By Javier Sanchez
My very first job in high school was working as a checker at a big box discount grocery store. It was a million square feet of five-pound boxes of Cheerios and an endless supply of Spam, potted meat and Vienna sausages. I memorized the codes for gala apples, granny Smith and red delicious and they came pretty quickly.
The job was actually fun and doing go-backs (putting groceries where they belong after shoppers put them in the wrong place) at the end of the night was surprisingly fun. I got to interact with the other cashiers and stockers and work until midnight trying to find exactly where the 5 oz. can of button mushrooms went.
What stuck with me wasn’t the constant cling of scanning bar codes. It was those unpriced items: the bag of bagels or crackers without a white price tag. Have you ever been stuck behind the guy who grabbed the one box of cookies without a price, only to have the checker reach for the intercom: “Pshcht. Price check on aisle 8. Pscht.” You’re done for. It’s too late to switch lanes, you better settle in and open that bag of chips because it’s gonna be a while.
Not knowing your worth is like not knowing the cost of something on a shelf. You’re just going to have to take a guess. The problem is, your self-worth and value aren’t things you want to toss a coin to determine. Do you know how many times I had to take a stab at the value of whatever it was I was scanning? I was accurate maybe .1% of the time.
But when time is of the essence and you have a long line of angry customers on their way home from work without having eaten, you better think fast. And your first instinct is to always — always — guess low. Yup. That’ll be $1.99.
Guessing the value of things taught me that if you don’t have your label printed clearly across your forehead, people will take it upon themselves to barter for your price. And it’s never as much you think. Knowing your worth means little things like shaking hands and looking people in the eye. There’s nothing hidden. There’s nothing shady. You are on full display.
Knowing your worth also means keeping your word and not having to trade favors — something the snack industry needs to learn. I’m sure you’ve opened a huge bag of chips only to realize it’s half full, or half empty, depending on how you see the world. Talk about not being true to your word. In politics keeping your word means if you set a deadline, you keep a deadline. If you say you’re going to do something then you do it.
As a politician, you don’t ever want to be asked for favors because that means someone thinks they can game you. You should connect constituents with problem solvers. You shouldn’t be asked to connect water or sewer lines for free, get the city to take over private lines to prevent personal costs, or do anything untoward. The price tag on your head will determine whether they’ll get anywhere.
But determining self-worth is something we can all do even in the non-political world. Especially if we don’t want to settle for the status quo. Not knowing how much you are valued means you also don’t take part in shaping your community. It means you think you’re not good enough to make a difference. You need to stand up and vote and make sure you’re forcing others to be their best because you and your community demand more.
When you settle and you let your politicians settle, then you become as flat as that disingenuous bag of chips. Half empty. This week many of you were asked to vote in the democratic primaries. I hope you participated with passion, with anger, with love and with better expectations for our future. If not, then someone, the system, the big government, everyone is deciding for you how much you are worth. Don’t let them do a price check on you.