John Updike

I read A & P in one of my undergraduate English courses (101 or 102) when I first started college. As a retail worker, I can appreciate the humor in this story and sympathize with the narrator. I know coworkers who’ve had those days where you just feel like your boss is a jerk, or the work is too meaningless, etc. Wouldn’t it be nice to just say “I quit!” and walk out?

But the narrator also discusses the sadness the loss of his job caused his family and his realization that the world will be a much more difficult place for him now. It’s interesting how the narrator sacrificed his own job, at a great cost to him, out of sympathy for the girls. These girls were obviously of a higher class and didn’t realize or appreciate his actions. “I look around for my girls, but they're gone, of course.” (Did anyone else notice how he referred to them as “my” girls, as if he was playing some knight in shining armor for them?)