Vacuum Guy

“The large bags, right? the vac­uum guy asks.

“Yeah, for the orange Samsung.” 

He gets out four pack­ages of bags instead of the usual two from the box behind his chair and puts them on the table. “I’ve gotta tell you some­thing,” he says. “I’m clos­ing this store on December first. I’ve been los­ing money.” He ges­tures toward the wall, which used to be clut­tered with machines in need of repair — now there is only one, an old Electrolux. “No one brings their vac­u­ums in to get fixed any more, and why should they when they can get a new one for a hun­dred bucks.”

“What are you going to do?” I ask.

“I got a job at Future Shop. My step­son told me about it. He said, ‘Dad, you ought to go see the man­ager at the Regent Street Future Shop. He’s got some­thing for you.’ So I phoned the man­ager. No, not the man­ager, the team leader, that’s what they call them now, and I made an appoint­ment to see him. And he told me that he wants me to run the appli­ance divi­sion of the store.

“They’ve got a huge appli­ance divi­sion at Regent Street. They sell name brands — expen­sive stuff. Some of those refrig­er­a­tors, the ones that make ice and have triple doors, cost more than three thou­sand bucks.” The vac­uum guy says that the inven­tory in that one store alone, count­ing com­put­ers and cam­eras, is about thirty-three mil­lion dol­lars, give or take a mil­lion or so. “But the trou­ble is, and this is what the team leader told me, that they only have young peo­ple there and they need peo­ple like me who have some expe­ri­ence to teach them how to sell. 

“There’s no more hard sell these days, no bum’s rush. No, now you just go up to the cus­tomer and ask him if he needs any help and then tell him where he can find you if he has any questions.

“So that’s the story, that’s why at age sixty I’m clos­ing up the store to start a new job at Future Shop. I can tell you, it makes me nervous.” 

“You’ll do fine,” I tell him.

“That’s what the wife says. I hope you’re both right. Now how many pack­ages of vac­uum bags do you want? They won’t go bad, you know.”

“I’ll take six,” I tell him. 

The vac­uum guy throws in an extra pack­age. He walks out to the stoop with me as I’m leav­ing. We shake hands. 

“You’re a nice man,” he says.