March 17, 2007 / Park Slope / Perspective / The Brooklyn Angle

The area of my expertise

By Gersh Kuntzman

The Brooklyn Paper

Amy Saidens

Here’s our editor Gersh Kuntzman doing what he does even better than being our editor: working the checkout line at the Food Co-op.

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Sunday night at the Food Co-op, and, of course, the lines were stretching from the recycled toilet paper to the goat-milk yogurt case and wrapping around to the frozen, grass-fed, organic, cruelty-free beef.

I, like half the members of the Park Slope Food Co-op at any given time, was working a make-up shift. But even though this wasn’t my regular squad, I was my usual eager (free-range) beaver, bounding over to the checkout line to man a post.

Then the squad leader stopped me.

“I can’t put you on checkout because I have to put my regulars on checkout,” she said.

Her regulars? I wanted to remind her that regulars are what got the Co-op into this crowded mess in the first place, but then I remembered where I was: at the Park Slope Food Co-op, even the mildest hint that you are challenging a squad leader’s authority would be met with a sit-in, a petition drive or, worse, the formation of a committee to investigate whether someone’s feelings had been, sniff, hurt.

So I remained mute — and was assigned to watch the exit door. For two hours and 45 minutes, my job was to stamp people’s receipts.

What a waste of talent.

Talent? Yes, talent. Look, readers of — and writers at — The Brooklyn Paper are already well aware of my general excellence at writing, editing, abusing underlings and holding court over two-for-one Margaritas at the DUMBO General Store.

But I am actually far superior at working the checkout line at the Park Slope Food Co-op. I don’t want to brag (yes, I do), but it is nothing short of inspirational watching me speed customers through the checkout process, hearing me exchange recipe tips, local news, and old Jewish jokes without so much as a mis-scanned item, seeing me fast-track the process thanks to memorizing all of the four- or five-digit UPC codes for produce. (Organic red grapes? 94023. Kiwis? 4030. Organic radicchio? 94738.) I’m like a freakin’ Bond movie: Nobody does it better.

It is probably the One Thing I was put on this earth to do: work the checkout line at the Park Slope Food Co-op. As Nicholson once said, “You want me on that wall. You need me on that wall.”

But on Sunday night, all I was doing was stamping receipts while the lines got longer and longer. By the end of the night, they had wrapped all the way around to the frozen Boca burgers (which stink, by the way).

I don’t mind telling you that I was demoralized. I felt the way people (not Co-op people, but normal people) feel when they are denied their destiny.

For consolation, I called up my regular squad leader to tell him about the affront, and he was appalled (not that any Co-op member expresses such raw emotions. Let’s say he was miffed).

“That is no way to treat the best cashier in the business,” he said, though, oddly, did not want his name used in connection with praising me.

Somebody should empanel a committee.

©2007 The Brooklyn Paper