Sammy's Boss And The Girls example essay topic

In the short A&P A&P In the short story A&P by John Updike, the character Sammy works in the A & P. He does not care about the work that he does and is very unambitious; he cares more about observing his customers than doing his job. He even makes up names to call certain customers such as, sheep house slaves cash-register-watchers. Sammy creates names that he associates certain customers with. For instance, he calls some of them cash-register-watchers. The cash-register-watchers are the old women who have been watching cash registers for fifty years and probably never seen a mistake before...

When the old woman caught him ringing the HiH o crackers up twice he had not been paying attention. Three girls had just walked in all wearing nothing except their bathing suits. This shows how Sammy is not very interested in doing his job well. He is too busy watching what everyone else is doing, and pays very little attention to his own actions. The main focus in this story for Sammy however, was the girls. He watched them prance around the store with nothing but bathing suits on.

He did not know any of them so he gave one of them a name and referred to the others by their appearances. There was this chunky one, with the two piece... He also referred to one of the girls as Queenie. She kind of led them, the other two peeking around and making their shoulders round. She didn t look around, not this Queen, she just walked straight on slowly, on these long white prima-donna legs... In this line Sammy explains why he thinks that she is the queen.

He notices everything about her. After the girls get to the register to purchase the snacks, Sammy's boss comes out and says, Girls, this isn t the beach. Lengel, Sammy's boss, and the girls argue about coming to the A&P in bathing suits. Lengel tells the girls not to do it again and walks away. The girls begin to leave.

Sammy becomes angry with him for hurting the pretty girls feelings and says, I quit. It seems more that his action was to catch the attention of the girls, maybe to impress them with they bold attitude that he was putting on. He says that he said he quit, quick enough for them to hear, hoping they ll stop and watch me, their unsuspected hero. This shows not only his lack of concern for his job but also his immaturity. In the end of the story Sammy says, my stomach kind of fell as I felt how hard the world was going to be to me hereafter What was meant by this is that Sammy had just quit his job, not a great job but he was making money, he had been rude to his boss whom also was a friend of the family, and all for a group of girls in bathing suits.

He knows that his father will be angry and he realizes especially now that the girls left him there, how stupid his reaction was. He understands that now he is at square one with no job, no girls, and an angry father.