Scott Swanson
Of The New Era
Chris Trotter says there are real differences between working in a grocery store in a small, rural community and those in larger cities.
And it’s not just that people know each other.
“In country stores you see a lot of families,” he said. “In the last store I worked in, there were a lot of handbasket transactions. Here you have more basket (shopping cart) transactions.”
After 19 years in the grocery business, most recently as manager of the Safeway in Sweet Home, Trotter, who took over in February, knows the ropes.
His grocery career started at 16 as a courtesy clerk when he walked into the Safeway in Longview, Wash., across the river from Rainier, where he’d grown up.
“I was looking for a job and they hired me on the spot because they needed someone immediately,” he said. Since then he’s worked at stores throughout southern Oregon, including eight years in Ashland and two stints as an assistant manager in Lebanon.
“I like the challenge, the opportunity to move up in the company,” he said.
One of the challenges of his current position is handling the tourist traffic, Trotter said.
“There’s a fluctuation of population in Sweet Home,” he said. “You have to know what to keep in stock. We keep lots of ice chests and ice in stock. You don’t want to run out. You miss an order and it’s done.”
He said he was impressed by the number of people who came to town on the Fourth of July – “especially families.”
Trotter lives in Eugene with his wife and two daughters, 11 and 7. He said he enjoys fishing and golfing.
He said that even though he’s never worked in Sweet Home before, taking over the store here wasn’t entirely new.
“When I came here I knew half the people because I’d worked in Lebanon,” he said.