Column: Remembering Our Friend Kevin Olish

Remembering Our Friend Kevin Olish

Allison Gnade, Catalyst Editor

When wonderful, unusual staffer Kevin Olish passed away unexpectedly, the Co-op community responded effusively and movingly. Kevin was a person with whom interacting required one to change their pace, and perhaps eventually, their outlook.

Many echoed an initial discomfort with Kevin’s surprising wealth of knowledge – his memory for dates, numbers, facts, and history was astounding, and, as all Co-op cashier transactions begin, it all started with a member number – the unnerving thing for the unacquainted being that Kevin would know your number better than you did, when you didn’t even know his name.

Read a Patch , and share your memories in the comments.

With a member number, which is actually superficial knowledge about a person, it seemed personal. (“Being just a number” is usually a complaint, but not so at the Co-op. At the Co-op, knowing your member number by heart seems to tether one’s reputation.) This seemingly intimate knowledge – that Kevin knew your number – initially deterred some, but given enough time in our community, initial distrust turned the other way. As converts do, those unsure eventually became Kevin loyalists, skipping other available lanes to wait at register one for a chat with Kevin.

His knowledge of space, music, and politics was unusual, as was his voice and way of conducting himself. He often talked about his days working at the Santa Monica Co-op back in the ‘70s, and he was a co-op-er through and through.

Stationed at the register at the front of the store, he greeted those that came through by name, including children. He knew the meaning of a real hello.

One of many touching accounts got me: a woman was waiting in her car in front of the store while her husband ran in to get a few things. He was taking a while, and she felt a little impatient. Outside the window of the store, she saw him finally come up to register one, Kevin’s register. She watched them chat, Kevin gesturing. Her husband looked like he didn’t get what Kevin was saying. Kevin kept talking, gesturing, and her husband’s body language said that he got it.

They smiled, surely Kevin concluded with, “Have a nice night,” and her husband walked out the door. There in the night air he stopped. He stood, staring, up into the night sky for several moments. They needed that reminder, her account recalled, to slow down, admire, and appreciate. We all need those reminders, and Kevin was king of that.

Finally, and most importantly, was Kevin’s interest in conversation. Like knowing an apparent stranger’s member number, Kevin’s chattiness and unconcern with time was unnerving for some. You’d be sitting there tapping your foot, and he’d bring up a new, random, topic of conversation. If that was you, you’d always leave feeling like you’d played that wrong, that your rush wasn’t worth it. It’s Kevin who, in the words of another’s remembrance, taught us to put relationships over transactions.