He knows if he hits me I will get violent and he will go to jail. A place I’m suspecting he’s very familiar with.
Suddenly he spits in my face. Then again directly in my eye. Now there is a crowd around us. He runs outside.
I know he’ll never answer for what he’s done. The manager asks me if I’m ok and want to police I say yes but now he’s gone, they’ll never find him.
The cashier asks me, “What happened?” I reply, “I honestly have no idea.”
It’s the day after Thanksgiving. I opted to go to the store this day, assuming everyone would be eating leftovers so the store would be dead. I was right, mostly.
“We had to call the police twice yeaterday on my shift.”
I push my cart aside. I’m not buying anything from Lucky’s ever again. A homeless, grissled man gruffly asks,
“Can I get out of here?!”
I move to the side. The manager tells me he’s sent a mentally disabled employee to write down the license plate of the vehicle as they left.
There was some conversation with the manager and staff while waiting for the police. I’m standing by the front door. A young employee walks in unmasked. I gestured her to put her mask on. She shouts, “I have an ADA accomodation!”
Before I can say, “That’s not a thing,” she literally ran away. I went outside to wait.
After what was a long time. Twenty five minutes, or so two young officers arrived. West Valley City police officers.
Some context here: West Valley City is notoriously terrible. The police department hires twenty one year olds directly out of POST training. They also hire cops who’ve had problems at other police departments. In Salt Lake County, police murdered more people than gangs did over the last few years. The crime in West Valley is serious. Violent crime, pervasive poverty, gangs, drugs, domestic violence and fatal traffic accidents are all realities of a WVC cop’s life.
West Valley cops do not help matters.
They certainly didn’t help me. Showing up, demanding to know how I knew this guy. I didn’t. They clearly didn’t believe me. Treating me with low grade contempt.
They claimed they would review security footage. They didn’t. The cashiers confirmed what I told them. They dismissed me, without so much as a case number or business card to follow up. A violation of protocol to not provide a case number.
I didn’t get my cheese.
I had to wait ten days to get a Covid test. It was negative. After a long gagging, sinus intruding, brain stem tickling Covid test, I waited a day.
After that most Unfortunate day at Lucky’s I’ve never been back. I’ve stuck with East side grocers. With people who wear masks, own homes, change their oil without leaking a quart at a time. It’s a cleaner, safer, science embracing world. No one has a problem with me.
I have a problem with this arrangement. Race and class divisions reinforced through violence.
I don’t know what happened in Lucky’s that day. Well, I know what but I don’t know WHY. I walked into something. Was it a domestic fight I chanced into? What did he mean about “yelling?”
I’m surprised to not be angry. The bigot receptionist at the Opthamologist who checked out my eye left me angrier.
The strain of Covid, the explosive rage of injustice finally emerging into white consciousness and a general social breakdown. The pressure cooker leading up to the presidential election, it was a horrible moment, collectively.
There isn’t a tidy moral here. Shitty, inexplicable things happen. Random acts of violence outnumber random acts of kindness when you’re in a space struggling people. People shown no compassion have no compassion. Is that guy an inexcusable shitbag? Yep.
So that’s my unfortunate day at Lucky’s.
