Food Avenue

by Harry Leeds

“Can you list five of your weaknesses?”

I sniff my own poo. I fidget when I get bored and can’t control it, did you notice? I am overly sensitive. I am a sucker for Pushkin. I can’t think of a fifth one off the top of my head.

“Well, I don’t really know,” I say.

“Please list your weaknesses,” he says.

“Well, I guess sometimes I get so wrapped up in something, and work too hard on it, I guess.” I pause.

“And?”

His beard is clearly grown long to cover up his double chin. I feel like if I’d met him in a bar maybe we’d get along okay.

“I think sometimes I smell. No really, I smell…not good.”

He scribbles something down. I can’t wait for my strengths.

I get the job anyway.

No matter how big the corporation, it seems like everyone has a boss. There’s a CEO and a chairman of the board, and they have to act like they have to answer to the stockholders. But no, if you have that much money and that much power, you can always sell everything you’ve got and turn your back on the world. Me, I work at the Pizza Hut in Target.

It’s the first day. You can take the store out of the warehouse, but you can’t take the warehouse out of the store. The ceilings in Target are tall and the air ducts are exposed. Someone spent a lot of money to find out that tall ceilings make people want to shop.

I try to feel my way around the kitchen. There’s a 10-foot-long toaster oven, tons of Styrofoam cups and five racks full of frozen dough. There is nothing in the freezer but frozen cookies. There are no ranges, no ovens, no utensils, no plates and only one knife. It’s dull. John comes up to me.

“Hey Harry, this is Steve, he’s the team leader of Food Avenue,” John tells me.

“You mean he’s my boss?” I ask. Yes, okay, hi Steve. Yeah Steve, I really look forward to working with you, too. Apparently Steve’s career at Carvel Ice Cream was cut short so he could be my boss here. Then Denise comes up. Her hair and makeup are overdone to suggest that she knows she’s just turned 30 and is frightened of 40. Real people don’t smile like that.

“Hey Harry! I’m Denise. This is the supervisor of Food Avenue, Steve.” I know. “I’m sure his experience working at Carvel will come in handy. He’ll do a great job of leading your fellow Team Members!” Oh, you mean the other workers.

Then Dan comes.

“Hey Harry! I’m Dan! Have you met Steve and Denise? Sorry, we’re a little short-staffed, so it’ll be just you and Steve working today. I promise we’ll get some more people soon.” Thanks Dan.

We stand around for five minutes and I don’t touch anything. This very first shift is for training. “So,” I ask, “What do I do?” Steve explains that the full-time staff makes the pizza and mans the counter, but it’s just him and me today, so I’ll be doing the dishes. Yes, I know, rinse, soak, sanitize, I know how to run a kitchen. But it’s not that simple. There are hundreds of pizza pans that need to be washed, and to make sure the pizzas slide out when they’re done they need to be scrubbed thoroughly. The pans also have a tendency to stick together, so often that you have to smack them hard against the counter so they’ll fall apart. Because of space limitations, they have to be stacked a dozen high in the sink, then broken up so they can be soaked, then sanitized and flash dried. These two pans are stuck together really hard, and I can’t get them apart. I bang and I bang and then stick my nail and half of it snaps right off. Blood runs into the sanitizer. At least it won’t get infected.

“Hey Steve, do we have any Band-Aids?” He tells me to be more careful. He tells me that he needs to man the front. I explain that a register isn’t hard to use, I’ll figure it out. He says it’s really complicated. I tell him I really need a Band-Aid. Steve explains that I can’t get one myself because Target is worried I’ll steal them all, so he has to get them. There is a long line waiting for pizza, and I assure Steve that I can handle it. Steve doesn’t remind me to wear gloves when I serve food or to say good afternoon, but I’m a skilled worker so I do it anyway. The blood doesn’t show up against the tomato sauce, and nobody seems to notice. Steve comes back 15 minutes later and says he couldn’t find a Band-Aid, but the bleeding has mostly stopped. It’s back to doing dishes, and the soap doesn’t burn too bad.

“Hey, Harry! How was your first week?” One of my bosses says, I’m not sure which one. Oh wait, it’s a girl, it must be Denise.

“Hey Denise, you still owe me that coffee,” says Steve.

“Yeah, so anyway, Harry, we’re really sorry but we’re really short-staffed still, so we need you to come in 20 hours this week, and we still need you to keep doing dishes. We’ll give you something better to do soon, in the meantime you’re getting lots of experience, you know, doing dishes.”

I can’t come in any more hours, I have two other jobs. She tells me we’ll work something out, and leaves.

“So Harry, how’s your finger? Great, so, you know a kitchen is a dangerous place. Heck, when I was young I cut right through my finger. We don’t want any accidents…” I can tell he’s practiced this. The one knife we have is dull, and there are no cutting boards. Three days ago we received a shipment of hot dog buns without slits, and I had to go through and cut them. The knife we have wasn’t serrated, and I squished the buns more than split them in two. In the process, I cut my finger again.

“I get it, Steve,” I say.

“Well I just don’t want you to get hurt.”

You don’t want a lawsuit. It’s good workplace etiquette to equivocate what you really want to say. But everything we mean to say is implicit, so why do we even bother?

“Steve, I get it. I’ll be careful. You have more important things to worry about, right? [So get off my back].”

He agreed. I did some more dishes.

To make the time pass, I have to sing songs in my head. In my head I have perfect pitch and the harmony is always just right. Sometimes I get confused and start to play the bridge where the third verse should be, and sometimes I forget the words to the bridge, so I just hum along and add words like “baby” where it seems appropriate.

Dan comes in. “Hey Harry! We finally found someone to relieve you. This is José, we brought him in from White Plains, he can help you out.”

“Hi José,” I say.

José just stares at me. I’m not sure whether he understands English or not. I extend my hand, but his blank stare endures, and it is clear that I’m not going to get him to shake.

Steve says that with the new relief he needs to do administrative things, so José has to take over pizza-making and manning the counter (even though he doesn’t speak English, although sometimes neither do the “guests”) and I’m stuck doing the dishes again.

At Food Avenue, it seems like we’re always running out of things. We run out of hot dog buns or hot dogs (but never both), and we don’t even make the French Fries that appear on the menu. We have one item under a dollar, and it’s popcorn. We are constantly making more of that. Guests complain that popcorn isn’t stacked high enough. We run out of soda and slushy constantly, and when someone spills their drink, I have to clean the sticky residue off the carpet with a wet rag. Someone standing nearby watches me scrub the floor on my hands and knees, smiles, and sips his soda. It’s okay, though, because I’m getting paid.

“Steve,” I say. “Where have you been all day? I’ve been here for five hours, and—”

“Administrative things,” he tells me. “I was here cleaning the kitchen for two hours this morning because whoever was here last night didn’t clean up properly.”

“I was just wondering when I could get off dish duty. I mean, I know how to cook and—”

“Well we’ll see. It’s just that you aren’t careful around the kitchen.”

“Well I can’t see myself doing just dishes here for much longer.”

He pauses for a second and says, “Okay, next week, I’ll have Conrad show you how to make pizzas. How does that sound? Now we need you to keep doing those dishes!”

“Well, I was also wondering if I could get some gloves to do dishes with, my skin is like paper,” I say, and show him. He says he’ll get on it.

I asked Steve if I could start making the pizzas (which involves placing them on a conveyor belt toaster) but today we’re up for review, and I’m just so good at cleaning the dishes. We’re so short-staffed, though, that I’ve been running to work the counter when it gets busy, and then running back to the sink. I figured out how to work the register myself. Steve, of course, is absent right before the review, and comes in with Dan.

“So, Dan, as you know, we sold more pizzas last week than any other Target in the nation!” Steve says. “Do you want a coffee or something.”

“No, Steve, it’s okay. Say Harry, how’re you doing?”

“[Why do you even ask when you know I’m just going to say] you know, just doing lots of dishes…”

Steven taps me on the back while Dan is distracted and tells me to shelve the drinks. In retail terms, “shelving” means making the selection look pristine by bringing all the Gatorade bottles in the back of the refrigerator up to the front. This is supposed to give the impression that Target never runs out of anything.

I run to the storage room to get a case of Gatorade, and hop to the other side of the counter where I have to push through three people to reach the drink case. Yes, it looks a little messy, but we’re busy, what do you expect? Shouldn’t the lack of a product mean it’s so popular that we couldn’t restock it in time? I have to fight through the pizza line to get to the cooler, and I do the best job I can. When I get back Steve says, “Oh, did you count the number of bottles there before you stocked it? We need to make sure nobody is stealing them.”

“No, I’ll do it . . . ”

“Come on, Harry! Anyway, there’s a pile of dishes.” Steve turns around and smirks towards Dan.

Drew, who I know from school, comes up to buy pizza and asks how I am.

“I’m pretty, happy, you know, red’s my color,” I tell him and he laughs. He works in the electronics section. He says things are going pretty well over there. He’s saved up enough money to buy a PSP. With his 10 percent employee discount, it’s only $290. He scares me because he still shamelessly plays Magic cards, but maybe we have more in common than I think.

I turn around and I go back to dishes. Conrad’s talking about his car.

“This guy sold me a lemon engine! Bullshit. I’ve known him forever and right on the middle of the highway it blows. Lucky I didn’t get killed. Shit, I don’t have any insurance, either,” Conrad says and shakes his head. “My mom warned me about that guy.”

“So, I mean, how are you going to afford a new engine?” I ask.

“What, you think I’m poor just because I’m black?” asks Conrad. No, that’s not it. Don’t do this Conrad; don’t be that guy.

“I think you’re poor because you work at Target,” I say, and think for a second. “You think just because I’m white it means I don’t know what poor people look like?”

“All right, I get it,” he says. “Now here’s how to put on the pepperoni.” At the end of the day, they weigh the bag of pepperoni to see if you’ve been eating them. If it’s under a certain weight, you go up for review. The regulation is an average of seven slices per pie.

To make a pizza, you have to spray the empty pans with an industrial can that only says oil, then throw on some rock-hard frozen dough. The dough then rises overnight in the pan. There is a special tool to punch down the center, giving an illusion of crust. The material is so artificial, of course, that no true crust would ever form. Then you add regulation amounts of sauce, cheese and toppings, and shove the pizzas back into the fridge until they’re ready to cook. The oven is that 10-foot-long toaster with a conveyor belt that is designed to move a pizza through in just enough time to cook. This is how Pizza Hut Express makes all the food. The breadsticks and the chicken sandwiches are all processed so that they take the same amount of time in the one giant toaster.

Donald, who is about 70 and has come out of retirement because he is bored, tells us he doesn’t trust anyone. His kids, he says, don’t call him even though he put them through college on a working-class wage. Nobody appreciates him. He says that the other day he saw a man sprawled out on the sidewalk with blood running from his head. He said that he just ignored him. If he tried to help and the guy survived, he could get sued for somehow making it worse. If the guy died, he could get sued for killing him.

“Well,” I say, “there is a law, the Good Samaritan law, at least in New York State you can’t be tried for attempting to save someone’s life in reasonable terms.”

“Bah,” says Donald.

“No, he’s right. You can’t be sued for that,” says Conrad. “I’m an EMT, I’m sure of it.”

But Donald insists we are just kids and don’t know what we’re talking about. Maybe there’s a reason Donald’s kids don’t call him, and maybe there’s a reason he’s working at the Target Pizza Hut. Me, I need the money.

It’s 10 o’clock at night. Because of labor laws regarding minors, all staff under 18 must leave the building by 9:45. I have homework to do. Conrad and Donald’s shift ended at 9:30 and they left us to do all the clean up. Steve has been gone all day, and everything is filthy with pizza sauce. A quiet kid named Nick is working with me. He doesn’t like to talk to me. We know there are clean-up procedures we are supposed to follow and doors we are supposed to lock, but nobody ever told us what to do, and nobody gave us any keys. We are afraid to just leave the kitchen as it is, as we might be reprimanded for not cleaning up properly. Nick says he needs to go home. I tell him I’m not going to be left here alone. We clean up as best we can until 11, and don’t lock up because we can’t. There’s nobody to ask for help. All the administrators are gone for the day, it’s just me and Nick and the overnight warehouse workers.

When we’re all ready to go, I see that Nick begins to walk out into the parking lot. He lights a cigarette as he goes and sulks. I offer him a ride, and he just nods and climbs in. I begin to speak, maybe to ask him about his life, but as soon as I vibrate my vocal chords he looks the other way, like he’s embarrassed of himself or me and I can’t tell which one. It’s late and the only sounds outside are barking dogs and crying babies. I drop him off at a nice apartment building. He doesn’t say thank you and slams the door. He makes his way down the block to the shitty apartment building we passed a minute ago.

“Look at this! We’ve sold more pizzas this past weekend than any other Target Pizza Hut for the second week running!” Steve shows us all a sheet with some numbers on it.

“I feel like crap,” I say. Steve says I should be proud. “Where are those gloves?” I ask. Steve says that he was unable to get them for me. I buy them myself, but we’re still understaffed so I have to work the register and wash the dishes. It takes too long to rip off those rubber gloves when you’re covered in sanitizer but need to serve a hot dog.

Steve tells me that somebody didn’t clean up last night, and I told him that Nick and I were left to do it ourselves and didn’t know the procedure, and that he shouldn’t blame Donald. He says that Donald shouldn’t have left so early, that this isn’t the first time. Steve says he’s going to fire him.

Then he asks me to cut open some hot dog buns, but tells me to be really careful when I do it. “If you’re so [fucking] worried about my cutting myself, why don’t you [fucking] do it your [goddamned] self [you asshole]?” I say.

Steve doesn’t listen, because Denise passes by and he goes running after her, pretending that he has something important to ask. She’s too smart, though, and keeps walking as though she has somewhere to be.

I leave my post at the sink and head right for Human Resources. The HR director, who is the most gentle person working at Target, tells me that they’re really short-staffed and that I should stick around for a bit longer. She says I should tough it out, that they are getting more staff soon and that it’s going to be okay. This woman is so maternal that I take for granted that what she says is true and go back to work.

“What the hell happened to your hands?” the dermatologist asks, as she grabs my hand. I went to her so that she could take a look at my acne, but she grabbed my hands right away.

“I work as a dishwasher. Well, not actually, but that’s what I do most of the time,” I tell her.

She explains that my hands are completely cut up from being soaked in water, and that I must wear gloves or I’m going to have scars all over my hands. I tell her that I’ll wear gloves from now on.

When I get up off the table I collapse on the floor. We take off my shoes and my white socks have big red splotches. Yes, my foot is bleeding. My calluses have grown so thick from standing that when they crack, they crack right down to the flesh. My dermatologist says that my pumice stone isn’t working because the bottom of my foot is too hard. The pumice stone is probably getting shaped by my foot, not the other way around.

What I need, says my dermatologist, is this industrial-strength designer wrinkle cream by Merda. I need to rub it on my foot, and after two weeks I can just peel the calluses off. My dermatologist also happens to do Merda’s commercials. She says I can buy what I need at Target.

I buy a new chair, because my back is killing me. I buy shampoo, hot chocolate, sunflower seeds, T-shirts and anything my mom asks me to bring home. I buy gas and car insurance so that I can get to work. I buy Advil because my head is killing me. I tried running down to the Super A&P to get Advil once on my break (because I didn’t want to buy it at Target), but I looked ridiculous wearing my red Target T-shirt, black apron and name tag. I leaned against the giant red balls that decorate the entrance in order to catch my breath and thought of how tacky my life was. Now I keep Advil in my pocket because I don’t have time to get it from the back room. The breaks at Target are 15 minutes and it’s all you have for lunch. Nobody can get food that fast; nobody can eat that fast. One time I bought a frozen Stouffer’s dinner from Target, cooked it, ate it and went back to work—and Steve told me I took too long. Instead, I’ve been buying those shitty mini-pizzas. They’re too disgusting to finish.

This weekend I’m going to go out to a movie. This weekend maybe I’ll smoke pot or whatever normal people do to relax. In order to do any of this I need money, so I drive to an ATM after work. I check my balance, and I find that I am broke. I don’t have enough money for pot and I don’t have enough money to buy a movie ticket and I’m already revolted by popcorn. All the money I earned at Target, I spent at Target.

Holy shit, I’m a sharecropper.

* * *

“What’s good to eat here?” a guest asks.

I think for a second. “Nothing, nothing’s good.”

“Huh?”

“Get out of here while you still can,” I say forcefully. He nods, he understands, and he turns away from the line. Nick looks at me like I’m stupid. Today is different though, because today I plan on quitting.

Somewhere off in the distance, Denise is talking to Steve. I can see her telling him off. He comes up to me.

“Hey Harry, I heard you’re quitting, I was just wondering if it was something I did, or some way we can keep you on. I’m sorry you’ve been stuck with dishes, we promise we won’t be understaffed for much longer…” Steve says, but it’s all broken-up-half-sung bridges to me. The world inside my head doesn’t need to hear this.

“Steve. I’m sorry. Obviously Target Pizza Hut is not the place for me to work,” I tell him.

“Well if you had problems you should have gone to someone!” he says before walking away. I could yell back that there is no union, that I didn’t get overtime or benefits, but it’s not even worth it. How does everyone know I’m going to quit today anyway?

Then Denise walks up to me.

“Hey Harry! How’s it going? It seems you were thinking of quitting today. If there’s anything we could do to help you stay—”

“No, there’s nothing you could have done,” I lie. Do they really need me here that badly?

Then Dan comes up to me.

“Hey Harry! I heard you were thinking of quitting. If there is anything we could do to help you…”

“Dan? Okay. I’m not going to wash [your fucking] dishes anymore. You say that you’re hiring more staff, but people are just quitting [because this job fucking sucks]. I can’t do it anymore,” I tell him.

He seems shocked, like nobody has ever challenged his logic before. He turns around. I go straight for the Human Resources department. Nobody is there and I wait. Finally, the head of HR walks into her office. I follow her, and close the door behind me.

“Okay, Janet, what do I have to sign to quit this place?”

“What do you mean?” she asks.

“Well, [you seem like you may be a nice person, so I’m going to be nice to you] I can’t work here for a single second longer,” I tell her. She slumps in her chair.

“So, was school just getting in the way too much?” she asks.

“Yeah, that’s it.”

She shows me the paper I need to sign and I eagerly do so. She assures me I’ll receive my last paycheck. On the way out the door she says, “Say, Harry, there wasn’t anything we could have done better, was there? Or perhaps someone that didn’t treat you well. Maybe Steve?” She picks up a clipboard, and is ready to write something down. They don’t care that I’m quitting, they just want someone to blame. She’s just being paid to act nice. Would it do any good if I told them something?

By the time she can expect an answer, I’m already out the door.