Entry #20: Green Peppers

Green peppers are definitely the Bibbies or Kidds of the vegetable world: they consistently produce good results, yet they're not talked about too often and are almost taken for granted.
Green peppers are one vegetable I can easily pick up and eat without augmenting them in any way or adding any salt; even though they're still tasty without preparing them in any way, they undauntedly add to nearly anything that's normally cooked with them. Add green peppers to pizza? Fuck yeah. Add green peppers to beans and rice? Fuck yeah twice.

Recently I encountered possibly the meanest, most forward customer since I started working in produce. I had some indian lady ask me about peppers and their respective hotness - an area where I'm not too knowledgable; for the most part, I just stick to poblanos, habeneros, red chiles, and green peppers. I feel like I did an alright job, given my lack of knowledge. Of course she's looking for fucking anaheim peppers (the one pepper my store sells that I'm least familiar with) and poblanos (the ones on the floor were very questionable, overripe pieces of shit). Don't ask me what the fuck came over me, and why I was bitching to a customer, but I told her I wish I could give her the poblanos for a discounted price - but corporate policy prohibits me from placing anything out at a discounted price, especially when it's being sold directly to a customer or somebody I personally know. The fucking woman, she told me that I'm a bad worker! She said that a good worker would do whatever's necessary to sell the product at a reduced price and getting some sort of sale out of it, instead of throwing it away. It's pretty obvious I hate throwing shit away, especially when it's clearly still edible (just fuckheads won't buy it because it's beginning to gnarlify and less vibrant) - but I'd hate it even more if I got fired and was ultimately cockblocked from getting another produce job; I refuse to work at Wal-Mart, I'm not rehirable at Marcs, Trader Joe's and Nature's Bin are dickshits that never give me interviews, and I'm pretty sure most of the other grocers in my area require 2 or more years experience for their produce positions. Losing my job would be one of the most demoralizing things that could happen to me at the moment.

Just as a reminder: I can't put shit out at a reduced price. My workplace cares too much about upholding its reputation for quality. It's fucking stupid, but whatever. Customers need to quit begging me to give them shit for a reduced price, because as much as I wish I could - you're jeopardizing my job. I'm allowed to stuff banana bags, use dollar off stickers, and occassionally trim up two icebergs and put them out 2-for-1 on a styrofoam tray. There's not shit else that I can do.

So anyways, back to the green peppers. Now I'm going to bitch about my workplace again, somewhat. Of course the dickheads at corporate have no idea what they're doing and they're committing mass pepper genocide. Yes, they're ruining dozens of good peppers en masse: sending them to the fucking gas houses, gunning them down in trenches, and all that other shit Hitler did. The new layout has the peppers in a cooler much colder than their previous location, and a very dry cooler at that. The dry cold eventually causes the peppers to wrinkle at a faster rate, and although they're not technically spoiled - they're still more fragile and very much less likely to be bought. I would love to call the customers dumbasses or picky right now but I personally wouldn't buy a pepper wrinklier than my balls that caves in when I press it. Just a few nights ago I threw out about 10lbs of green peppers, green peppers that definitely would've been edible in the same timeframe if they weren't sped up to wrinkling.

This shit is heinous. Green peppers are dying, fuckholes.