by Mark McDermott
Pamela Muelot was 18 years old and about to graduate from Redondo Union High School. She figured that working at the local Ralphs supermarket might be good while she figured out what to do with her life.
“It was a summer job,” Muelot said. “I was going to graduate Redondo, and I went down on March 30 of 1973 and got the job at the snack bar at the Ralphs at the South Bay Mall.”
Fifty-one years later, on April 19, Muelot will work her last shift at the Manhattan Beach Ralphs.
“My summer has kept going,” she said.
Over the course of those five decades, she worked at several Ralphs in the South Bay. Her first move after the South Bay Mall (now the Galleria) was to the Ralphs at Anza and PCH in Torrance, then up to Westchester, down to San Pedro, back to Torrance, then she was part of the crew that opened up the little Ralphs behind the windmill on Sepulveda in Hermosa Beach.
Muelot stayed with Ralphs beyond that first summer because it paid well, every day was different, and her coworkers were her friends.
“Early on, just the camaraderie, the closeness of whom you worked with – we were like family,” she said. “We would go out after work. Like at Westchester, there was a little bar down the street and the store would close at 12 o’clock, and we would meet down at the bar for two hours till two o’clock and play pool. We would do other things, too. We would do ski trips and there were bus trips to Vegas. That doesn’t happen now. That was an old-time thing.”
Finally, about 28 or 30 years ago – she’s not exactly sure – she started working at the Ralphs in Manhattan Village. She’s been there ever since.
“I have to say it was a fantastic company. I was a single mom, and I raised my son comfortably with the benefits and the pay, and I enjoyed it. Ralphs has been very, very good to me,” she said, with a little giggle, echoing the famous “Baseball has been very, very good to me,” skit from Saturday Night Live. “And I have a good pension. So, I’m the lucky one.”
Muelot has worked a lot of different jobs within the Ralphs universe.
“I started at the snack bar and then I moved to box girl, or box boy, they called it,” she said. “Then I went to flower girl, then cashier, then to bakery manager, then liquor manager, and then to what they call PICs, person in charge. Then I went into management, then Price Integrity.”
If you’ve shopped at Ralphs or any big supermarket, you’ve seen a Price Integrity employee, often perusing each shelf in each aisle, checking and adjusting price tags and signs. If she had to pick, this was Muelot’s favorite job at Ralphs. It gave her freedom to wander.
“I’m basically my own boss,” she recalled. “They came to me. ‘Fix this can.’ ‘What’s going on with this can?’ And I could do my own schedule, come in when I want – not all the time, but if I needed to come in an hour late or leave an hour earlier, it was okay.”
Now she’s back working as a cashier. Sort of. She oversees the people doing self check-out. Which is also kind of a psychology job, because Muelot can tell right away which customers have no idea what they are doing.
“And then there’s the ones who don’t want help,” she said. “It’s like, ‘You don’t know what you are doing,’ but they don’t want help, so I just walk away. ‘Okay, alright!’”
When Muelot started working at Ralphs, not only were there no self check-out systems, but there was also no such thing as a scanner.
“The whole ringing up, the checkout system, when I started, we punched in the numbers on the big register with all 12 numbers,” she said. “And we had to use our fingers to punch the numbers in and take the items out of the basket as we’re doing it. That was the biggest change. Now you just scan the UPC code [Universal Product Code]. Before, every item was priced, and we had to look at the item and punch in the price.”
Though it made the job easier, Muelot said, it also sort of made it more boring.
“I don’t know, it sort of kept you moving,” she said. “Now you are just standing there.”
In her three decades working in Manhattan Beach, Muelot has seen another kind of movement, that of generations. She’s watched as little kids who come through the store grow into big kids, then mothers and fathers themselves. Some she knows by name, many she does not. But they are familiar faces to her, and she to them.
“In fact, I just told one grandma that I was retiring, and she was like, ‘Oh, I’ve got to tell my daughter, she has to bring in her four little boys…. Well, they’re not little anymore, they are grown up, but they have to come back and see you before you leave.’ My last day is going to be a little sad. I told my boss, ‘I don’t know how I’m going to make it through that day without crying.’”
Familiar faces are what make up a community. The people at check-out we sometimes have a running conversation with, or maybe just share a silent acknowledgment of swimming downstream through the years together, even if we often don’t know the name behind the face.
Muelot also notices when some of those familiar faces stop showing up. Sometimes they’ve moved. Other times they have passed away. She might never know which.
“There’s some that you see for a long time and then you don’t see them anymore, and you wonder what happened to them,” she said. “There’s a few that you hear back that they had passed away. But there’s a lot that you just don’t know what happened to them.”
There was one little girl who came through her checkout all the time whose bouncy disposition always made Muelot smile. She saw her grow into a pretty teenager and retain that same charm. Then she stopped showing up in line, but Muelot later found out what became of her. She showed up on television.
“Do you know that actress who was on that show My Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, Rachel Bloom? She was a little one starting out coming through our line all the time,” Muelot said. “Now she’s grown up and is a big producer and everything.”
She instantly recognized Bloom the first time she saw her on TV.
“The gestures she would make, it was like, ‘She did that when she was a little one!’” Muelot said.
Sometimes famous people came through and Muelot had no idea what the hubbub was all about. Her good friend Dianne Phillips recalled one such instance.
“The one that I do remember is Tiger Woods,” Phillips said. “She had no idea who that was. She’s not a sports person. I am, because my three sons were very active in sports, and still are. But she had no idea. After he left, they said to her, ‘Do you know who you just checked out?’ She goes, ‘No, I don’t know who that was.”
Not that it would have mattered. Phillips said Muelot isn’t the kind to get starstruck. She was kind to Tiger the same way she would have been to the bus driver or bartender who came before or after him in line.
“She just treats everybody the same,” Phillips said. “She is – and I am not just saying this because she is my friend and I want this in the paper – she is the best giver of herself. She’s not a taker. She will go above and beyond to make you, whoever you are, feel special.”
The way one works often reveals a lot about their character and who they are in the rest of their life. Phillips, who has known Muelot for 30 years, has marveled at her friend’s work ethic.
“She was never sick,” Phillips said. “She never called in. She was faithful, even during the strike [of 2013]. She was a staunch union rep for Ralphs.”
She likewise shows up, unfailingly, for her family and friends. Phillips is a few years older than Muelot and recently celebrated her 75th birthday. Muelot gave her two bags of presents – one contained “needs” and the other “wants.” The needs bag included two pounds of her favorite coffee, two boxes of her favorite hair dye, and two boxes of vitamins that help her with the macular degeneration of her eyes. The wants bag included a necklace, a blouse, and a Starbucks gift card. Similarly, when Muelot’s niece in Missouri turned 21, she sent a helium balloon that floated out of the box when it was opened. Once she’d done that, she made it a tradition, sending helium balloons to all her nieces, nephews, great-nieces, and great-nephews.
“She’s truly a heartfelt giver type of person,” Phillips said. “She’s a giver of thoughtful things.”
During the pandemic, having a friend at Ralphs meant having a friend in high places.
“Knowing there was nothing on the shelves, I made her buy my favorite toilet paper, so I could hoard it,” Phillips said. “No joke.”
Her long tenure at the Manhattan Beach Ralphs has also conferred upon Muelot something akin to local celebrity. Phillips has experienced the same conversation over and over again when she and Muelot are out and about in the community, whether it’s at a restaurant or a play or some other event. The conversation begins, “I know you,” and proceeds with, “Is it church? School?” And Pamela will go, “Is it Manhattan Ralphs?” And they will go, “That is where I’ve seen you!” It’s sort of like a joke, we don’t even say anymore, ‘Oh is it through our sons, or church?’ We just say, ‘Manhattan Ralphs.’”
Another running joke is what happens every Thanksgiving, which Muelot almost always works at Ralphs. The holiday came to resemble Groundhog Day, because without fail, between 2 p.m. and 3 p.m., a customer would come running to Muelot with a frozen turkey and a frantic question, “Will this turkey thaw by tonight’s dinner?” And every Friday morning after Thanksgiving, Muelot and Phillips enjoy yet another laugh.
“She’s a fun friend,” Phillips said.
Muelot planned to retire last year and make it an even 50 years. But she had breast cancer and had to take some time off. When she came back she decided to work another full year.
“My anniversary was March 30 for 51, so then I decided it’s time to go,” Muelot said. “It’s time to do what I want to do when I want to do it.”
Her retirement plans, of course, are about other people.
“I have a special needs sister who I take care of, so I am going to spend more time with her,” she said. “And then, if I feel like getting up in the morning and driving to San Diego, well, that’s what I am going to do. … And I have a niece in Missouri and a nephew in Utah and they both said, ‘Come and stay as long as you want to.’ So I’ve got that option.”
Phillips said there is a quality in Muelot that has become increasingly rare, revealing itself both in her work life and friendship.
“There are not that many people around who are steadfast,” she said. “I am glad that she is my friend.”
On April 19 at about 3 p.m., Muelot will complete her final shift at Ralphs. Her summer job will finally be at an end.
“I loved it,” she said. “It was a fun job. I enjoyed doing everything that I did there.” ER