A&P by John Updike

“I look around for my girls, but they’re gone, of course” (Updike). The story takes place within a grocery store and focuses on the main character Sammy who is a teenage boy. Sammy becomes distracted one day at work by a group of girls who walk in with nothing but bathing suits which he has no complaints about but his boss, Lengel, goes and complains to them.

Sammy doesn’t appreciate the way the girls, who he doesn’t even know, are treated and decides to quit his job based on his boss’ actions. Sammy doesn’t take a second to think about his decision, he had no hesitation. He later realizes what a mistake he made as he loses a job and gains nothing.People, in general, can learn how to think before acting. There are multiple situations in life where people should really think before making any decisions so that they achieve the best outcome in the end. Sammy made the mistake of quitting without thinking it through completely.

In the end, it didn’t play out into his advantage. Teens, especially in high school, should understand not to make decisions based off of foolish ideas. In the story, Sammy made his decision to quit based off of that some random girls that he never met were being treated unfairly in his opinion. In a more different situation, some teens may end up with a worse consequence than just losing a job. They might ruin their entire future when it comes to making decisions about school or something just as serious.

I feel that teens would most enjoy this piece of literature because I related best to this story and I am a teen. It was much easier to understand and appreciate what happens. Older readers or maybe even younger readers would not enjoy it as much because older readers wouldn’t find it appealing because they would be much more serious with their types of reading. They younger group of readers probably wouldn’t understand it because they haven’t been a teen before, they wouldn’t comprehend the idea of emotions taking over decision making abilities.