Life Skills

Like many grocery stores, we serve as a work placement for kids in special education. For reasons unknown, all of the teens who spend a school year at the Chop do so in my frozen/dairy department, under my tutelage and supervision. On 'down' days, I ask myself what, exactly, this says about the job I do. Then I remind myself that I'm not just a stockboy, and even if I was, the people I work with are what make the job enjoyable.

(Quick spiritual/linguistic aside: that word 'enjoyable' is one of many English words that people rattle off without really examining. It's interesting if you break it down into its component parts. The prefix EN- means "entry or conversion into the specified state". JOY we know, and crave, even if, or maybe especially if, we don't experience enough of it. And-ABLE means just what it says. So when you say something is enjoyable, you mean it is able to be infused with joy. That hints at an underlying Great Truth: nothing is a joy in and of itself: it's up to you what is "en-joy-able". Or as my stepdad used to tell me, "Life is what you make it.")

I have to admit that when I found out mentoring 'challenged' kids was part of my job description, I balked a little. I wasn't sure what to make of it, or even if I could make anything at all.

I couldn't have guessed, a decade ago, that this aspect of the job would be half as fulfilling as it has turned out to be. Or that I would be told at the end of every school year what a wonderful job I had done with that year's student.

I owe my brother-in-law a debt of gratitude for all of this. Eva's brother Jim is a larger-than-life man and one of the funniest people I've ever met. Like his sister and just about everyone else I've met in that family, he's a person of many talents, not all of which are immediately discernable. You look at Jim, you think mechanic, and he's a damned good one. But he's also a Life Skills coach for developmentally delayed children. He loves them dearly and he makes a huge difference in their lives.

When I told him, nearly a decade ago, that I'd be doing some coaching of my own, and was unsure about it, he said something I've never forgotten. "Just treat these kids like kids", he said. "Don't talk down to them. Don't treat them like retards."

Privately, I was skeptical. Well, aren't they? Aren't they retards? I honestly wasn't sure. I'd never knowingly met a retard (although up til then it had been an easy slur to throw around). That realization--I've never met one, but I seem as if I hate them--made me think about the disgust I'd once harboured concerning gays. That was before I found out my best friend was gay. Maybe these kids are like Jim, or Eva, I thought. Maybe there's lots more to them than meets the eye.

To this day, I'm not sure what labels are affixed to these teens before I ever meet them. I don't care. Following Jim's advice, I have tried my damnedest to treat them the way I'd treat any new hire. For the most part, it has worked, and worked wonders, even if (as has usually been the case) the kid isn't employable by the end of the school year.

Case in point: Justin. He was a little runt of a kid that, physically at least, reminded me of a younger me. Looked just like your stereotypical '80s nerd, Coke-bottle glasses at all.

The trick with Justin was to harness his attention. He was the very definition of scatterbrained: give him one task to do and he'd interrupt it every chance he got to go and do something else. Then he'd interrupt that and who knows where he'd end up. Now, hell, I have days like that myself, but this was excessive.

We did discover, however, that Justin had a knack for fixing things. Things nobody else in the store could fix, he'd take one look at and presto. It was a little unnerving, considering I can break things with both hands closed and my eyes tied behind my back, but fixing them is beyond my ken, so to speak.

Writing my end-of-year review for Justin, I noted that a grocery store was not a suitable environment for him, and suggested a factory job or maybe an auto shop. I'd talked to Justin myself throughout the year and confirmed that an auto service center was where he really wanted to be. He'd told his teachers this, of course; they didn't listen. Of course. But they listened to me: I ran into Justin on the bus last year and he was gainfully and happily employed at a service center and looking to get some credentials.

Or take last year's student, Brandon. He was distinctly average as these kids go. Some days he'd complete everything at an employable standard with little supervision; other days you'd have to babysit him and correct a host of simple mistakes. It was really frustrating, because he'd do a task correctly six times in a row and completely flub the seventh.

On his lunch breaks, Brandon would sketch. In seconds, he could generate an astonishing piece of artwork, and given half an hour, he'd create something that should be hanging in a gallery some place. It became clear to me very quickly that my job here was to keep him performing his job at a minimally acceptable level so that he'd stick out the year. Every chance I got, I would encourage his artistry. He didn't think he was all that special. The ability just came naturally to him and he didn't have to think when he had a piece of blank paper in front of him. Thinking was painful for him, so you can understand why he'd retreat into his mental canvas at every opportunity, but even so he didn't consider his artwork anything to be proud of. We all worked to correct that: every person who saw him sketch told him he could make a living off it if he wanted to. I don't know if all that encouragement worked. I hope it did, I really do. Brandon came in two weeks after his last shift and gave me a Tim Horton's gift card (from his teacher) and a cartoon-sketch I still have somewhere. That sketch might be worth something someday. Check that: it's worth a great deal, right now.

There has only been one student I've had to turn away, and that was only because he was physically unable to perform the job. A milk crate was too heavy for him. Every other student, even the ones who have failed, has been a success story. But two of them really stand out.

Michael came to us four years ago, if I recall correctly. He was a tall drink of water who dressed like a gangsta and, as I was told more than once, acted like one too. He'd already been in trouble with the law and I got the sense that Price Chopper was a narrow and greasy tightrope he'd have to walk if he wanted to go straight. I had real and sincere misgivings about this kid, but did my best to mask them. Talking to him, I learned that Michael came from a bad, bad home. His dad was abusive and his mom was a dishrag and his sister had been kicked out of the house at least twice. Work represented an escape for him and he threw himself into it.

These students usually work two shifts a week. Their work placement is a school day for them, and so if school's not in session, they're not at work. Imagine my shock to hear Michael, the week before March break, say this:

"That ad you've got next week looks brutal. I can come in if you want."

That floored me. What kid would willingly give up any of his March break to come in and work for free? We couldn't take him up on it--in the unlikely event he injured himself, we'd be in a world of trouble with Workers' Comp--but we resolved then and there to hire him on at the end of the school year. And we did, and he worked out so well we eventually moved him to full time night crew. Not long after we'd done that, somebody neglected to lock up the cigarette delivery and I guess the temptation to make a quick buck was too much for Michael. He and another guy on that crew kited the smokes out the door and next day they themselves were kited out the door and charged to boot.

I took that really hard. Yeah, the kid had made some bad choices--knocked a girl up at seventeen, for one--and he came from a family that made trailer trash look lordly...but damnit, there was a good kid in there somewhere and I'd spent over a year teasing it out. To have him step so boldly off the straight and narrow felt like a betrayal and it made me feel like a grade-A failure.

The 2010-11 prospect's name is Nathaniel, and he insists on that. Not Nathan, not Nate or Nat. Despite the fact that most of these teens have easily subverted my first impressions, my mind insists on making them, and I disliked Nathaniel on sight. He's 16 but looks easily 20: 6'4", 220 lbs, with a muscular build and a face that had, at least when I first met him, all the expression of a wind-lashed cliff. I always make a point of asking, when the kid's not in earshot, what issues I should be prepared to deal with, and in this case I was told that Nathaniel had a problem with anger management. And he didn't want to work in a grocery store.

"Really," I said, stunned almost speechless. "And you're putting him in a customer service position he doesn't want to be in?"

"He's one of our higher-functioning students," I was told, "and...call it a hunch. I think he might do well."

The night before Nathaniel started, I talked myself to sleep, wondering how best to manage a kid with anger management issues in a job where misplaced anger could easily lead to a lawsuit. Jim spoke up in my mind: "Treat these kids like kids." I decided, tentatively, to pretend there was no problem, and then try and nip it quick if I could see one developing.

As is usually the case, the teacher spent the first day helicoptering over her student. I'd give Nathaniel a task to complete, starting off really easy, and she'd hop right in and try and micromanage it. I could see Nathaniel glowering, clearly resenting the interference, and so I took the teacher aside and told her point-blank to go check on her other student at a different store. "I think I've got this well in hand", I told her.

"There", I said to Nathaniel after she'd left. "I've got her out of your hair. Now let's work this skid of yogurt together."

He smiled, the first one I'd seen on his face. Up to then, I didn't even know he could.

The next day, Ms. Busybody came in again and I shooed her away before she and Nathaniel could even see each other.

That was two weeks ago, and Nathaniel is already light-years ahead of where most kids are at the end of their terms in June. The other day he went and stocked milk without being asked, having never done it before, and did it as well as I could have. Last Friday was a P.A. day; echoing Michael, he told us he could come in, if we wanted him to.

"I thought you didn't want to work here", I told him, half-joking.

"I didn't," he said, "but that was before I found out it was fun."

Last Thursday, I approached my boss and we stood watching Nathaniel work for a minute. "If you're looking to hire," I said, "you could do worse than that kid." "Yeah," he said, "I've been watching him. Talk to his teacher on Monday and see if we're allowed to hire him before the school year's up."

Worst case, Nathaniel will work for free on two weekdays and be paid for weekend shifts. Best case, we can spring him out of school entirely. And once again, my first impression has been proven 150% wrong. Yeah, the kid has anger management issues...at school. Know what? Lots of kids do. It comes from them being talked down to and treated like retards.