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.
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