On String Beans and Moral Authority

Last year I was pretty faithful about volunteering at a local food bank, but I stopped going when the bank cut its Friday hours. Today, I decide to give Thursday afternoon afternoons a try.

There’s a new director, and when I get there, he’s about to start lunch. While under the previous director I had done both intake and pantry work, I don’t want to presume on the new one, so I wait to be assigned. As a result, I spend a few minutes loitering. I always find it a little sad when a place has changed from my memories of it, but despite six months, things are not too different. The waiting room has been rearranged, and now has more chairs. There are now fans placed everywhere. The pantry has a new sign admonishing volunteers not to take any food. All small things, though the sign is a little disconcerting.

I don’t recognize any of the other volunteers, either because it’s been six months or because it’s Thursday. I start to introduce myself to two in the pantry, but their conversation looks pretty animated, so I slink back out to the waiting room. I can still hear them, though I don’t think they realize that. One says, “Is that guy waiting for his food, all creeping up over your shoulder and shit?” No, the other one responds, he’s a volunteer.

The new director comes out and asks me if I’d be willing to work in the pantry. Sure, I say. We head back there and he gives me a quick review -- nothing seems to have changed policy-wise.

It’s a new shift, so the two other volunteers leave. “Matthew” comes back and says he’s going to be working in the pantry with me. Good deal.

He shows me around, and I generally defer to his authority. I don’t bother telling him that today is not my first day, although I do question him when he tells me to give out two cans of both the Lucky Time green beans and the Golden Harvest green beans. Aren’t those the same thing? I ask. “They’re both green beans, but you should give out both,” he says. But won’t that mean going through the stock twice as fast? They’re different brands, but are you sure they’re not meant to be replacements for each other? “I’m sure,” he says.

As recently as last summer, running out of food was a serious concern. Maybe things have changed -- the shelves do look fuller. It doesn’t seem worth an argument, so I agree to do it his way.

A new volunteer comes through, led by the director. She is an older woman wearing a large scarf, a black dress, big earrings, and numerous rings. Her hair is short and blonde-white and severe in an older-woman-of-means-not-letting-herself-go sort of way. She looks out of place, a faded socialite wandered in from a Fitzgerald story.

She is uniformly impressed by everything. Here are the refrigerators, the director says. “Oh really!” she says. And here is the USDA food, he says. “Oh yes!” she says. Her oh reallys and oh yeses are still audible as they move into the warehouse.

Matthew and I begin to fill orders. He pulls out a psp and uses it play hip-hop music. I can’t describe exactly why, but it feels incongruous with the situation. I'm not happy about it, but decide not to say anything about it.

The socialite comes back through. I hear her being introduced to the woman working intake today. The woman says that she’s a single mother. “Oh really!” the socialite responds. She continues that the welfare office told her that if she was having trouble finding work, then she should find a place to volunteer. “Oh yes!” the socialite responds.

Another volunteer comes out of the warehouse into the pantry. He gives me his name and says, “I bring the Mormon boys.” He’s wearing a white t-shirt with a picture of Jesus that says “my boss.” I introduce myself. My eyes are drawn to his hair, which is flat and oddly pushed back, almost like there is some sort of singularity in the back of his head which is forcing light and gravity to converge on it. I notice that sweat on his forehead seems to be coming from under the hair, and I wonder if he’s wearing a toupee.

He asks me where I’m from, and I tell him the name of the university where I work. “Oh!” he says. “I’m headed there tonight to hear the speaker on Mormons!” Our conversation has lasted thirty seconds and it already has a theme. Yes, I tell him, I heard about that. He tells me the time and location of the speaker, but stops short of asking me if he’ll see me there. He looks like he’s considering it, though.

“Do you know who’s back there?” he asks, and gestures to the warehouse. “See that guy? He’s the 1983 heavyweight champion of the world.” He’s here? I say. Though I have no idea who that is, nor have I ever seen a fight, it seems like the sort of response the toupee man was looking for. He nods grimly.

The man in the warehouse is well-muscled, but otherwise nothing particularly sticks out about him. I wonder why the heavyweight champion is volunteering at our food pantry, or why that seems odd to me. I imagine faded glory; I picture all the boxer characters from “Million Dollar Baby” and their broken dreams; I hear “Eye of the Tiger.” All of that happening here, in the warehouse of our local food pantry. It’s uncomfortable, like seeing someone who was cool in high school now working a menial job in your hometown.

Maybe it’s not like that at all; maybe it’s good and fine that the heavyweight champion is here. I still decide not to introduce myself.

I ponder Matthew and his bagging. He puts a paper bag inside a plastic bag and then stacks all the way to the top, building careful pyramids of food security. Or he uses empty boxes and builds precarious and heavy sculptures, small cans supporting big ones, ungainly cans ready to topple out, etc., like some sort of unstable chemical arrangement whose atomic bonds are ready to break at the slightest moment. Nothing seems to predict when he will make the careful stacks or when he will opt for the Tasmanian Devil swirl approach.

After a few orders I work up the courage to talk to him about his bagging and how heavy and inconvenient it probably is for the clients. “It doesn’t matter,” he says, “we help load the food anyway.” That’s true, I tell him. But the people also have to get the food into their homes. “I never thought of that,” he says, but I notice he doesn’t change his ways. I decide if he’s willing to open the pandora’s box of passive aggression, then I’m going to stop giving four cans of green beans and only give two.

A client comes back into the pantry despite the numerous signs posted everywhere admonishing that only volunteers are allowed. He’s come through the warehouse entrance, too. The heavy-weight champ has let him by.

“Can I get some of those sausages?” the client asks. Sorry, I tell him. Those are for the homeless packs. “I usually get some of those sausages and soups and shit” -- I appreciate his alliteration, even at the time -- “but this time they gave me a whole bunch of cans and rice and beans and shit I can’t cook.”

Do you not have a means to cook? I ask. This is a question that is supposed to covered during intake. “No, I’m living in my car,” he says. “I’m sorry, sir -- I’d be happy to give you a homeless pack instead of the regular order. Just bring me back what we gave you, and I’ll swap you.” Had intake gone correctly, I would have given him a homeless pack in the first place and wouldn’t be in the difficult situation of asking for food back. Still, most of the food is stuff he can’t use anyway.

He brings the bags back, but since every order gets the same food, when I start to reshelf, it’s clear that some items are missing. I go back outside and ask him if he brought back all the bags. He admits that he did not, but tells me that the bag he kept had cereal and other things he could eat. He is upset that I’m asking for it back. I tell him that I need the full order back, so that I can give him a full homeless pack. He grudgingly leaves to get it.

While waiting outside, I hear one client talking to another about Obama, and how he is going to help turn things around. She is nodding and saying, “Oh really?” and “Yes?” to his every comment, but I’m pretty sure from our encounter earlier (when I asked her what kind of milk she preferred, another question that should have been covered during intake) that she does not speak English.

Mr. Alliteration returns with a bag which has cereal, peanut butter, and a bag of rice. I go back inside to fill the homeless pack. I reshelf his peanut butter, and put a larger one into the new pack. Although technically cereal boxes are not supposed to be part of homeless packs, I go ahead and throw it in, anyway, plus all the other stuff that is supposed to be there.

I head back outside to give it to him. “Can I have one of those pizzas?” he asks. Pizzas? Sometime in the last few minutes someone from Pizza Hut has dropped off some over-cooked pizzas. This happens every so often, and even though it’s only a few pizzas, they’re appreciated.

“Sorry,” I tell him. “We save the pizzas for families.” This is true.

“Come on, man, why do you gotta be like that?” he tells me. His face is wrinkled up, though he’s more angry than cajoling. “Just let me have a pizza.” Matthew is next to me, finishing up another order. He grabs a pizza and gives it to him.

Although the odds of me ever seeing this client again are low, and it is doubtful there will be any long-term harm, I’m nonetheless irked. Hasn’t Matthew ever heard about not undercutting your partner’s authority? I realize that is normally given as parenting advice, and suddenly feel a little guilty. I am not this client’s parent, nor is this client a child.

Still, I tell Matthew that I thought pizzas were just for families. “They are, “ he says, “but I usually will give out whatever just to make them shut up.” Oh. Wow.

The client has heard all this, but somehow I am still the one who is the enemy. He is smug. “See, man? What did I ever do to you?” he scoffs as he ambles away. I don’t tell him about the big peanut butter, or the cereal that I wasn’t supposed to give him but did anyway.

I suppose my moral authority on the string beans has evaporated. It’s hard not to want to give extra food; hard to visualize and remember that extra food for any particular client is taking food away from a future client.

So as I walk away, I recant. I should have given him a pizza, even if he was mean and it was against policy. I decide that for the rest of the day I’ll give out the pizzas to every client until we run out, whether they’re families or singles. Not only will it feel like atonement, it will also make me feel like I didn't just give one to Mr. Alliteration because, like Matthew, I didn't want to deal with him. These thoughts seem like they should be contradictory, but they don’t feel that way.