At the expense of often deeper-connecting short stories and novels, considerable leisure activity is frequently dedicated to reviewing less-meaningful Instagram posts and Facebook updates. While devotion to betterment and enrichment requires occasional respite, as is true with most every activity and initiative—remember Oscar Wilde’s admonition, everything in moderation, including moderation—I’ve always found it rewarding investing time in a short story that sticks with you. Catapult just published such a story.

You won’t view your next Whole Foods shopping experience quite the same once you read Lucie Shelly’s Clean Eating and Pure Loving: My Life as a Whole Foods Cashier. The warm, heartfelt piece celebrates the end of summer as well as the end of a season, of which our lives are formed of so many. Anyone who’s worked a summer job and left quickly-formed but sincere friendships to move on to life’s inevitable next stages will appreciate the tender nostalgia carefully mixed within Shelly’s fast-moving prose and the many cashier codes that remain with the author to this day.