Sammy, the teenage cashier, "a martyr for beauty", stalks off the job after his manager ejects the bathing suit-clad girls from the store, in particular "Queenie", the prettiest of the three.[8] Literary critic Mary Allen comments on Updike's conception of the ideal female:
Sexuality is far and away the most desirable trait in a woman, perhaps the only essential one. It is not necessarily associated with physical beauty. A woman in Updike may be remembered as pretty because of the fondness with which the love scenes are portrayed... In fact, a case can be made that homeliness of a sort that makes a woman soft and vulnerable is itself an attraction for Updike men.[9]
Allen adds: "The very sight of women gives a kind of grace to existence for Updike men. A young grocery checker in 'A&P' grows faint with delight when three girls in bathing suits come into the market. The loveliest girl, whose straps hang charmingly off her white shoulders, comes through his line and pays her bill with a dollar she produces from the top of her bathing suit."[10][11]
Updike's 19-year-old protagonist is quickly disabused as to the wisdom of his recklessness on behalf of the girls.[12] Literary critic Richard Detweiler writes:
The undertone of sorrow resides in the depressing sight that awaits Sammy outside the supermarket: the girls for whom he has gallantly sacrificed his job have disappeared; in their place is a young married woman yelling at her spoiled children, a much commoner refrain to the heady tunes of wishful American romance.[13]
