In the story A&P by John Updike, Sammy has bad love towards his customers, girls that come in, and his boss. He gets annoyed, insults and disrespects people. He does not enjoy anyone that comes through his line; he just does not care about anything.
Sammy is annoyed by how the older woman is watching him ring up her items. “She’s one of these cash-register-watchers, a witch about fifty with rouge on her cheekbones and no eyebrows, and I know it made her day to trip me up” (Updike, 141). He is just very impatient by the way she was acting towards him. “She gives me a little snort in passing, if she’d been born at the right time they would have burned her over in Salem” (Updike, 141). He was just ready to get rid of her.
He has bad love for these three girls that come into the store, by the way he disrespects them about what he thinks about them. He said about one of them “one of these sun-burns right across under the eyes, and a chin that was too long” (Updike, 141). After he looked past the bigger ones that he thought were not attractive, he looked at the pretty one. He thought to himself, does she even have a brain, or is she just all body. He has no respect for any of them. “You never know for sure how girls’ minds work (do you really think it’s a mind in there or just a buzz like a bee in a glass jar?)”(Updike, 141).
Sammy does not like his boss Lengal because of the way he treats the girls. He did not respect them but he does not like Lengal for what he did to them. “You didn’t have to embarrass them” (Updike, 144). He could not stand the way that he treated the girls, so that he stands up for them and quits his job. “I pull the bow at the back of my apron and start shrugging it off my shoulders” (Updike, 144).
Throughout the paper, its seems like he just has no respect for anyone and is just a troubled teen. But the way that he feels is just bad love for other people because he just does not care about them. If it were good love than he would have cared more about them.
"A&P" by Updike, John 1961
Literature, Craft and Voice; 2nd edition; by Delbanco,Nicholas and Cheuse,Alan p.141-145