Night Shifts
During my second year of college I transferred to an upstate school to study Biology. Like many of my fellow students from working families, I started doing minimum wage shifts in campus dining services as a dishwasher and line server. I took late afternoon and early morning slots around my classes, but also tried to leave time for non-paid activities, such as apprenticing once a week at the radio station to get a coveted DJ shift, and eventually training and working as a Volunteer EMT-D on the local ambulance service. Looking back, and considering my grades, I probably should have left more time to study.
After a couple semesters bussing tables, shoveling meals on students’ plates and making sandwiches as “the Deli guy”, a friend hooked me up with red eye shifts at the late-night café, where students would go between study sessions for burgers, pizza and fries. The set up was simple, a flat top grill, a fryolator with two deep fry baskets, a countertop pizza oven, coolers and a cash register. I would be responsible for opening, stocking, preparing orders and ringing people up, and then cleaning up for close by 3 A.M., leaving 4-5 hours of sleep until I needed to wake up for classes. Ah, to be young, ambitious and full of cortisol!
It was my boss, though that really made the experience awesome. “Manny” was the night café manager and had a ton of pride in doing the job right. He was built like a fireplug, was always smiling and upbeat, and usually started and finished shifts with an espresso in hand. He probably taught me the most by example of work ethic and working style. He was among the hardest working folks I knew, always about efficiency and effectiveness, even if we were just running a greasy spoon for stoned and hungry students. At the start of the shift, he’d have me grill up a few dozen patties and prepare, wrap and stack the sandwiches. Then we’d run a few pizzas through the treadmill on the little pizza oven, the kind that always leaves some nasty acrid burnt crust on the ends. Fries were easy, we’d just do them in batches throughout the night, salt them and leave them in the warmer. We’d always be stocked up and ready for the post-dinner rush and could smoothly ring up and check out the first few waves of customers. When things slowed down, we could prep more burgers and pizza. We also did other greasy spoon standards, like buffalo wings, jalapeno poppers and mozzarella sticks. It was probably these many shifts coming home smelling like fryolator oil that later inspired me to start working at a local Food co-op and sell healthier fare.
The work was all pretty smooth for me, but where I had some challenges was the clean-up and breakdown at the end of the shift. We closed up around 2 A.M. and I was usually pretty beat, and I would do a half-assed job of squeegeeing all the congealed grease off the flat top into the grease trap, and my mopping skills were barely passable. Manny took it on himself to not write me up or fire me, but to stop what he was doing, usually inventorying, ordering and restocking, and come over to correct my techniques, particularly with mopping, where I would just be lightly dabbing the floors. He’d take the mop, shaking his head and tell me, “Not this, do it like this,” and he would lean into it with short, quick swings of the mop to make sure we got all the grime and crud off the floors, so tomorrow’s customers wouldn’t wipe out when they walked in. Likewise for wiping down counters and tables and squeegeeing the flat top grease, just a little focus and effort to get the work done efficiently.
I eventually figured it all out to Manny’s approval and the shifts were actually pretty fun, even when crazy busy during finals weeks or after I had done an overnight shift as an EMT the night before. Manny turned out to be super easy going, but was really strict about one thing, that closing time was closing time. If we had laggards and loiterers at 2 A.M., he would start blasting Gypsy Kings at full volume over the speakers. I still twitch when I hear Bombaleo. I had a different trick. I’d toss a few pickled jalapenos directly onto the flat top and turn on the vent, and as a biology nerd I knew that the capsaicin would aerosolize and we’d give the slowpokes a very mild, late-night pepper spray wake-up call.
We’d occasionally shoot the shit during shifts. Manny was married, which didn’t stop him from flirting with many of our younger female customers, and he was from a war-torn country in Central America. He was not able to go back, for political reasons it seemed. Manny also wasn’t just the night café manager, he was also a full-time graduate student. He was working 5 shifts a week and then studying engineering during the day. So, not only could he work circles around me, but he was probably a lot smarter too.
One time I asked Manny why he couldn’t go back to his home country, since he talked about it occasionally and seemed to really miss it. He had been in the army, on the losing side in the civil war and the other party was now in charge, which wouldn’t bode well for him. He felt fortunate to have been accepted to study at the university and he was making the most of the opportunity. Manny kept his politics to himself, but his story hit home for me.
Manny had learned to work hard and smart as a young revolutionary, committing his mind and energy to a future where everyone in his country could share in the bounty they created. Hearing it through his words gave me a lot more color into why people struggled, but also how they carried that energy forward when things didn’t go their way. Here he was, ringing up students, making chicken wings and studying his ass off in the country that helped put down his revolution. Once in a while, towards the end of the shift when he was recording inventory and shrink numbers, he’d allow me to fry up one last pile of burgers and chicken sandwiches. I’d take them back to my friends and roommates, a feeling of triumph as I’d walk into the dorms stinking like the grease pit, with a sack of late-night sustenance for the stoned and studious, who’d greet me with a cheer as I shared in the bounty too.
