Learning how to work

Without a job I was a clique, worthless lost cause without a paycheck. My work ethic had matured since my days of dropping jobs like beats from a white trash bassy car stereo from a wreck on four wheels. Without a job, I sold CDs to a music store on Cary Street. I would usually have the shakes when I walked in there because I hadn’t taken the first drag of the day. My eyes would be hanging low from the lack of sleep last night thinking about what I didn’t have and what I would never be. The stares from the cashier would say it all. “He must be a junkie. Oh my God, He’s shaking.” All this for a pack of the cheapest cigarettes on the market and a forty of the cheapest malt liquor. The real kick to the groin happened when I sold Dexter Gordon live at Carnegie Hall. That’s when I figured I had to get a job and after about eight we-will-call-you and we-will-see-what- we-can-dos; it happened at Gusto’s Squid.
It was a brand new restaurant in the Fan district of Richmond. A sister restaurant of a very popular one in Carytown known for fine Italian dining in a very compact space. The customers were treated like cattle at feeding time then pushed out of the restaurant so another confined table could be filled again. People in town raved about the food served there, yet the wine was poured in little juice glasses (customary in Italy), the customer was always wrong in the cook’s eyes, and people knew of it from word of mouth not from corny ads in the local paper or the TV.
The mother’s newborn had the same compacted eating area, which was above a sub shop. The tables, covered by sky blue table cloths which were covered by tiny candles that had been used for last year’s Passover and by different shades of oils were small with chairs forcing themselves in to the confine space. There was a jukebox they played compact disk in a corner beside the coat rack. The bar served three kinds of beer, and wines that I never heard probably that cert of knowledge never presented itself at my old job, which was at an ice cream store. All this controlled by the bartender, Dr. Bob. Who wasn’t a real doctor, but he did wear a lab coat as well as make the perfect Manhattan.
The interview was just a simple question: “Do you want to wash dishes?”
This asked by my future boss with a long red beard and flannel shirt making him look like a lumberjack glazed over in scotch.
I had been avoiding restaurants, but I was so desperate for a job I regretfully accepted. They had me fill out my information form on a piece of paper from a legal pad; it wasn’t even a real application.
“Come in on Saturday at 10:00 am or around 10:30.”
I showed up Saturday at ten. My boss was late. I was smoking my second cigarette during my wait. He eventually showed up in a red pick up truck. His eyes were tired and his hair was covered in a blue bandana.
“Have you been waiting long?” he asked showing signs that he didn’t actually care if I was there; he had a job to do regardless.
“Nah.”
He unlocked the front door and we climbed the stairs up to Gusto’s, passing old black and white photographs man and woman smiling a day at the beach. There were others, the same man smoking a cigarette with an apron on or making pasta in the kitchen.
“Who’s that?”
“That’s the owner’s parents. He owns one half, I own the other.”
“Wow.” I couldn’t see myself owning anything that could make a profit.
“Saturdays are just a leisurely day of prepping for tonight. When you first show up you have to empty the trash from the night before. I’ll help you out today but not always.”
I nodded.
We gathered the trash at the bar, the wait station, the dish pit, the salad station, and the cook’s trash. They were all filled to the brim reeking of tomato sauce, stale wine, and uneaten seafood.
“How’s business?” I asked.
He nodded slightly and strummed his beard. “Business is good. This is my baby. I care a lot about what goes out of the kitchen.”
We slid the over baring trashcans to the back stairway he had no problem sliding them individually down the stairs using only one hand as a guide so the trash wouldn’t fall out. I on the other hand had to use my whole body to make sure not only the trashcans would tip over but also my feet were still on the floor.
The boss shook his head. “Woman,” he said under his breath.
We pulled the trash cans one by one to the dumpsters. He had no trouble lifting his to dump the trash out, but he had to help me with mine. He shook his head. We went back inside.
He led me into the kitchen. “All right. I want you to sweep and swab the deck from last night. I want you to give it a woman’s touch.”
He went to the bar to thumb through the receipts from last night. I located the broom and dustpan, and decided not to empty the dirty mop water that reeked of whatever. I then picked up the mats on the floor, and threw them on one side of the kitchen.
I started sweeping near the stove around his cooking area, underneath the cutting board where the muscles, clams, and squid were located. I swept under the table where the pasta was kept. Moving on to the deep fryer where squid was transformed to calamari, which lay across from the salad and bean station. The anecdotal linoleum was caked in flour, pressed to the floor. I had to use the broom handle to scoop it up so it could be swept away into the dustpan. I did this for a while then grabbed the mop, which was drowning in a bucket of blackened gray stench. I found some bleach and poured some in to cover up the smell. I started at the cooking station, and moved closer to the dish pit adding more weight to shoe marks, tomato stains, and the permanent flour on the floor. I took a piece of cardboard, and placed on the floor of the cooking station, and the salad station, and covered them with the mat that was there before.
I picked it up, and shook it wildly. Water, and particles of saturated food flung itself all over my white t-shirt and arms (I was used to this). Next I swept up small puddles of water and food, and put it all in the trash that I had just put a new trash bag in. Then I mopped, place a piece of cardboard down, and the mat. The mat was the savior for dishwashers from their slippery souls, and slides.
The boss came back to the kitchen and looked around. “Did you clean?”
“Yes.”
“What are you talking about? You didn’t give a woman’s touch.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. At the time it seemed like a day’s work. This kitchen was a dive: it would never be clean.
“I cleaned it,” I insisted.
“You’re gonna learn how to work here.”
Work? All I wanted was a paycheck.
“Do you know anything about mussels?” he said as he brought a plastic burlap bag of them from a freezer near the sinks.
“No.”
“How about clams?”
“No.”
“How about squid?”
“No.”
He sighed, “Have you ever worked the line?”
“No.”
He shook his head like I was wasting his time.
“These are mussels,” he said in a kindergarten teacher’s tone of voice. He proceeds to cut the bag of mussels opened on top of the bag. He turned the bag upside down so the mussels could spill in the sink. Then he turns on the faucet. He picked one up.
“You have to rip out the beards.”
The beard of a mussel looks similar to dark navy blue bristles on an overly used toothbrush.
The boss had a long orange beard that he stroked in disbelief while I fumbled around with the mussels. He shook his head again.
He went back to the freezer and brought out a bag that looked similar to the last only this one was filled with clams. He placed the bag in a sink beside the one the mussels were in. He walked over to a shelf holding plastic buckets and brought one over to where I was standing.
“You want to soak them first. Then you scrub them.”
He opened the bag with the same knife, emptied the bag of clams in the bucket, and swung the faucet over to it and filled it. When the water reached the top: it flowed over the side. He started to stir the clams with his hand.
“These are my friends. Be gentle. If you’re not gentle they’ll get pissed off and they’ll die!”
I nodded once and said, “Okay.”
He stopped stirring the clams, and looked at me ripping the beards.
“Get your hands moving; you’re going to slow.”
He started walking to the stove.
“Lucky for you, you’re starting today. Saturdays are usually just a leisurely day of prepping.”
This was a bad idea, I thought too myself.
He lit the stove and yelled back. “I need pots of water on the back burners.”
I left the mussels and went to the stack of pots on the grill beside the stove. I grabbed three, and went back to the sink to fill them up. He unwrapped all the inserts at his station, as I a struggled filling the first pot. Individually I brought one over with both hands. The boss shook his head.
After the last pot, I went back to the sink, and slowly but surely finished the mussels. I stirred the clams in the plastic bucket gently, wondering what I should do next. I walked up to the boss still apprehensive about my first day.
“What should I do now?”
He looked at me like I had just asked him where the kitchen was.
“Why don’t you scrub the clams?”
“What do you mean?”
He shook his head and walked over where the clams were soaking. I followed.
“Get another camboro,” he demanded.
“Uh what?”
He pointed to the shelf where he got the last one for the clams.
“Oh you mean a plastic bucket.”
He shook his head. I brought one over.
“Okay. You take the scrubby and a clam, and you scrub the top, the bottom, and the sides. Make sure you scrub hard. They’re gritty.”
He went back over, and I started scrubbing.
“Be gentle with my friends!”
I scrubbed hard thinking about the depressing life of a clam. They stay in and only leave when they feel the need to get food, and they depend on a hard shell for survival. The life of a clam is being blind to the outside.
“Are you done?”
“Not yet!” I yelled back.
“Get your hands movin’!”
I scrubbed the clams as quickly as I could.
“Coming over!”
“What?” I yelled back ignorantly of his ways in the kitchen.
He came over with a big pot of boiling water containing pasta, and stared at me for a little while I just stood there confused.
“Get the strainer.”
The strainer was up over my left shoulder, hanging on a hook. I got it down and held it by the handles on the sides while the boss poured the contents of the pot in. The boiling water went through the holes of the strainer.
“Now rinse it cold,” my boss demanded.
“What?”
He turned on the faucet, dosing the burning pasta with cold water.
“If you don’t rinse it cold the pasta will over cook.” He muttered.
I turned off the faucet and redirected the water through the hose connected to the sink, and continued rinsing the pasta cold.
“When you’re done with that put it in a camboro, and bring it back over to me. Then put another water up on the stove.”
He started walking back to his station. “Hurry up with the clams!”
I brought over the pasta, and started filling the pot of water back up. First burning my hands on the metallic handle, forgetting that it had just come off the stove. I grabbed a towel and wrapped it around the handle so it would burn my hands. I brought that over to the stove with both hands, struggling. My boss looked at me and shook his head.
“Hold it with one hand like a man!”
I shrugged my shoulders and went back to the clams. The boss eventually came back to the sinks. He stood beside me staring at my scrubbing skills. Then he picked up another scrubby and started helping me with the clams.
“You’re taking to long.”
“Well you know it’s my first day.”
He looked at me and shook his head wondering what the hell was he thinking when he hired me.
“After this you just have the squid to do.”
“I’ll go ahead and ask you. How do you do that?”
This time he grinned. “It’s easy.”
He took a big bag out of the freezer, and placed it on a dish rack beside me.
“First you need a knife and a cutting board.”
He found the knife hanging on the side with others, and picked up a cutting board from the floor underneath the slicer beside the white room. He put the cutting board on the trashcan, and went out the swinging doors. Later he came back with a bucket of ice from the bar.
“You have to keep the squid iced so it will stay fresh.”
He placed the bucket of ice beside him near the cutting board, and picked up a squid.
“First you rip it out of the capsule. Take the capsule in your hand and with two fingers scoop out the scum and shit out of it.”
“It looks like snot,” I concluded.
“Whatever gets the snot out of it.”
“Next, you take the knife and you cut above the eyeball, and you rip the two tentacles off the body. They’re the longest legs. You throw away what you cut off and the two tentacles. It’s easy. Now you do one.”
I picked up one squid, sizing it up first from the capsule to the longest smoothes slippery legs. I ripped the body out of the capsule. With my two fingers went deeper through the scum making a squish squash sound as the load inside slowly came out. My fingers slightly stuck together with a sea life residue. I felt a slight tug on my gag reflex. I cut above the eye, and ripped off the tentacles and threw both body parts away.
My boss brought over a camboro, and put some ice in it that I got from the bar.
“Make sure you keep it fresh.”
I put the capsule and what was left of the legs in the bucket.
“Slice the capsule up.”
The boss took the capsule out of the bucket with its bottom half full with ice, and sliced the capsule in rectangles.
“You got it?” The Boss asked.
“Yup.”
I started to scrub the remaining clams again.
“After the clams, can I get a cigarette?” I asked.
The boss shook his head. “Yeah sure.”
He went back to the stove, and I picked up the last clam realizing I still had squid left to do. I scrubbed it well then put it in the bucket of clams that I already scrubbed. I wiped off my hands with my apron, then turned to my boss.
“Where should I smoke?”
“Do you remember the door we took out the trash? The stairwell.”
I nodded, and went out the swinging doors, and forcefully pushed opened the door to the stair well. I sat down on the steps, glad that I could finally sit down.
My first day could be summed up in my boss’ words (said to the only waitress on duty), when I came back into the kitchen.
“Yo boy punk kids don’t know how to do shit!”
This microcosmic passage develops your character and has potential to develop a theme or idea for the book as a whole. It reminds me a bit of the catalogue descriptions Hemingway mastered in a number of books: simple tasks described in almost minute detail (fishing, pouring wine, smoking). I’m not sure yet how this may fit into your book’s structure but I like the way it moves and the voice you use to tell it.