Have you ever noticed that lobster tanks no longer exist in your average grocery store? If you weren’t aware, in decades past it was extremely common to go to the grocery store and see live lobsters sitting in a tank that was either in or adjacent to the seafood department. Even if the store lacked a separate seafood department, you could guarantee to see a tank of this nature somewhere. Each store seemed so proud of their ability to have this tank, as those without one were often described as “lower class”.
I would always look forward to looking at the lobsters as a child, unaware that their ultimate destiny was to either die in the tank or in a cooking pot. My family was never wealthy enough to afford such delicacies and we lived far enough away from the shore that the prices were always too high for my parents’ meager salaries. Which is ironic, considering they apparently used to be seen as food fit only for the poor. As such, I never had lobster growing up and a later discovered shellfish allergy ensured that I never would. Looking back, this lack of lobster consumption is probably what saved my life. Somehow, they knew.
Years later as an adult I began working at one of my local grocery stores and as luck would have it, specifically in the seafood department. It wasn’t hard to get promoted to that department. No one else wanted the job, to the point where even promises of large raises and less management oversight couldn’t make my coworkers budge in their refusal. It didn’t help that no one seemed to last long. People would either quit without notice or their odd actions would force management to terminate their employment. And by odd I mean things like refusing to talk (and when they did, seeming to talk to no one in particular), smelling strange, and just overall moving awkwardly, the final one something people typically chalked up to the department always being near freezing.
When I finally had my first day on the job, I was given various tasks and rules to go by. Always make sure that you tear down part of the display when you close (our seafood was always displayed on fresh ice that came down from the ceiling), check the product each day to ensure we sold only the freshest items, and never feed the lobsters.
This last part upset me, as this meant that we were ultimately starving the lobsters to death. When I asked why, their answer was to the point: if we feed them, they poop more. If they poop more, we have to clean the tank more, which was time consuming and smelly. I was even more upset when I learned that lobsters were cooked alive, something I’d never learned because of my family’s poverty and my shellfish allergy. I vowed that day that even if I couldn’t keep them from being cooked alive, I would at least make sure they were fed, even if I had to clean the tank myself.
My workplace wasn’t the most ethical and the department was always understaffed (ie, a staff of myself and some occasional helpers from the meat department), so more often than not I found myself working most days. I wasn’t happy about that, but it did mean that I could make sure the lobsters were treated fairly. Each day I worked, I’d give them whatever seafood had expired. It may not have been safe for human consumption, but that didn’t matter to the lobsters. They’d quickly gobble up whatever I gave them. Oddly enough, I found that the tank didn’t really need to be cleaned any more frequently than it did before, something I chalked up to the lobsters eating each other’s leavings. There’s a reason they’re sometimes referred to as the “roaches of the sea”, y’all. While I fed them, I’d sometimes apologize to the lobsters for their fate. Just a softly whispered “I’m sorry, you being here wasn’t my choice either”.
As time passed, I managed to last longer than any of those that came before me, much to the shock of my coworkers. The fact I hadn’t become “peculiar” was also surprising. However working all the time like that just grated on me. They wouldn’t outright say “We want you to work 6-8 hours every day” but somehow they’d find ways to guilt trip me into coming in and I was too young to know that I didn’t have to put up with that. This is why I chalked the first time I heard them up to fatigue.
I was doing a daily feeding and apologizing to them, when I heard “Thank you and we know, human.” I shook this off and finished my daily tasks. A few days later I heard them again, this time telling me that they particularly liked getting the old tuna. My reaction (suddenly backing away from them) must have told them I could hear them, as the following day they complained about the lack of tuna. As you would expect, this made my job a lot more difficult. They never spoke much, a sentence here and there, but I felt like I was going crazy. I also couldn’t help but feel sadder when I’d send lobsters off to their eventual demise. If you’re wondering what lobsters talk about, it usually involved food. Although they did mention that I didn’t smell like the customers, which I think was meant as a compliment.
Then one day I heard them specifically tell me “Don’t come in tomorrow”. Honestly, at this point I was just so tired of how I was treated that they didn’t have to tell me twice.
The following day was kind of a blur. I tried calling in sick, however my (now former) boss called me on it and fired me over the phone. I was hurt, but decided to go back to bed and enjoy sleeping in for the first day in a very long time. I was woken up about an hour later by my phone ringing insistently. I picked up and the first thing I hear, after giving a sleepy “hello” was one of my friends saying “Oh thank goodness, you’re at home”. I must have made a confused sound, as they started going on about lobsters and people rampaging. Once I managed to get them to calm down, they told me the story from the beginning.
Early this morning in seafood departments across the country - and possibly overseas - employees and random customers started destroying tanks in an attempt to get to the lobsters. Anyone who tried stopping them were met with strong resistance. Those who were able to grab the lobsters and escape drove until they either made it to an appropriate body of water and released the lobsters or handed them over to another driver, who presumably made a similar exchange until the lobsters were released.
When the media reported on this they claimed that these people were all part of a unified, synchronized protest. There were attempts by some animal rights groups to lay claim to the actions until they learned that some of the protestors reacted especially violently when confronted. There were reports of deaths and wounding, but the worst were the reports that some protestors fed human remains to the lobsters during transport. And that some of these remains appeared to have been prepared ahead of time. I later heard rumors that in some of these cases the protestors had peeled their own living flesh for the lobsters and that some had cooked family members alive. I stopped looking into these rumors when I heard that one protestor had allowed the lobsters to lay eggs all over their flesh, with the intent that when they hatched, the hungry babies would use their body for sustenance.
I don’t know how they managed this, but as quickly as the media storm hit, it disappeared. If you look nowadays, you won’t see any sign of this. You’ll see mentions of protests and of stores deciding to stop carrying tanks out of recognition that the tanks were not humane, but not the transporting. Nor the injuries or deaths. No one really wants to talk about it either, as it just seemed too gross and strange.
I might have left it at that, except that well… I still hear them. And they aren’t finished yet.