Desmond Wallace slides a jar of pickles into a brown paper bag, slips the package into a plastic bag and the bag into a grocery cart with a motion as smooth and practiced as a basketball pro going for a layup.
The 20-year-old loves basketball. And hip-hop music. But the activity he loves better than anything else is work.
He’s a Jewel-Osco service clerk, the grocery business’ jack-of-all-trades. He bags groceries, stocks shelves, collects shopping carts and mops up spills, but he likes bagging the best.
He works at Ashland and Wellington Avenues at one of Jewel’s busiest stores, with 19 checkout lanes and more than 5,000 customers a day.
He serves thousands of people, yet if you pass through the lane where he is working even once and speak to him, he will remember you the next time you come in. It’s one of his gifts. He never forgets a name or a face.
And when you meet his eyes and thank him, a smile spreads across his face as if you had just flipped a switch.
“He has a million-dollar smile,” said his boss, Michael Impola.
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Nine of the store’s lanes are open and traffic is building on a Friday afternoon. Wallace looks serene, a Zen master in a blue Jewel-Osco shirt.
He pulls a customer’s cart alongside him with one hand while reaching with the other for boxes of cereal, two at a time. Swoosh, into a bag, into the cart.
The scanner beeps a relentless staccato. Eggs on the bottom of the bag, bread on top of the eggs, swoosh, into the cart. Beep beep, ice cream, lemonade. Beep beep, melons, meat. Beep beep beep, bananas, celery, oranges.
“You have a great day,” the customer says, pushing her cart past him. “You too,” he says, flashing his smile.
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“I look for personality first,” Impola said. “I always say, ‘Hire personality, train skills.’ Desmond has a wonderful personality. He puts people at ease. You just feel good being around Desmond.
“As hectic and harried as this place sometimes gets, I’ve never seen him frown or get upset.”
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Eleven lanes open. A customer in a Hawaiian shirt opens a packet of pink powder and shakes it into a bottle of Aquafina water while waiting his turn to pay. Wallace reaches for the bottle and hands it to him with a smile, but the man is too distracted to notice.
“You forgot your change,” Wallace says, scooping a handful of coins that clanked into the metal cup. The customer pockets the money while hurrying away. Wallace is already reaching for the next cart.
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“Most of our service clerks are in the 16- to 22-year range,” Impola said. “Turnover, like in any retail job, is high. You have people leaving for college, people whose grades are slipping, athletes who quit because of sports.
“Desmond has never missed a day in almost two years, and he’s never been late.”
There are buttons pinned to his name badge. Some are black with white letters spelling “GOT,” for “greet, offer assistance and thank.” He gets them when customers write him up for good service.
The gold button is for a checker of the year contest.
“He was picked by his peers to represent the store [along with a cashier] in a district competition where they deal live with customers,” Impola said. “There are 20 stores in the district. They get evaluated on efficiency, execution on ‘GOT’ and overall impression. Desmond’s team placed in the top three. It was quite an honor.”
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Twelve lanes open. Wallace tucks a flat of pansies into a cart, rearranging the bags to make room. The customer gives him a big smile as she wheels away.
“You deal with a lot of people who don’t seem to like their service jobs, so it’s always a pleasure when someone does,” she explains. “I bagged groceries my first job. It’s sort of a thankless job. You’re not really expecting a lot of one-on-one.”
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Abby Dils met Wallace in July 2005 when she spoke to a group at his high school, Von Steuben Metropolitan Science Center. She is an employment counselor with Bridges, a Marriott Foundation for People with Disabilities program that helps students make the transition to work.
Wallace sat silently through the meeting — he usually doesn’t initiate conversation — but his written application spoke volumes.
Asked to list what he does well, he wrote, “Coming on time.”
Asked what qualities he would bring to a job, he wrote, “Helping people.” Asked to list his skills, he answered, “To get along with people” and “people person.”
“It catches your attention,” Dils said. “Most teens, they’re not going to put that down as a skill.”
He came early to a Bridges open house, and Dils drew him out. She was impressed.
“The minute you talk to him, the first thing you notice is his smile. He had a very good aura about him.”
Asked to list three jobs he would be interested in doing, he wrote, “CTA,” “movie theater” and “open.”
Dils thought Jewel would be a good fit. “They do a good job training and offering a supportive environment,” she said.
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A little girl runs behind the counter where Wallace is working and reaches up to grab a package of candy from the groceries he’s bagging.
“What do you say?” her mother asks.
“Thank you,” she says, without looking up at Wallace.
“You’re welcome,” he says, without skipping a beat.
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Wallace is an only child who lives with his mother, Leslie Wallace, a single parent who works two jobs: nights as a certified nursing assistant and days as a part-time home health-care aide.
“Most kids when they were about 2 would say a sentence,” she says. “Desmond would never talk. He would point to stuff. If you told him to say something, he would repeat it.
“His uncle read him “The Cat in the Hat” book when he was 3. He closed the book and gave it to Desmond and he read it right back.
“At preschool he was the only child who knew how to read the kids’ names on the toothbrushes, so they made him a helper, passing out the brushes.
“Certain things would be real simple but he couldn’t understand. Other things, he was so amazing. He has always been real smart in certain areas.
“When he was around 7, I took him to Children’s Memorial [Hospital]. We went once a week for testing.
“They say he’s autistic. When they first diagnosed him, I went and watched the movie ‘Rain Man’ [starring Dustin Hoffman as an autistic savant], but he’s not like that. My friends say, ‘Girl, there’s nothing wrong with your son. Every child don’t learn the same way.’
“He’s real soft-spoken until he gets to know you. I used to think he was real quiet. He used to talk on the phone, but he would just hold it. I’d say, ‘Desmond, you have to talk to the people or they won’t call you back.’
“When he was 10, he just loved maps. He knows all the CTA routes, the buses and the trains, when they leave, when they arrive. At one time he was telling me about some bus in the suburbs and we had never been there, but he read about it.
“In grammar school he got picked on a lot because he was quiet and he was an only child. In high school, his counselor talked to the students and told them to look out for Desmond. They all looked out for him because they knew he wasn’t like the other kids. Everybody took to him.”
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The electronic scanner won’t accept a customer’s card. Wallace stands patiently, unperturbed, while the line halts for what seems like an eternity. The cashier rings for Impola, who fiddles with the scanner. The card still won’t work.
Wallace carries the customer’s receipt and the bagged groceries to the service desk, where the problem will get resolved.
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“I like to watch to see if any of my co-workers are coming in to work,” Wallace said.
He is sitting upstairs in the store’s break room, which offers a view of the checkout lanes through a row of narrow windows. Without the sound, it’s like watching a movie.
He likes to arrive early for work to buy his lunch and sit upstairs and watch for people he knows. Sometimes he leaves home two hours before he is scheduled to start, even when his starting time is 7 a.m. He rides two buses, and the trip takes less than an hour.
His greeting for co-workers — it never varies — is a set of three questions: “Hi, how are you? What time do you start today? What time do you get off?”
“I’m fabulous,” he says when they ask how he is.
Wallace said he likes bagging best because “I like talking to the customers.”
How do they usually feel? “They feel OK,” he said. “The way I be treating them, they’ll treat me back.”
When his mother and his aunt wanted to take him and his cousin to Walt Disney World last year for his birthday, he didn’t want to go because he didn’t want to miss work.
“He wasn’t familiar with how the vacation thing worked,” his mother said. “I told him, ‘Desmond, this is your first job, everyone gets a vacation. A vacation is time you have. Once you come back, they’ll put you back on the schedule.’ We got back and that same night he called so he could be at ease.”
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It’s 4:30 p.m. Wallace’s quitting time was 30 minutes ago, but he hasn’t checked his watch and Impola hasn’t pulled him off the floor yet. When Impola does, he punches the time clock, opens a combination lock on his storage cubby and pulls out a blue nylon book bag. It contains a newspaper and his CD player for the bus ride home.
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“It means a lot to him knowing he’s good at what he’s done,” his mother said. “If he’s standing there and people talk about him, there’s a glow in his face.
“He used to be in a shell, real quiet. He talks more now. Before, he really didn’t have a lot to talk about.
“I hope he gets the job at the CTA someday, which he really wants, but right now he’s happy at the Jewel. He loves it because he loves being around people. Anytime he can meet new people and help them out, he just loves it.”
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berose@tribune.com
