Lengel
Manager of the local A&P, Lengel is a man who spends most of his days behind the door marked "Manager". Entering the story near the end, he represents the system: management, policy, decency, and the way things are. But he is not a one-dimensional character. He has known Sammy's parents for a long time, and he tells Sammy that he should, at least for his parents' sake, not quit his job in such a dramatic, knee-jerk way. He seems truly concerned even while he feels the need to enforce store policy.
Queenie
"Queenie" is the name Sammy gives to the gorgeous girl who leads her two friends through the grocery store in their bathing suits. He has never seen her before but immediately becomes infatuated with her. He comments on her regal and tantalizing appearance. She is objectified by 19-year-old Sammy, who notes the shapely contours of her figure and the seductiveness of the straps that have slipped off her shoulders. He also, however, clearly admires how her inappropriate attire defies convention. When Lengel chastises the girls for their attire, Queenie, who Sammy imagines lives in an upper-middle-class world of backyard swimming pools and fancy appetizers, becomes "sore now that she remembers her place, a place from which the crowd that runs the A&P must look pretty crummy". Sammy becomes indignant at Lengel's treatment of the girls and tries to help them save face by quitting his job. But Queenie appears not to notice and leaves the store promptly, diminishing the impact of Sammy's impulsive gesture.
Plaid and Big Tall Goony Goony
These are the nicknames Sammy gives Queenie's friends, who are somewhat uneasier about their attire. Plaid is a plump, pretty girl in a plaid two-piece bathing suit; Big Tall Goony Goony is cynically observed by Sammy to have the sort of striking features other girls pretend to admire because they know she's no real competition to them (although he concedes that she's not bad-looking on the whole).
Sammy
Sammy's name is not revealed to the reader until the end of the story, even though he is the first-person narrator of the story. He is a checkout clerk at an A&P supermarket. His language indicates that, at age 19, he is both cynical and romantic. He notes, for instance, that there are "about twenty-seven-old freeloaders" working on a sewer main up the street, and he wonders what the "bum" in "baggy gray pants" could possibly do with "four giant cans of pineapple juice". Yet when Queenie approaches him at the checkout, Sammy notes that "with a prim look she lifts a folded dollar bill out of the hollow at the center of her nubbled pink top. ... Really, I thought that was so cute." He vacillates back and forth between these extremes of opinion during the story, calling some of his customers "houseslaves in pin curlers", yet he is sensitive enough that when Lengel makes Queenie blush, he feels "scrunchy inside". At the end of the story, he quits his job in an effort to be a hero to the girls and as a way of rebelling against a strict society. In a sudden moment of insight—an epiphany—he realizes "how hard the world was going to be to [him] hereafter" if he refuses to follow conventional paths.
Stokesie
Stokesie is a 22-year-old white man who is married with two children. He works with Sammy at the A&P checkout, and is the only other store checker mentioned. He is a minor character in the story, but seems to be representative of ritualism; Stokesie seems to be a medium between the temperaments of Sammy and Lengel. He shares Sammy's askew views to some extent, but does have ambition that one day he can take over the store when Lengel dies or retires, but thinks it is probably out of the question until 1990 when there is Soviet takeover of the United States. (Ironically, 1990 in real time being one year after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the USSR was on its last gasp of being a superpower.) However, Stokesie does his job faithfully each day in order to provide for his wife and kids. Like Sammy, he also observes the girls in the store with interest, although not to the point he is fully distracted. Other customers have been filling up Stokesie's aisle when the girls come to make their purchase, leaving Sammy free. He is a glimpse of what Sammy's future might be like; Stokesie's family "is the only difference" between them, Sammy comments.
