“A & P” is a short initiation story in which the young protagonist, in a gesture of empty heroism, quits his job at the supermarket because the manager has embarrassed three girls—and learns just “how hard the world was going to be to him hereafter.”
Most of the action in the story takes place in the short time Sammy stands at his cash register on a summer afternoon watching three girls from the nearby beach colony, dressed in “nothing but bathing suits,” wander the store in search of a jar of “Fancy Herring Snacks in Pure Sour Cream.” By the time the three reach his checkout stand, Sammy is halfway in love with their leader, a girl he nicknames “Queenie,” who has “nothing between the top of the suit and the top of her head except just her.” Sammy is attracted to the girl not only by her physical beauty but also by her regal bearing and by her clear disdain for small-town mores. Sammy is highly sensitive to the class differences between “the Point,” where the three are apparently vacationing (“a place from which the crowd that runs the A & P must look pretty crummy”), and the supermarket where he works (where “houseslaves in pin curlers” push shopping carts up and down the aisles, followed by squalling children).