Rachel Rose Withers

For the first four years of my adult life, I worked every weekend as a cashier in my local supermarket. By local, I mean nearby—this was no small-town convenience store. It was one of the busiest outlets of a major supermarket chain in the largest mall in the country, with more than a dozen registers siphoning shoppers out of the store. Despite the store’s size, I, like most cashiers, had my “regulars.” There was the little girl I knew by name who did the weekly family shop with her dad and insisted on seeking out my register, regardless of how long the line might be. There was the man in the tie-dye shirt with tight gray curls, whose name I did not know but whom I mentally referred to as “Old Tom” for his resemblance to a friend of mine (give or take 30 years).