The Rapture Of The Whipcream

It was the summer of 1978 that I learned about Nitrous Oxide.

My friend Jimmy was the coolest guy on earth, the Fonzie at the center of the world. He had a Chevy van with orange shag carpeting, a waterbed, a disco ball, and a built in eight track tape player, and he was saving up to get a mural airbrushed on the side.

To pay for this glorious excess, he worked as a stockboy at Stanley’s, a small chain of grocery stores down on the Texas coast. I don’t know if HEB has killed them all off yet, but back in 1978, you could still find them everywhere, and at one of them, Jimmy made the amazing discovery that N2O was used as the propellant that ejected the whipped cream out of the spray can.

In addition to his impossibly cool transportation, Jimmy also prided himself on always knowing where to get weed, disco biscuits, amyl nitrate, and other things (y’know, because it was the seventies, and it wasn’t drug abuse, it was a lifestyle), and he pondered how to add nitrous oxide to his repertoire. And Stanley’s provided him with the key to the mystery.

At the time, Reddi Wip and other aerosol whipcreams had upright nozzles; you push the nozzle to one side, and the cream would come out. But Stanley’s store brand, the cans were designed more like shaving cream cans: a button at the top with a nozzle poking out the side. Jimmy discovered that if you jammed a fairly thick pin into the gap between the button and the assembly, the nitrous would leak out and could be inhaled, or collected in a balloon for later use!

Well, this was a discovery of some magnitude for a mob of teenagers in 1978. A dime bag of weed was ten bucks and would quickly vanish, but a can of Stanley’s Whipped Cream Topping was only 59 cents, and was probably on sale on top of that! A great party was organized, and Jimmy was greatly lionized as the Renaissance Man of the Seventh Decade.

Jimmy had many friends, and it got to the point where he was selling a LOT of whipped cream. It was HIM selling it, because Stanley’s had these little customer satisfaction tickets, and if you turned in enough of them with your time card, you could get a cash bonus. And we ALL wanted to help out good ole Jimmy, so many tickets were filled out, singing Jimmy’s praises as the epitome of everything a fine and noble stockboy should BE!

So naturally, trouble followed. Management called him in for a chat.

“What’s the deal with the whipped cream, Jimmy?” asked the manager.

Jimmy, of course, refused to admit to anything; he’d have asked for a lawyer if he thought he could get away with it. “Beg pardon, sir?”

“The whipped cream, Jimmy. What are you doing with the whipped cream?”

“Um... selling it to customers, sir? That IS what I’m supposed to be doing... right?”

The manager sighed. “Jimmy, when you turned in a hundred and fifteen Customer Satisfaction tickets with your last time card, I was sure you were having your friends come in and fill them out so you could steal from the company.”

Jimmy’s stomach dropped about ten floors.

The manager continued. “So I noticed a lot of these tickets talked about whipped cream. So I ran the numbers. In the past month, this store has sold FIVE TIMES as much whipped cream as any other Stanley’s! We’ve sold almost TWICE as much whipped cream -- in the middle of summer -- as we normally sell in NOVEMBER, when there’s THANKSGIVING! You’re NOT cheating the system. You’re selling whipped cream like it was going out of style! What in God’s name are you doing to sell all this whipped cream?”

Jimmy remained outwardly calm. Between his ears, the wheels spun at a frightful rate. He didn’t DARE tell the truth -- he didn’t want to be the guy who derailed the party train -- so he decided to bounce it back. “Um... well, it’s because of YOU, sir.”

“Wha?”

(A while back, the manager had made a big noise about how everyone should be a salesman, even the stockboys, pestering customers to buy more and other things than what they had. Everyone had ignored the manager, but Jimmy pounced on this and made this amazing story about how he’d taken it to heart, and how now when ANYONE walked through the bakery section, Jimmy would pounce on them with a lyrical pitch about how Stanley’s Whipped Cream Topping turns a cake into a FESTIVAL, only 59 cents, AND it’s on SALE, and you’d be amazed how many people just say, whatthehell, and drop a can into the cart...)

Well, it turned out that the appeal to ego was exactly the right move. It turned out that upper administration hadn’t thought much of THIS manager’s motivational program with the tickets (too easy for employees to cheat) and they’d thought his point of sale program where you got stockboys and cashiers to push product was just dumb. But THIS fine, motivated young man had taken it to HEART and earned himself a fine bonus, AND quintupled the sales of a given product! VINDICATION!

And Jimmy was off the hook, and a great party was held to lionize this Renaissance man of the seventh decade.

Until the following week when the manager told Jimmy he’d be attending a management conference and giving a speech.

Jimmy said “Wha?”

The manager explained that he wanted Jimmy to give a longer, fruitier version of the speech given in the Manager’s office, to vindicate the man’s programs.

Jimmy began to explain that he had plans that weekend--

Management offered a $200 cash bonus if he did, on TOP of the ticket bonus and his regular paycheck. Plus, there would be a champagne buffet afterwards.

Jimmy promptly agreed that this was a speech that needed to be given! Between the two bonuses, he’d have enough to pay off the airbrush artist to do that Star Wars mural on BOTH sides of the van...

And Jimmy stood at a podium at the Hilton and gave a speech in front of a roomful of grocery managers and assistant managers and spun a line of absolute crap about how to sell whipped cream to housewives. And there was much applause. Jimmy pondered whether the van’s port side would have a head and shoulders bust of Darth Vader or portray the lightsaber battle between Vader and Obi-Wan Kenobi. And then, everyone broke for lunch and headed for the champagne buffet, where sparkling wine was served in plastic glasses...

...and the Assistant Manager For Bakery clapped a hand on Jimmy’s shoulder. “All right, Jimmy, cut the crap. What’s REALLY going on?”

“Wha?”

“The old man’s being going on about how you’re the hottest thing in the store because you know how to sell. Everybody should sell like Jimmy! So I’ve been WATCHING you.”

Jimmy’s stomach dropped about ten floors, and he nervously gulped the rest of the champagne.

“Last week, I didn’t see you talking to any housewives. What I DID see was a whole damn biker gang walk in and ask if you were working, and where you were. I kept an eye open in case I had to call the cops. But they talked to you for five minutes, signed your ticket, and bought ten cases of beer and two cases of WHIPPED CREAM! Now what the hell is going on?”

Jimmy gulped. “Well... okay, you got me... I couldn’t tell the old man what was REALLY going on...”

Asst. Manager Of Bakery grinned. “Now we’re getting somewhere. Keep talking.”

Jimmy closed his eyes. “Y’see... they’re buying it for sex.”

AMOB boggled. “Wha?”

“Y’start with some guy, right? You have a can of whip cream, and you test him by asking “Hey, I bet you’re popular with the ladies, right?” and if you think he’s the right customer, you say something like “You know that thing that they don’t wanna do? They’ll do it if you put a TOPPING on it!” and you hold up the can of whip cream, right?”

AMOB boggled some more.

“Fifty nine cents. And it’s on sale!”

AMOB looked skeptical. Jimmy shoveled onwards.

“And you see some pretty lady, hot pants, big hair, spangled tube top, right? You let her know that they’ll kiss her where she’s never been kissed before if she puts a TOPPING on it! Liven things up! Fifty-nine cents! And it’s on sale!”

AMOB looked stunned. Jimmy went for broke.

“And the beauty of it? REPEAT CUSTOMERS! Once it WORKS, they’ll be back and buying the stuff EVERY WEEK! That’s why the BIKERS came in! They KNEW about this stuff, because I sold it to them WEEKS ago! That’s why my numbers are so high! Once you get the ball ROLLING it don’t STOP! FIFTY-NINE CENTS A CAN, BABY! AND IT’S ON SALE!”

And in the roomful of drunk grocery managers, the two of them stood in silence.

“Wow.” AMOB stood, pondering. “Okay. That’s amazing. All right. Enjoy your lunch.” And he walked off.

And Jimmy promptly knocked back another glass of champagne as the tension drained out of him. Dodged a bullet AGAIN! Although he noted that AMOB seemed to be chatting with a group of junior management... and several of the people he was talking with glanced sharply at Jimmy...

And that night after the conference, we held yet another grand party to lionize this Renaissance man of the seventh decade, and to celebrate the beginning of the artwork on his van of vans.

And then, three weeks later, Jimmy threw yet ANOTHER party of parties... partly to celebrate the completion of the airbrush work... but also to celebrate his promotion to Assistant Manager Of Bakery, a thing unheard of at Jimmy’s tender age of eighteen! Promotion! Raise! Prospects!

Turns out there were more than a few assistant management slots opening up at Stanley’s grocery stores, all of a sudden. It actually made the papers at one point that a great many assistant managers seemed to be getting arrested (and subsequently fired) for some sort of vague sex offenses that the paper wouldn’t go into details about......