2.4: Joe Daniels, Cart Guy

Sound Design and Photos: Angie Hayes

This story is from of our series of "audio postcards" featuring people and their work in the Buckeye, Woodland Hills, and Mount Pleasant neighborhoods. The stories are told in the voice of the person featured.

My name is Joe Daniels. I’m basically a cart guy. My job is to help people with their carts.

I’ve been doing this job for around 10 years. It’s not so bad. The worst time is like the winter generally.

I have minor depression so it slows my thinking process, my memory a little bit. Not so much but enough where it’s hard for me to get certain kinds of jobs. I’ve been doing like cleaning jobs almost 10 years on and off before I got the job here.

This is a little more than just janitorial. I like the variety of things to do other than just mop the floor. I get to see what kind of people come around here and things like that.

Female Customer: Sir, can we get some help over here please? Thank you.

Right now I’m helping someone get their groceries into their car.

Female Customer: You can put 'em on the back seat on the floor. Yeah, [Mr. Daniels] is a nice person. Very aware of what’s going on around him and he tries to help everybody. 

Since this is the only grocery store around close here, that’s why it’s so busy all through the month. It used to get slow around the 15th of the month. Now there are so many people shopping at this one store. It doesn’t really slow down quite so much.

I have to get more salt to finish the rest of the half of the walk way...