In Which an Ice Cream Cone Reminds Me of Fresh Meat

Time Frame: September 2014/January 2011

September 2, 2014. That’s the date that it really sunk in. I was a college senior. I had been so excited about reaching my final year and elated when I found out that I finally had enough credit hours to be given that glorious rank. So what if it had taken me an extra year to get to that point? I made it. I had finally reached the end, the last lap, and I wasn’t going to slow down. With full speed ahead I was determined to cross that finish line, defeat that last boss, write that last paper, receive that last grade, and claim victory by walking across a stage in front of a large group of people to receive a piece of paper that, with simple words, told of my victory. But, in order to get that oh so valuable piece of paper I had to first complete my final mission as a college student...senior year.

      

      My name is Andy Martin. I’m 5’2, I weigh 114 pounds, I can never remember what blood type I am, and I have a tendency to forget to eat when I’m doing things I deem important, like writing. An English major with no idea of where she’s going, unwillingness to quit where she is, and proud of where she’s come from. That’s me.

            At the age of 18 I graduated from a small high school and relocated from my home town –Grand Island, Nebraska –to the much bigger city of Olathe, Kansas. I won’t lie and say that I wasn’t nervous, that I wasn’t scared, or that I didn’t think about dropping out and working at a local food joint back at home for the rest of my life, but I also won’t tell you that I regret that change. Going to the university was one of the best choices I ever made.

            Let me tell you, every college has its down falls. There’s no place on earth that is perfect, but, for what it’s worth, you get out of your life what you put into it. Participation isn’t just something you do to pass a class, it’s something that one must do in order to have a fulfilling life.

            Flannery O’Connor once said that, “Nothing needs to happen in a writer’s life after they are 20. By then they’ve experienced more than enough to last their creative life.” O’Connor may have been right. By the time a person reaches the wonderful age of 20 they’ve gone through more than enough to teach the world a thing or two. Think about it, one of the most adventure and lesson filled times of one’s life is high school. Just between the ages of 14 and 18 one learns some of life’s greatest lessons and experiences enough to write volumes full of wacky adventures. However, there is something to be said about those years after 20.

            At 18, I started working at the cafeteria on my University’s campus. At 22, I had made my way up through its ranks to reach the coveted rank of Student Manager. The second week of my senior year, on the second day in September, I ran my second shift as Student Manager, and when I went in to work that night the last thing on my mind was my freshman year. In fact, I can tell you exactly what I was thinking. I was thinking about those plays I still had to read, that article that was waiting for me to write a response paper to, that presentation I needed to start preparing for, that quiz I was going to be taking the next day and had yet to study for, and how much I really didn’t want to be at work that night.

            I never, in a million years, could have predicted how that night had gone. I had just finished Student Manager Training and still had no idea of what exactly I was supposed to be doing. I didn’t even understand why they had picked me. Why had my bosses emailed me over summer break and requested that I consider taking a student manager position?  

            I’ve never considered myself as a leader. I’ve never really been a follower either. I paved my own way, kept my voice soft, and said all I needed to say through ink. Writing was my outlet. It was the only way I ever felt capable of expressing exactly what I wanted and needed to say. Whenever I spoke I spent so much time fumbling and stumbling over my own tongue that most of what I said tended to loss the impact it could have had if spoken clearly. It wasn’t that I had a speech problem. I didn’t stutter, I knew how to articulate, My tongue knew the exact places to touch in my mouth to create the words I wished to speak, but I had a bit of a social anxiety problem. When I wasn’t talking to close friends, or about writing, I got quite and my words started to sound like a scratched CD, my heart rate increased, my thoughts flew from what I wanted to say to what those around me were potentially thinking of me. Which is kind of odd considering that as the older I got the less I cared about other people’s opinions of me. I grew to know who I was and to be comfortable in my own skin, which was the exact opposite who I was back in high school.

            Still, even though I knew who I was and I knew that I was capable of putting up a brave mask to convince the world that I knew what I was doing even when I didn’t, I didn’t understand why in the galaxy my bosses would pick me to be one of the three student managers. At first I thought it was just because I was a senior, because I really couldn’t think of any other reason. I mean, yes they seemed to like me, and yes they always said that I was a great worker, and yes they constantly reminded me that I was reliable, but I couldn’t wrap my head around their reasoning. I was plagued with fears that I would do a horrible job, that my co-workers (who had also been my friends, my roommates, my hall mates, and my classmates) wouldn’t respect me. I quickly found out that they had more respect for me than I thought. In fact, that second night of holding the Student Manager position, almost each and every one of my co-workers told me how happy they were for me that I got that position and how they thought I’d do a great job.

            About halfway through my shift that second night in September, I was standing there between two serving lines –my bosses to my left speaking in hushed whispers and my friends hurrying around to wipe down counters and refill dishes – and surveying the scene before me. To say I felt out of place would be an understatement. I wore the same black chef coat as every other worker, had the same blue rag thrown over my shoulder, but I wasn’t moving. I wasn’t actually doing anything but watching and that felt wrong. From the time I was a Freshman, up until that point, I had been trained in every student position working that night. I had been trained to keep moving. No standing around. No having lengthy conversations with people. No texting. If you weren’t busy, you found a way to appear busy. That was the way things worked…until that moment.

            I felt like I should be wiping down counters, or checking the coffee and soda levels. I felt like I should be cutting tomatoes, refilling ice-cream, or seeing how many pans of rice was still in the warmer…but that wasn’t my job anymore. My job was to tell people that was their job. And that felt weird. So after asking my roommate –Stella – to clean up a few pieces of meat that had fallen from the carving board, and requesting that the guy working in the same area as her refill the rice, I resorted to awkwardly standing between the two serving lines.

            I stood there for a couple minutes when I noticed one of my bosses, a tall slim guy with a balding head approach the ice cream machine. I didn’t think anything of it for Aaron would often check the machine to make sure it was still working. He pulled a long metal tube from its stand beside the purring metal box before heading my way. I knew what he was going to ask even before his slack, shirt, and tie clad form reached me.

            “Hey, And,” he was grinning, swinging the metal tube around like it wasn’t half the size of a bazooka. “Want to see if anyone could fill this up?”

            I hummed, debating on who I could ask to do such a small but important task.

            “Or, if you really want to, you could do it,” Aaron suggested, the lines around his smile grew. He was barley middle aged and that smile of his made him resemble a devious little boy. It was pure joy and it brought to mind a time when I had witnessed him laugh after telling someone to walk across the room and pick up a napkin he had spotted underneath a booth. He had said, at that time, with the exact smile he was currently wearing, “I just love telling people what to do.” He was such a good natured boss though that most people just did what he said without complaint. After all, you couldn’t have an attitude with somewhat that actually cared about how stressed you were or worked with you to figure out a schedule that would fit your needs with classes and the want of a social life.

            “I’ll do it,” I took the metal tube from my grinning boss who I knew was still smiling as I walked away.

            I didn’t have to go far to refill the metal tube. After all, it was meant to distribute ice cream cones and the cones were located on a shelf right by the door that lead to a large storage room. It took me all of six steps to get to the door and even though I had to stand on my tiptoes to get the tall box of cones down from its shelf, it was still easy. It was then though, as I was at a metal table across from the shelf –which was named Faye’s table after the woman who toiled over it during the day to prepare all the salad bar options and sacked lunches we provided  -that I froze in my work.

            I was reaching into the long box with latex covered hands, pulling cones from it and easily slipping them into the metal tube. I didn’t miss. The first cone fell straight through the tube and stopped halfway through the hole it would eventually leave from, just like it was supposed to. As I dropped one cone in after another, each one slid right into place and suddenly it hit me. I was doing the exact same task, perfectly, my senior year that I had an absolutely disastrous encounter with my freshman year.

            My first week as a cafeteria worker, my little fresh meat brain was still trying to get a handle on college life. I had been at the school for a semester, but it was all so different than what I was use to and work was relatively new to me. I had held jobs before, but only a couple and they were nothing like working at the cafeteria. It was sometime during my first week working there, I can’t recall the exact day, that I had been asked to refill the ice cream cones.  

            Being the insecure, unsure little freshie that I was, I had meekly approached the duel metal tubes that stood next to the ice cream machine which I couldn’t even fathom how I’d refill. Hesitantly I grabbed one of the tubes.

            “They just slide right off,” the head chef at the time, Roger, had told me. “Just pull it off and 

take it to Faye’s table. The cones are on the shelf across from it.”

            Yeah right, they just slide right off. It took me nearly five minutes to get the metal tubes free from their hooks. I tried pulling, I tried lifting up, I tried pushing down, I tried sliding them off of whatever device was securing them, but nothing worked. For five minutes I messed around with the tubes, everyone seeing but no one bothering to come up and actually show me how it was done. Then, finally, with a soft, fearful voice I turned to the person who was supposedly responsible for my training –I say supposedly because he really wasn’t a very good trainer –and ask, “Um, T-Taylor, could you show me how to…” I gestured towards the ice cream cone holders.

            With a sigh and a roll of his eyes, the afro haired, ghost pale boy walked over and removed the tubes by simply sliding them up. Something I was sure I had tried. At that point I was more than sure those ice cream cone holders were biased. I wanted to sink into the shadows as he handed me the tubes with a snicker. I was so embarrassed and heat was flooding my face. I rushed to Faye’s table as quickly as I could.

            Things only got worse once I was at the shiny, pristine stainless steel table. I sat the tubes down and took a couple deep breaths to slow my heart rate. I just wanted that night to be over with. I hated how much I kept messing up. There had been other incidents that day –that week –that left me feeling like a failure at work.

            Turning to grab the cones, my stomach only churned more. How was I, a short petite girl, supposed to reach the box of cones that was half my size and located on the top shelf of a rather large shelving unit? Not only was it located on the top but it was pushed clear to the back of the shelf. There was no way I could reach it without falling. Still, I looked around, saw no one and used the skills I learned from doing dishes around the house as a kid. I scaled the shelf easily enough, got the box, and almost gave a cheer of victory when I landed with a soft thud on the tiled floor. No one had seen my stunt and that made me even happier.

            I felt that I had finally done something right that night. That little hope that flared in me put a skip in my step as I twirled to face Faye’s table. I had gotten the cones and all I had left to do was put them in their tubes and put the tubes back by the ice cream machine. Not too hard, right? Wrong!

            Somehow, and I still don’t know quite how I accomplished this, I managed to break half of the cones. The first few broke when I was trying to get them to fall partially through the hole at the bottom of the tubes, the others…well…I’m not sure what led to their murder. I just know that I slaughtered over a dozen cones trying to get them into the tubes and, if that wasn’t bad enough, after I had gotten the tubes full I dropped them. Which broke every single cone I had managed to get safely inside.

            After refilling the ice cream cone tubes, came my next challenge. Re-hooking them back up by the ice cream machine was a nightmare, and just like they had done when I was trying to get the tubes off the hooks my coworkers just stared at me. Not even Taylor had come to my aid and I had to eventually retreat to the kitchen and embarrassingly –almost forty minutes after he asked me to refill the cones –ask the head chef to show me how to put the cone tubes back.

            Thankfully, that never happened again after that time. The cone incident was a rookie mistake and, thankfully, I learned that I wasn’t the only fresh meat who had ever done such.

            I laughed a little as I left Faye’s table behind. My senior self couldn’t help but smile at my freshman one. I was so foolish then. So naïve. I messed up on so much and now I was a student manager. I really had come a long ways. It was weird to think that I was senior.

            As I slid the cone tubes into place as easily as if I had never once failed at doing so I realized that I wasn’t that scared little freshman anymore. I wasn’t terrified of the cafeteria or my bosses. I wasn’t worried about screwing up and I no longer pointlessly murdered ice cream cones. I was a senior.

I. was. A. Senior. I had finally made it. And, as I turned away from that ice cream machine to look out at my friends as they worked, I felt myself fill with pride. And I realized that’s why they picked me. That’s why my bosses had chosen me for the third Student Manager position. Not because I was a senior, but because I was experienced.

I Dream of Being a Fairchild and End up Being Cinderella

Time Frame: Fall 2013 

            “Ow! hot, hot, hot, hot, hot!”

           

 It was a rookie mistake. One that an experienced person would never make. I knew the second the mistake would be made, but we had a saying around those parts –and when I say “those parts” I mean the kitchen at the college cafeteria my friends and I worked at –and it’s that you’re not a kitchen worker until you’ve burn your arm on the oven door. It’s a mistake everyone makes at least once, no matter how hard they try to avoid it.

            Unfortunately the girl that had just made the mistake had done more than just bump her arm against the angry door. She had also made the mistake of grabbing the pan of cookies that were in the oven without first wrapping her hand in a towel. Rookie mistake number two…and maybe a sign that she lacked a bit of common sense. I mean, really, who grabs a hot pan without first finding some sort of protection for their hands?

            “That’s why you don’t grab a hot pan without a potholder!” Our boss, James, chided over the growl of our chief, who was staring down at the now unusable cookies that lay scattered around the girl’s gold converse shoes.

James, for all his quirkiness, was a decent guy. And no, I’m not just saying that because he, at one time, had a part in issuing my paycheck. He was an odd dude, for sure. He had a tendency of doing or saying things that made us workers uncomfortable and he was the kind of guy you either liked or didn’t. The thing about him that was the most annoying was that he could be super cool one minute and crazy uncaring the next. Let me put it this way, he wasn’t the first guy you’d want to pour your soul out to but he did offer to listen should you ever find yourself in a situation where you wished to do so.

            James was a guy of average height. He had dark hair the exact color of a raven’s wing and eyes like coffee. He appeared to have a bit Italian in his blood, but I never asked so I can’t tell you if he really was part Italian or not.

  

          “I’m sorry!” the girl cried. She was clutching her hands close to her chest, cradling their burnt flesh. “I didn’t mean to!”

            “There’s a heat resistant glove on the shelf above the oven for a reason,” our head chief, Joe, chimed in.

Unlike James, who had the muscle mass of spaghetti, Joe was buff. He was middle aged with close-cut blond hair and the shoulders of a quarterback. He was fun loving and relaxed. He was a cool guy. A quite guy. He rarely ever talked and spent an unsettling amount of time in the coolers. Most newbies thought he was mute, because communication with him involved a lot of gesturing and eye rolls. He didn’t like having to explain things and kept conversations between himself, his cook assistants, and those he’d known for a minimum of a semester.

“Could have grabbed a towel too,” James continued.

“Or an apron,” Joe added.

“Okay, I get it,” the new cook assistant, whose name I had yet to catch, ground out. “Sue me for being nervous my first week here.”

Joe scoffed. “What use would that be? You’re a college student. You don’t have any money.”

“If I did, I wouldn’t be working here,” the girl muttered and I had to fight back a snicker. I totally got what she was saying. Everyone started working at the cafeteria because they had to pay the school. Money was good motivation.

“Go treat your hands, then grab a broom and sweep up this mess,” James purposely stepped on one of the cookies, mashing dough and chocolate chips into the rough red flooring of the kitchen.

I wanted to speak out. To say, “Why do you have to be that way?” to him, but I had a feeling he didn’t particularly like me and I needed to keep my job. So, instead, I said, “I’ll show her where the burn spray is,” and laid down the large knife I had been using to chop onions.

James merely nodded and Joe went back to his bowls of herbs.

            I lead the new girl back to the offices and opened the top drawer on our head boss’ desk. Thankfully for us, James wasn’t the big guy. Though he could fire us, and he did control our schedules, he wasn’t the guy that made most of the rules. Said big guy’s top desk drawer was full of medical stuff. A first aid kit, bottles of pain reliever, and a couple epi-pens laid inside the drawer. I reached behind the white first-aid box to grab a bottle of burn spray and said, “Hold out your hands.”

           The girl and I didn’t say anything as I sprayed her hands, or after I put the spray away. Nor did we say anything once we rejoined James and Joe in the kitchen. We continued to work in silence, until both of the men ventured off to make sure we had enough bags of fries and that all the tables in the cafeteria had been cleaned for dinner.

            

“Are they always like that?” the girl spoke up once the men left the room.

           “Pretty much. Joe gets better,” I promised.

            “And James?”

            “James gets worse.”

            “Great,” she drew out the word and I cracked a smirk. “I’m Nikki, by the way.”

            “I’m  Andy,” I responded.

            Nikki was a sweet girl. African American with kinky curls that she spent hours straightening. She had a whole lot of sass and a killer fashion sense. From gold converse and varsity jackets, to Pencil skirts and frilly tops, she could rock it all. She was never without her music and her phone. Of course, at the time, I didn’t know that. I just thought she was a smooth chick who had an attitude I was jealous of. I didn’t know she was going to rub off on me or that I’d be bobbing my head at people, like she would, when I’d get mad at someone in the future. She became one of my best friends though.

            Being best friends wasn’t exactly on the agenda that first day we met. Really all she wanted to do was survive her first week of work and all I wanted to do was to make it through the day without earning myself some snide remark from James. We never would have predicted how close we’d become.

       

     “So where are you from?” I asked of Nikki.

One thing about college, there are four questions you ask everyone the first time you meet them:

1)      What’s your name?

2)      Where are you from?

3)      What class level are you?

4)      What’s your major?

“Florida,” Nikki answered.

“Really?” I laughed. “Why the heck did you come here?”

“I needed to get away from home. Thought this would be as good a place as any. You?”

“I’m from Nebraska, but I came here for the same reason, actually.”

            

I always dreamed of having a life like Sabrina Fairchild. Of traveling to some far away country to learn something exciting. I didn’t want to be Sleeping Beauty or have a prince swoop in and save me from some dragon. I had merely wanted to leave home, learn an exciting career, find myself, and perhaps one day return home to find out the love of my life had been the brooding, misunderstood boy from next door.

            The original plan had been to graduate high school, pack up, and move myself to the sunny state of California. I was tired of the drama of my home state. I was tired of cattle and corn. I wanted to break away and find a place where I could be comfortable being me; where I could find out who I was.

            I thought California would be the perfect place for me. As far as I was concerned, my plan to get as far away as possible, without leaving the country, was set in stone…that was until the end of my junior year of high school. As life normally goes, I was slung down a path I had never intended to take. The freefall called life had gotten her ugly talons into me.

            At seventeen, I wanted nothing besides to be invisible until I could get out of Nebraska. Unfortunately for me, that was impossible. You see, my dad was my children’s pastor…then my youth pastor…then eventually my pastor, pastor. That may not mean anything to some of you, but all you PKs (That’s Preacher Kids for anyone who doesn’t know) out there know what I’m getting at. At seventeen my dad was the head of my church’s teen department. So, my siblings and I tended to be held to a higher standard than most kids our ages.

Deny it as pastors may, but their children are always held to a higher standard. I was expected to get along with everyone in youth group, to smile and participate in meaningless small talk, and to love every youth event we went to. I had always felt a bit like a bug under a microscope because of it. I always felt like people were watching me, just waiting for the moment I screwed up. That was another reason for California. I wanted to be somewhere where no one knew me.

That all changed though towards the end of my junior year in high school, when the juniors and seniors in my youth group went to visit a college associated with our religious denomination. There were only three of us, plus my parents (who were chaperoning), and we had been friends for as long as we could remember. We couldn’t even really recall how we had met.

Jacklyn and Connie were both planning on attending the school we were visiting. I, on the other hand, was still dead set against it. Both of my parents had attended the school and I was afraid that I would end up living in their shadows. So, California sounded like a better option. Plus, I kind of liked the idea of going to a university that had palm trees on campus and was only a short drive from the beach. Which is kind of odd, since I can’t swim…but my fear of water was beat over by the promise of sunshine and freedom.

Anyway, at the college visit, my friends and I were placed in a room with two of the university’s students. Such was done with every highschooler visiting. We were required to sit through meetings and attend a couple on going classes. Jacklyn had no problem branching out and chose to attend some advanced science classes or something super boring like that. Connie and I, however, compromised. Neither of us wanted to go alone, so we each chose one class to attend together. I’ll never forget the class I chose for us to attend.

In room 208, of the humanities and religion building, Connie and I attended a class on Shakespeare…and I felt my passion for English and writing explode. There, among six college students and a professor who was excitedly explaining Romeo and Juliet, I felt like I belonged.

That night, when I crawled into my sleeping bag on the hard dorm room floor, I knew that I wouldn’t be going to California. For some reason, the Kansas University felt like home and I just had a feeling that I belonged there.

Olathe, Kansas was no Paris and it was definitely closer to home than I thought I wanted to be. And English wasn’t exactly the culinary arts or modeling, but I still had that Sabrina Fairchild concept going on.

Though I was studying English, I was still sort of like Sabrina in the way that I found myself with a job at the college cafeteria. I also found myself alone, for Connie and Jacklyn both decided that they didn’t feel like the college was for them. It’s funny how things work out. Olathe was promising me Sabrina’s life…and I took it up on its offer.

There’s always been one thing about Sabrina’s story that I sort of disliked and that’s that we who are told her story know some of what occurs during her time in Paris and that it’s because of Paris that she grows into herself, but we don’t really know what she discovered when she was there.

How did she discover herself? What happened that shaped her? What made her go from the awkward girl who watched her crush from a tree to a strong, confident and sophisticated woman?

I’m not Sabrina Fairchild and I don’t know exactly what happened to her in Paris, but I know that it’s a story worth telling. How do I know this? Because at eighteen I left home a shy awkward girl to attend a university in Olathe, Kansas and I grew into a completely different person. What happened between taught me some of the most important lessons in life, but that’s getting ahead of myself. So, allow me to begin again and to tell you about my human experience and how a cafeteria can sometimes be the best place to learn of life’s secrets and just what it means to be human.

Once upon a time, in a city called Olathe, not far from Kansas City, there was a college campus where there lived a variety of students.  And on that campus there sat a little cafeteria where people dreamed of being Fairchildren found out that sometimes to be a Fairchild you first have to be a Cinderella. And what those students found there, after leaving the safety of their homes, was the world…

A Letter to the Reader: (In which I address the issue of writing about real people)

“Food is our common ground, a universal experience.”

-James Beard

If you’re reading this then you’ve no doubt accidentally stumbled on this or followed a link I posted. That’s alright though because, you see, this blog is all about accidents. No matter how you got here, know that you are welcome. You won’t be judged.

This blog, this collection of writings, is an invitation for you to step into a family that you may have not known existed. A family where mistakes are expected and applauded. A family where, no matter how horrible of a day you’re having something will always go right…it just might take a little squinting to see what it is.

From here on out you will read about real life events happening to real life people. Every word is true. Every tear, laugh, and experience happened to someone in a little city in Kansas, USA. Yet, I must confess that the truth will be littered with lies. Every name you read will be false. In order to protect the identity of those in these posts I will be changing their names, but each person represented here exists.

This is because the issue with writing about real people is that one does not wish to ruin their subject's lives. I do not wish for any of these stories to come back to haunt my friends and co-workers. Giving you their true names is almost an invasion of privacy and since I won't be asking for any of their permission to use their real names you will be given their false ones. The ones I create for them.

This is not fiction. This is not fantasy or romance. This is real life comedy. The writing here is meant to be light-hearted. The experiences I share are being shared with a good heart and good intentions.

I do not wish for you to laugh at the people in these stores, but with them. My wish, my hope, is that you will find yourself somewhere in these words. That they will bring you a laugh when you need it the most or a spark of hope to keep you going through out your day.

The experiences I’m sharing come from a cafeteria located at a college in Olathe, Ks. They are from the student staff that both have previously and are currently working there. Some of these experiences come from 2010, others are much more recent. I will be attempting to keep them in chronicle order. Or as close to chronicle order as I possibly can. And I will provide the year of each event at the begging of each post.

We, the workers of this fine establishment, came together for the sole purpose of earning a paycheck to pay for our tuition. We stayed together because of the community we found. James Beard, an American cookbook author and chef, said that food is the common ground for us. It is what unites humanity. Food united us. It taught us the value of non-blood family and sometimes it was there to remind us just how human we really were.