In the short story "A&P" by John Updike, the character Sammy works in the A & P. He does not care about the work that he does and is very unambitous; he cares more about observing his customers than doing his job. He even makes up names to call certain customers such as, "sheep...house slaves...cash-register-watchers".
             Sammy creates names that he associates certain customers with. For instance, he calls some of them "cash-register-watchers". The cash-register-watchers are the old women who have "been watching cash registers for fifty years and probably never seen a mistake before.". When the old woman caught him ringing the HiHo crackers up twice he had not been paying attention. Three girls had just walked in all wearing nothing except their bathing suits. This shows how Sammy is not very interested in doing his job well. He is too busy watching what everyone else is doing, and pays very little attention to his own actions.
             The main focus in this story for Sammy however, was the girls. He watched them prance around the store with nothing but bathing suits on. He did not know any of them so he gave one of them a name and referred to the others by their appearances. "There was this chunky one, with the two piece....". He also referred to one of the girls as Queenie. "She kind of led them, the other two peeking around and making their shoulders round. She didn't look around, not this Queen, she just walked straight on slowly, on these long white prima-donna legs.". In this line Sammy explains why he thinks that she is the queen. He notices everything about her.
             After the girls get to the register to purchase the snacks, Sammy's boss comes out and says, "Girls, this isn't the beach." Lengel, Sammy's boss, and the girls argue about coming to the A&P in bathing suits. Lengel tells the girls not to do
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