Next Up in the Mission: I Meet My Handler

Names of Cracker Barrel employees have been changed for their privacy and protection.


I'd infiltrated the target.


But if you've seen the show "ALIAS" with Jennifer Garner, you know that every secret agent needs ... a handler -- someone to show them the ropes so that they can complete their mission successfully.


And I was about to meet  mine: a pleasant, affably kind soul named Janice.


If Mrs. Claus ever had a rival, Janice was it. She was what I like to call, "a chipmunk person." You know what I'm talking about? These people chatter endlessly, but not so much that you want to clobber them. Dimples punctuated the ends of Janice's half-moon smile, which never seemed to disappear. She was a home-spun charmer with bubbly effervescence.


You may not realize this, but Cracker Barrel employees are organized into a caste system. If you look at their aprons, you'll see they're wearing stars. People whose aprons say, "Rising Star" are in training. As you reach certain calendar benchmarks, you take tests about corporate culture and employee practices. And you earn a star.


Janice had four stars.


Pretty much, that meant in this little world, she reigned supreme. Her realm was the Cracker Barrel "ole country store," and Janice was definitely sovereign.


"The most important thing," she started to say before yelling, "GOOD MORNING! WELCOME TO CRACKER BARREL!" at two guests entering the store (customers were always referred to as "guests") ... "The most important thing is ALWAYS greet our guests. It doesn't matter if you're in the corner of the toy section. Everybody gets a greeting. EVERYBODY."


I nodded.


"Now you try."


"What?"


"Go over there and say hi."


She pointed to two women who were perusing Yankee Candles.


I did as I was told and got the cold shoulder.


"Good for you!" she said as if I had an IQ of 70. "Now anytime you see anyone in the store that you haven't greeted, make sure you go over to them like that."


The next few hours were nothing short of hilarious.


Most of the morning, we were on the front porch, tying golden ribbons on wooden rocking chairs crafted in Tennessee. And every time someone pulled up, we'd pause and wait for them to approach the front door before both of us yelling, "Good morning! Welcome to Cracker Barrel!"


I felt like I was in a Hee Haw episode.


"Do you see these blotches on the windows?" Janice asked, putting glass cleaner and a paper towel in my hands. "That's grease from the biscuits. We always need to keep those clean."


I nodded and sprayed and held the door for the "guests" who were coming and going, coming and going, all the while receiving a very loud greeting or thank-you-y'all-come-back-now farewell.


But the highlight of my morning was what I called "The Room of Requirement." Harry Potter fans will understand this. The Room of Requirement in the Hogwarts castle was a magical space that would provide the user with whatever he or she needed. Harry sometimes used it to stash things he wanted to hide. And when the room would open, it was stacked to the rafters with every imaginable toy, gadget, potion, flying contraption ... you name it.


Cracker Barrel had one, otherwise known as ... the storage room.


This place was packed with candy, stuffed animals, trinkets, talking toys, quilts, pillows, candles, coffee, pancake mix, sodas, nuts, baby clothes, women's clothes, University of Kentucky apparel, clocks, wall hangings and even Christmas ornaments. Stacks and stacks of inventory were so high up into the ceiling that you needed a ladder to reach half of it.


I stared open-mouthed.


"Now I'm going to show you how to stock the candy shelves!" Janice said with a silver-bell giggle. She had me fetch the ladder and then pull down Rubbermaid tubs filled with enough sugar for at least 500 children. I followed her back into the store, my arms filled with candy.


"See?" she pointed to a metal circular "tree," where bags of old fashioned candy hung. "Now you fill this up."


"But it's already filled," I said, truly not understanding where she wanted me to find space for what I was carrying.


"No, it's not." She pushed some of the bags inward so that there was a little space left at the end of each tree arm. "We want the store to be full, plus 20 percent."


"Plus 20 percent?"


"Right. It has to be so full that you can't put anything else out, and then 20 percent more on top of that."


I stared, trying to get my brain around this logic.


"OK."


What else could I do but agree with her? She was clearly serious. And she was a four-star employee. So for the next several minutes, I tried to find every one-quarter-inch open space on that packed candy tree to stuff more into it.


"You're done now!" Janice said, appearing out of vapor and jarring me out of my determination to hang one more bag of Circus Peanuts. "Now we're going to clean the restroom."


Suddenly, she had my full and complete attention.


"We're .... wait. What did you say?"


"We have to clean the restroom. We do this once every 30 minutes." She shoved a small broom in my hands and cleaning solution. We walked into the restroom, where the trash receptacles were overflowing with paper towels, some of which were on the floor. Janice started picking everything up and directed me to wipe down the sinks and squirt the mirrors.


Then came the big surprise.


"Now you need to check all the toilets, to make sure there's nothing in them and that there is plenty of toilet paper." She pulled out a small key and opened each toilet paper holder, showing me how to re-fill it. Then she squirted cleaning solution on each toilet seat.


I cleared my throat.


"Can I ask something?"


Janice looked up from one of the porcelain thrones.


"What happens if you come in here and there's, um, a really big mess? Like ... period blood?"


She didn't miss a beat.


"Flush the toilet."


"Yeah, but, I don't exactly relish the idea of cleaning the toilet seat of blood."


"Use rubber gloves. And sometimes, you will come in here and find they've done some bad things."


They've done some bad things????


I couldn't imagine anything worse, and I didn't want to imagine it, but I charged ahead and asked.


"What could be worse than period blood?"


"Crap on the floor."


"Crap on the floor?" I repeated the words to make sure I'd heard her correctly.


"Crap on the floor. And in that case, I won't clean it up. Just ask for a manager," Janice said frankly.


I can honestly tell you that in that one moment, I almost ran screaming out of Cracker Barrel, health insurance or no health insurance.


But then I weighed the options. If most of the job was tying ribbons on rocking chairs, stocking candy, saying hi to people and straightening toys and clothes, I could do this. And if I hit a bad restroom, I would deal with it then. Until then, I had to do what was best for me and my child. I was going to complete this Mission, even if I had to deal with period blood on the toilet seats.


"Don't worry," Janice said, observing my obvious trepidation. "Most of our guests don't do that."


She breezed by me, and I took a deep breath.


Maybe this wasn't going to be as easy as I thought.




Tune in for the next part of the story ... Mission Impossible: Health Insurance.