my part-time past #4
my next gig was in ann arbor in the fall of 1993. me and 4 of my closest friends had procured a 5 bedroom apartment in Kerrytown, which was way the hell off campus, but it was great. down the street was zingerman's, the city's coolest deli. it's where all of the jewish students (and non-jewish, too) took their families when they came into town. they had fresh baked bread, great cheeses and sauces, and sandwiches that would blow your socks off. they also had a building next door which was their coffee shop.
annette got a job in coffee shop. she usually closed so i would go and hang out and bug her and her coworkers while i studied or just watching people or ate my weight's worth of Gemini Rocks the House (fresh mozzarella, tomatoes, and basil on toasted farm bread). annette would eat chocolate covered espresso beans and make lattes for customers. it seemed like the perfect college job. she told me that they needed help in the mornings and i should apply. so i did.
jennifer was the morning manager. i would come into work at 5:30am and help set up and work until 3pm. yeah, that sucked. for a college student, 5:30 is bed time, not morning. i would stumble down the cobbled street before sunrise, blearily make iced tea and coffee, set up the pastry case, and wait for the first customers. and they would come. locals who got up that time every day to get their coffee or cappuccino. during the week wasn't so bad, but it was the weekends that killed me. so many people. and i would get one 20 break for lunch, which i'm pretty sure is illegal, but i got free sandwiches, so who cares.
i learned the ways of the espresso machine. it was all manual. burned milk if you didn't pay attention. the drinks didn't have descriptive names, which made it a little harder. had to remember drinks like "sarah's green grasshopper," which i think was a peppermint hot cocoa. i learned how to make a cappuccino and a latte. how to tell if you were burning the milk by the sound of the steam. and by the smell. barf.
it was also my first foray into the gay community. anthony and shelly were both gay. shelly was older than us, like 27, had gone to eastern or UM for art and now work at zingerman's full time. anthony was also older, but only by a couple of years. he grew up in a town next to the one i grew up in, so we would laugh about how small everything there was. anthony and annette were good friends, so i saw him a lot. he was so funny, not very tall, bleach blond hair, huge brown eyes, would sway when he talked to you.
shelly lived and breathed zingerman's. they wanted me to work more hours, but i couldn't with my class schedule. when finals came up, they scheduled me during a studio session that i needed before my class was over. in art, you didn't study, you made stuff, you had projects, that could take days to complete. you also fought for computers and studio time, so every minuted counted. i tried to find someone to work for me, but to no avail. i called jennifer up to tell her that i wasn't going to be coming in and she said, "i guess you worked your last day." i guess i had. it was december 1993. it had been two months since i started.
a few months later, jennifer asked annette if i wanted to come back. i guess she told annette that i was a good worker and that she missed me. that kind of vilified my firing, but i still didn't come back.
i don't think i got another job for the remainder of the school year.
annette got a job in coffee shop. she usually closed so i would go and hang out and bug her and her coworkers while i studied or just watching people or ate my weight's worth of Gemini Rocks the House (fresh mozzarella, tomatoes, and basil on toasted farm bread). annette would eat chocolate covered espresso beans and make lattes for customers. it seemed like the perfect college job. she told me that they needed help in the mornings and i should apply. so i did.
jennifer was the morning manager. i would come into work at 5:30am and help set up and work until 3pm. yeah, that sucked. for a college student, 5:30 is bed time, not morning. i would stumble down the cobbled street before sunrise, blearily make iced tea and coffee, set up the pastry case, and wait for the first customers. and they would come. locals who got up that time every day to get their coffee or cappuccino. during the week wasn't so bad, but it was the weekends that killed me. so many people. and i would get one 20 break for lunch, which i'm pretty sure is illegal, but i got free sandwiches, so who cares.
i learned the ways of the espresso machine. it was all manual. burned milk if you didn't pay attention. the drinks didn't have descriptive names, which made it a little harder. had to remember drinks like "sarah's green grasshopper," which i think was a peppermint hot cocoa. i learned how to make a cappuccino and a latte. how to tell if you were burning the milk by the sound of the steam. and by the smell. barf.
it was also my first foray into the gay community. anthony and shelly were both gay. shelly was older than us, like 27, had gone to eastern or UM for art and now work at zingerman's full time. anthony was also older, but only by a couple of years. he grew up in a town next to the one i grew up in, so we would laugh about how small everything there was. anthony and annette were good friends, so i saw him a lot. he was so funny, not very tall, bleach blond hair, huge brown eyes, would sway when he talked to you.
shelly lived and breathed zingerman's. they wanted me to work more hours, but i couldn't with my class schedule. when finals came up, they scheduled me during a studio session that i needed before my class was over. in art, you didn't study, you made stuff, you had projects, that could take days to complete. you also fought for computers and studio time, so every minuted counted. i tried to find someone to work for me, but to no avail. i called jennifer up to tell her that i wasn't going to be coming in and she said, "i guess you worked your last day." i guess i had. it was december 1993. it had been two months since i started.
a few months later, jennifer asked annette if i wanted to come back. i guess she told annette that i was a good worker and that she missed me. that kind of vilified my firing, but i still didn't come back.
i don't think i got another job for the remainder of the school year.
posted by mikraas at 9:42 PM
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