When Life Gives You Lemons

When Life Gives You Lemons

As many of you know, I work at a grocery store. I have been working there for almost a year and a half now, and I have had many adventures. For example, sometime during my first month, a customer asked me where an item was. I went to go get it, and when I did my key clip (which is attached to my belt loop at almost all times), got caught to a cart heading in the opposite direction that I was. Another time an older customer asked me to help her put her bags in her car- only to realize afterwards that we had put the bags in the wrong car! I mean even last week, I was working on Saturday and one of my bosses asked if I wanted to be the Easter Bunny. Most of the stories are funny, but one recently happened that was really deep and meaningful (at least I think it was).

My official job description is “courtesy clerk”. Basically what that means is, I am a bagger, a cart attendant, and a makeshift janitor. I work the morning shift on Tuesdays so I can have the rest of the day for homework and stuff. Last Tuesday,  I got to work as usual and I didn't think anything was really going to happen. Towards the end of my shift, I was bagging when a woman came to check out. I was still working on the last order as she started to unload her stuff from cart on to the conveyor belt. About midway through, she got to the mesh bag of lemons.

I saw it Immediately, some of the lemons looked green and squishy. I pointed it out to the customer, and she asked me if I could get her a new bag. They were organic lemons - I'm not going to lie, I didn't even know we sold organic lemons, let alone where they are in the store. So I took the damaged lemons as a reference for what the bag looked like. “Put that in damaged when you find the new ones.” said the cashier I was working with.

I went to the produce department knowing they would probably be there. I was right, but it still took me about three minutes to actually find them. I knew that the customer was probably almost done bagging, and I didn't have time to put the damaged lemons away. I decided to return with both bags and put the damaged back later. On my way back to the registers, I passed one of my bosses. He looked me up and down, saw both bags, and said sarcastically, “When life gives you lemons!” I chuckled and responded, “You make lemonade!”

I had never actually thought about that phrase before. I know what it means, but I never actually thought about it for a long period of time. Because I thought the situation was funny, I was thinking about the phrase. Eventually a thought popped into my head, A single question- Why? Why when life gives us lemons must we make lemonade? I mean there's so many cool things you can do with lemons. You can juggle them, because you know it's a bad idea to juggle eggs, or you could make your house smell really nice, or my personal favorite- give a lemon slice to a baby and watch them freak out.

See my point? Back in the day that phrase had meaning: Take the situation you are in and make something good out of it. And while that can be applied to any situation today, I do think it's a little outdated. Think about it, you can do anything you want but in most cases, You have to follow a path or a formula. Point A to point B- Lemons to Lemonade. But it's not a straight path, at least it shouldn't be. Do what you want to do  of course, but do it your way. When life gives you lemons, don't just make lemonade, plant a lemon seed.

Have a Greattastic day!

J. Mitchell Ulibarri