Shift work @ “Grade-B”
It is not strange to find little shops in metropolitan areas that are not quite liquor stores, not quite convenience stores, not quite fast food take-out. They can go by many names, but most people would recognize the name Bodega. Any are mysterious in how they are arranged, most are magical in how much stuff is enclosed in those store fronts.
With the one I work in, the bodega is just the beginning.
It was an idea of Chef to have a place only Service workers knew about. You have to know about it to even know what door to go through. That was how I got a job here, and how my career changed for the better.
I had gone past the place for a few months after it opened. It was a crowded storefront, just like other ‘everything’ stores, and was from the beginning. It always seemed to be open, even after bar-time. I started going in after my shift at the pizza place just to pick up a few things, mostly cereal and milk.
There seemed to be a changing crowd and once or twice I saw someone in chef jacket looking at what was on the shelves. It never was empty.
There was a consistent clerk when I was in at night and I used my few words of Spanish to say, “Hi”, to thank him and wish him a good day. He laughed openly at my accent, but it was always in fun.
There was a particularly cold and frustrating night that let me know that the bodega had a secret. I know I smelled like burned pizza and grease, my shoes still wet from a spill from the fryer as I tracked mud into the store. I even still had my apron on under my coat as I walked in, which made Genaro smile.
“Hard shift?” I was used to his accent by then and heard the humor.
“Si…” I turned to head to the dairy cooler when I heard him laugh again.
“Hey. Chris. The milk all bad. Go talk to Mary in Service.” He pointed to the hallway that led to the bathrooms. I pointed the same way and he nodded.
When I had used the bathroom before, I had seen several other doors in the hallway, but had not paid any real attention. One had ‘office’ above the door, another had ‘service’ over it.
Shift had ended at 2.30am. For anyone to be in a service area of a bodega at that hour was damned peculiar. But I went where Genaro pointed.
I first knocked and then went through the door. There was music I had not heard in the store front and the sound of voices above familiar kitchen noises. I saw Mary behind a raised table that had nothing to do with stocking the dairy cooler.
I had been let into the secret of ‘Grade-B’. There was a full restaurant behind the store. I had no idea about it until I walked through the door.
A host at 2.30 am in the morning. One who smiled as I opened the door and stood in the doorway, my eyes not focusing well on the unexpected sight.
“Haven’t seen you before. At least not back here.” She stood from her stool and ushered me in, closing the door to the store behind me. She took my arm and walked me past a couple of security monitors mounted on the brick wall to a recliner.
Now, before you get ideas, there are real booths, tables and chairs in the dining area, but the place of honor, the Chefs table, has recliners and tv trays. Mary had seen me on the monitors before and knew I was a regular out front.
My coat went on a rack near the ‘table’ and I was relaxing into a lazy-boy my Uncle would have fought me for, as a plain piece of 8 1/2 by 11 paper was given to me. I read it and almost cried.
Everyone before me had been given this piece of paper, the words as comforting as the chair I was in.
“You are now the guest.”
Yes. That was it. Do you know what it is like to make food for people all day who don’t understand what goes into it? People who have as much sympathy for the food service behind the counter as they would if we were just a toaster? To have to remake food, to throw it away, because the guest forgot to mention they couldn’t eat something that is in everything we make? And then, as if a miracle occurred, be given the deference of a high-roller?
I read it and did not cry.
Mary had seen this before. They handed me one of those pocket tissue holders. To keep and use.
Sean came up at that point. He moved a chair and sat to face me. I had seen him in the bodega before, and it took me a moment to realize he was my server.
The first thing he said was, “Glad you found us.”
I. Don’t. Cry.
I put my hand over my mouth and felt the tears running down my face and over my fingers. I didn’t know how tired and frustrated I had been until Sean said those simple words to me.
“Hey. I’ve had shifts like that. What will make it better?”
My emotions had gone from suppressed to raw in less than five minutes. I’m not really that much of a tough guy, but, when you work in a kitchen, you don’t have time for emotions. After that short visceral ride through my tired brain, I had a feeling I had not had in a very long time. I felt… Pampered.
Now, I don’t want you to think this was a spa I just wandered into. It would have had to buy a tire to get any sort of Michelin recognition. There was a bare brick wall that looked like it had been there when the building was a factory of some sort, not the current ‘wabi sabi’ bare brick because it looks cool. There were miss matched pendant lamps above kraft paper covered tables. Chairs almost matched around tables, and I thought I recognized the stools along the wall from a bar that closed recently.
From where I was sitting, nay luxuriating, I could see signs up with what turned out to be white-boards for some hilarious, and some unsavory things. “Days Sighted Cockroach” and several restaurants listed with dates marked next to them. “Sexual Harassment” and “OSHA” were others I could almost see from the recliner.
From the recliner, I could see the service window into the kitchen. There was a line cook there working on something and glancing up once in a while. My eyes drifted down and I saw that the wall below the hole was bookshelves, with cookbooks crowding each other where I would think flatware and service trays would normally go.
Sean brought me a bowl of cheerios and milk from a side table with a ‘Chefs’ Special’ sign above it. The menu was simple and I knew what I wanted right then, no question about it, and no substitutions. Though, after I ordered, I asked what the little plate icons next to some of the items meant.
Sean laughed. “Not everyone asks their first time here. Some people never ask. Thats how many loads of dishes it costs to get the food.”
That made me smile even more.
It was almost 4 by the time I got out of there. I was happy. That doesn’t happen very often after such a shit-show of a shift at work. I saw lots of people there, all having just gotten off of work at different restaurants and bars, and one guy who was coming in with a stack of to-go containers that one of the other servers took from him and put in a glass-fronted dairy cooler near the open kitchen door. I even caught a glimpse of the line cook as I was walking out and thanked her before I left to get a few hours of sleep.
I went back to Service about as often as I had been going to the Bodega. It was usually after work, a place to be around people who had just been in a kitchen or FoH and needed to have a bit of something before dealing with the rest of the world.
I saw staff there come and go, just like other places, but they would be back to eat and relax after that. I saw things change in the FoH, like the box of socks one night with ‘$1’ sign hand written above it. I spent more on socks than food that night. Who ever ran the place knew how to get the service workers’ moods up.
I think the trips to Grade-B had been happening for about four months when my idiot supervisor cut my hours at the pizza place. No warning, and I found out in the middle of training one of the guys hired, at a much lower rate, to replace me.
It took about a week, because we were paid weekly, to know I was screwed. Unreliable roommate had lived up to the name and had failed to pay the utilities, again. With him drinking the money I had given him(yes, I know, stupid of me), it was going to take almost three times as long to get the funds together than usual just to be able to have a hot shower.
And, as everyone knows, even when you work in food service, food is one of the first things to be cut when you don’t have money.
I tried. I really tried. After my only full shift of the week, I broke down and went to Service. I loaded up on cheerios and figured I would spend as little as possible on some protein in chicken salad form.
Sean was working and figured out what was going on. As he was putting the plate in front of me, he just said, “You know, that’s a two load cover.” I was confused as he walked away.
It wasn’t a joke. I thought it had been a joke. I had seen others go in back after eating, but thought they were friends with some of the staff or something.
When I finished the sandwich, I cleared my table into the bus tub at the servers station and then took the tub through the kitchen door.
All she did was glance up and point with her knife towards the dish pit before I did my dishes and another couple of loads before I felt I had ‘earned’ my chicken salad.
Before I put the thick plastic apron back on the hook, I had a tap on my shoulder. She handed me four little bottle-cap sized tokens and said, “Good work.” She went back to the prep table and I wandered back out to the front of house.
Sean took the two tokens for the meal, and the tip he rightly earned, with a smile. “Chef likes you.”
I must have been really dense up to that point. Chef had been there in the BoH many times I had been in. Even at 3 am like that night. She was quiet, except once when Beth had left something in the window for too long one night. Eyes always on the food she was making, but always a little smile when you poked your head in to thank her.
Before I left that night, I poked my head into the open door to the kitchen and said, “Thanks, Chef.”
That little smile made the last week almost bearable.
I found that I went to Service in the back of Grade-B Produce after most of my shifts scheduled at the pizza place. It felt good to be around people who understood. I chipped in here and there, sometimes for tokens, sometimes because was different and kinda fun from my day job.
The day I came in and was handed a beer at the door was cool and unexpected. Chef had been granted a beer and wine license, and, even though it was a choice between Lone Star and Pearl, it was the best damned beer I had had in a while. Mary had a tub of ice and cooled beers next to her at the door, a new bulldog-shaped bottle opener screwed to the wall for those who chose bottle instead of can.
Word must have gotten out about the beer because more people came in that night than I think I had ever seen at Service. I finished my burger, did a load of dishes just because and then stood with Mary to help keep people from double-dipping into the tub.
That was also the first time I recognized one of the lead Chefs from a 4 star place downtown sitting at one of the booths. He was still in his named coat, several of his staff around him, one talking about how he had just found out about Service a week ago. Some brown-nosing going hard there.
It had been a short shift for me at the pizza place, so it was relatively early at just after midnight. It was getting crowded, almost all the tables had at least one person at them, and one of the four ‘Chefs’ Table’ recliners was occupied. With that many ToPs, it was time for me to clear out.
Or so I thought.
“Chris!”
It cut through the FoH and heads turned, looking for who Chef had called for. Mary side-eyed me and I felt a wave of a mixture of fear and humility go through me. There must have been other Chris’ in the dining room, but I was the one who dropped my jacket on a hook next to the kitchen door and walked in.
Chef said the most words to me right then. Pointing at a station, she said over the Boh and Foh noise, “Knives in the slat, prep list on the wall, specials on the board.”
It took me about ten minutes for me to orient myself, find an apron and towels, and get started on what she needed. Lettuce and peppers into 6-pans. Thin brie slices onto the half-sheet. Cans of tomato juice opened and dumped on the mirepoix in the rondo. Rolls out of the oven and into the hotel pan by the flat-top.
I came up for air several hours later. Chef had called out things as she needed them, having to direct me a few times where in the cooler some things were. I saw another regular head back with an overly full bus tub, the sounds of the dish pit filling the kitchen with sound and a feeling of relief. I used the sani bucket rag on my station while waiting for the next thing from Chef.
She was wiping sweat from the side of her face as she seemed to be looking at the last two tickets on the rail. Her focus was there, but she was tired. She leaned forward and stuck her hand out the service window, the voice of someone coming through with happy compliments. There was the small smile I had come to know and a simple, “Thank you.”
There was a pause after the last plates went out. It was almost four in the morning and I was both dead tired and beat on my feet. I could see Chef was also tired, but still cleaning and prepping. She looked over at me and I felt she was sighting me in.
“Hold on.” She went out of the kitchen and came back a moment later with a few things in her hands. She dumped about ten tokens in one of my hands, draped a t-shirt over my shoulder and put a piece of paper in the other hand.
I was more interested in the shirt, but looked at the paper. It was a W2 form. I blinked and looked at her.
“For when you are on the line. No schedule. Shit pay.” She smiled as I saw minimum wage plus a quarter listed already on the pay field. She pointed at the P.O.S. screen outside the kitchen on the server station and said, “Mary will get you logged in.”
That was how I started to work for Service and Grade-B Produce.
Oh, and the shirt says, “I do Service.”
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