"A & P"

The story “A & P” I believe is about “manly decisiveness,” in two different ways. First of all when the story starts Sammy is checking another lady out at his register, from the tone of it I could gather that Sammy was not necessarily loving his job as a checkout boy. He refers to the woman as, “one of those cash-register-watchers.” (220) Which to me denotes that he runs across them often and then annoy him. On page 222 Sammy is talking about his job being boring: “ There was nothing much to do except lean on the register and wait for the girls to show up again.” Then when Sammy’s boss Lengel starts harassing the girls (223), it is the last straw for Sammy. He obviously wasn’t too keen on his job to begin with; it was something his dad had gotten him. Maybe he never wanted to work at A & P? All these things together that particular day I believe led to Sammy quitting his job which was his, “manly decisiveness.” Lengel, the boss also shows his “manly decisiveness” in this story on page 223 when he is telling the girls all about his policies and making them feel embarrassed. To Lengel, he was in charge and making the girls feel embarrassed when they left the store was his “manly decisiveness.”