To Sum it Up
I'm in a rather buoyant mood despite rather oppressive weather.
That's a lie. The weather is not oppressive, though it is cloudy and damp. The weather does not feel oppressive. It feels light and green and bouncy and full of life. The earth is spongy and springy and fertile and ready for change. In fact, maybe it's responsible for my buoyancy.
Point #1: This summer, I will be working as an editorial intern at Pearson Prentice Hall in downtown Boston. My hours will be 9 - 5, Mond. - Fri., May 30 - Aug. 11. The times when I am not working are the times when I want to see you and have adventures.
Point #2: I cannot wait to read for pleasure again. I intend to devote a good hour today to planning a summer reading list. I can do this because I have only one final left (Econ), and it is not until Friday.
Point #3: I'm going to miss Brown. My friends here. I can't believe everyone is leaving.
Point #4: Here are the three products of my Creative Non-Fiction class, for the bored and procrastinating among you:
Behind the Line
It’s different in the summer, when the rushes last four hours and the floor grows slick with melted ice cream, the counter grimy with sprinkles, and we’re struggling to stay on our feet, stay stocked, stay alert. Then, work is a battle between employee and customer. We’re on the defensive, trying to push that line of hungry consumers out the door as fast as possible - though their supply of infantry seems endless. During a rush, we don’t see the customers as people; we’re too concerned about the depleting supply of mint chip and splatter of hot fudge on the candy counter to look them in the eye. Like soldiers, we must dehumanize the adversary.
But when the weather is cooler, employees at J.P. Licks, Newton’s favorite local ice cream store, serve only a handful of customers in an hour. Two or three of us cover an entire shift, and we have ample time to lounge in the back room and laugh at obnoxious customers or sit on top of the dip-ins - ice-cream-slang for the monstrous freezers beneath the counter into which we must literally dip our bodies to reach the ice cream. The one room that comprises the retail area is deeply rectangular, with the serving area obscured by a long, high redwood counter running down one side, a space for the line to form down the other, and six stools for customers at the front near the windows. The parts of the walls not covered with bright, chalkboard-style menus are painted white with giant black cow spots. Smells of sugar and chocolate and coffee and sanitizer pervade the place; the hum and occasional roar of freezers obscures the Oldies to which we’re forced to tune the radio. The whole store is tiny enough that we can see a customer entering from any position.
When a customer pushes open the glass door, triggering an automatic “beep-beep” from the alarm system, our reactions depend partly on our mood at the moment - whether we were joking around, solving crossword puzzles, or railing against our lazy manager - and partly on the customer. Let’s say it is Giovanna, a smiling elderly woman who comes in at noon every day. I’ve been working at the store the longest and Giovanna knows it, so when she comes in she heads straight for me and we exchange hellos. She is barely tall enough to see over the counter.
What can I get for you today?
I hitch up a smile without too much difficulty because Giovanna is pleasant and always leaves a tip.
“I’ll have a medium cup of the coffee chip low-fat hard yogurt,” she says, temples creasing with happy wrinkles. I knew exactly what she would order; in fact, I was moving to the yogurt dip-in before she started speaking, but I still thought it was polite to ask.
“Of course,” I say, reaching for an eight-ounce cup emblazoned with our logo, a smiling pink and black cow’s head.
“I’m guessing you’re not going to be too busy today, with this weather,” Giovanna says as I scoop the caramel-colored confection from its bucket. The sliver of sky I can see from the window is mushroom gray, foreboding rain or even snow.
“You’re actually our first customer of the day,” I tell her.
She laughs. “It’s just the addicts like me who want ice cream today.”
If she is right, then the number of ice cream “addicts” willing to brave the New England cold never ceases to surprise me. Some I have come to expect. Sean, who is losing his hearing and walks with a cane, always asks for a tiny dollop of chocolate ice cream on top of his cup of frozen yogurt. He is my favorite customer. Barbara has crazy curly blonde hair and crazy thick round glasses and a son in college she loves to tell us about. We speculate that she must skip lunch entirely to polish off a large bowl of ice cream every day and still stay so thin. Angie, the crossing guard at Bowen Elementary school a few blocks away, comes for our coffee, which she claims is better than what they serve at Starbucks. These regulars accept the oddity of their eating habits and hide their insecurity behind jokes and big tips for the employees so we don’t judge them. It works: tips would be scarce in the winter without their contribution.
It’s the guilty first-timers succumbing to their craving who look really nervous when they walk in the door. The worst are the mothers, the wealthy, well-dressed, made-up mothers picking up their young children from school. They act as though they want to take their kids out for a special treat, but I think they make the trip because they want to indulge themselves. It takes the mother a matter of seconds to order a kiddie-sized cup of chocolate or vanilla ice cream for her child, but she spends several minutes choosing her own dessert.
What can I get for you today?
One middle-aged mother, who comes in a few times in the course of a month, tastes every flavor of nonfat soft-serve frozen yogurt before making her decision. (The wealthy mothers never order ice cream for themselves.) She stares at the menu, mouth agape, for several seconds before requesting a taste of the peanut butter soft-serve. She grasps the sample, which we serve in a tiny paper cup, with her manicured thumb and forefinger, eyes it closely -though she never makes direct eye contact with me- takes a delicate lick from the edge, and then slurps down the whole thing, cleaning the cup with her tongue. Her lipstick leaves a crimson stain on the rim. After several more tastes, she has created a small mountain of used cups on the counter for me to clear, though a bucket clearly labeled “trash” sits just inches away. And she always orders vanilla.
Indeed, most mothers order the vanilla or coffee soft-serve - they are the only flavors that come in sugar-free. At a whopping 10 calories per ounce, they contain little more than skim milk and air. Few women between the ages of 14 and 60 will order anything else: as I ask them what they would like, I watch their eyes wander from the menu to the yogurt machines behind me.
What can I get for you today?
I ask a fit, attractive young woman in a track suit with headphones dangling around her neck.
“Mmm, chocolate,” she replies. I immediately categorize her as flaky; the attentive customers know they need to provide more information.
“Would you like a cup or cone?”
“Cup.”
“What size?”
“Kiddie. And make it on the small side.”
“Sure. Any toppings on that?”
“Oh, no. No toppings.”
“And will that be ice cream or yogurt?”
“Oh, I’m sorry! The yogurt, fat free.”
I don’t know why I bothered to ask.
I do always ask, but first I make guesses - and they are correct, more often than not. One afternoon, I’m working a shift with Jordy, who is tall and poorly shaven and has longish stringy red hair and a soft beer belly. He brings books like On the Road to work but never gets any reading done, and he hits on all the female employees and all the female customers too. Then he messes up their orders and they’ve got to grab napkins to keep hot fudge from dripping on their clothes. Today he’s filling the yogurt machines while I restock the candy counter. I hear the beep-beep of the alarm and look up to see a young Indian woman wearing a traditional sari push a baby carriage towards the counter.
What can I get for you today?
Before the woman can respond, Jordy leans close to my ear as he passes behind me.
“Rum and raisins, of course,” he whispers, mimicking a South Asian accent. I try to freeze the expression on my face to hide my embarrassment from the young woman. A moment later, she orders a small cup of rum raisin.
What bothers me most is that I, too, was expecting her to order rum raisin or pistachio, the two flavors preferred overwhelmingly by Indian customers. I grew up in a militantly politically correct environment, learning never to generalize based on race. Stereotyping the dessert choices of rich mothers never seemed quite as egregious as stereotyping those of Indians. But the data was right in front of me; I liked any method of categorizing my customers to guess what they would order - and being right. It alleviated the mindlessness of the job. After months of observation, I learned that East Asian customers usually order strawberry or coconut almond chip, while black customers prefer maple butter walnut, rum raisin, or coffee.
Age, however, always trumps ethnicity in ordering decisions. When their parents let them choose, little children of any color love to try sweet flavors like cake batter and black raspberry, coated with rainbow sprinkles. They want cones, not cups, but I always give them a cup on the side just in case the scoop starts to topple. As I hand kids their ice cream, I remember the sweet sticky cones of my own childhood, remember trying to lick up all the drips before they ran down my arms, and for a moment my smile isn’t so forced. But the moment passes quickly. Next in line. A teenage boy almost inevitably orders a frappe - the New England version of a milkshake - in chocolate, Oreo, coffee, or cookie dough. If his friends are listening, he’ll order it Extra Thick, adding 50 cents and an additional scoop of ice cream. With the boys, it’s always a contest to see who can order the biggest, most extravagant dessert. It’s the opposite with girls: they want to have the smallest cup of all their friends.
What can I get for you today?
It’s a mild April evening and the line is longer than it has been all winter. In a couple of weeks, the flowers and sun will bring in serious crowds and I won’t have time to think about the individual people whose ice cream I scoop. My customer tonight is a cheerful high school girl with a bouncy blonde ponytail; she cuts short her conversation with her friend to order.
“Ooh, I’ll have a small cup of mint chip low fat hard yogurt with chocolate sprinkles,” she says. She’s so excited that when I hand her the cup, she takes a bite right off the top, not even waiting to get a spoon.
“And for you, Miss?” I say, turning to her friend, who is decidedly more attractive and less bouncy.
“I’ll just have a kiddie cup of the vanilla nonfat soft-serve,” she says. The mint chip girl’s face falls.
“That’s all?” she says. “But you hardly ate anything at dinner - you said you were saving room for ice cream.”
“I guess I’m just not hungry tonight,” replies vanilla girl. Mint chip girl sets her cup down on the counter, all enthusiasm for her confection gone. Jaw clenched, I fill a kiddie cup with vanilla yogurt. I let the snowy substance flow above the rim, piping it up until the swirl I have created far exceeds the regulation three ounces. I hand it to vanilla girl with some permutation of a smile.
Have a nice evening.
shit gotta go i'll add the rest later!
That's a lie. The weather is not oppressive, though it is cloudy and damp. The weather does not feel oppressive. It feels light and green and bouncy and full of life. The earth is spongy and springy and fertile and ready for change. In fact, maybe it's responsible for my buoyancy.
Point #1: This summer, I will be working as an editorial intern at Pearson Prentice Hall in downtown Boston. My hours will be 9 - 5, Mond. - Fri., May 30 - Aug. 11. The times when I am not working are the times when I want to see you and have adventures.
Point #2: I cannot wait to read for pleasure again. I intend to devote a good hour today to planning a summer reading list. I can do this because I have only one final left (Econ), and it is not until Friday.
Point #3: I'm going to miss Brown. My friends here. I can't believe everyone is leaving.
Point #4: Here are the three products of my Creative Non-Fiction class, for the bored and procrastinating among you:
Behind the Line
It’s different in the summer, when the rushes last four hours and the floor grows slick with melted ice cream, the counter grimy with sprinkles, and we’re struggling to stay on our feet, stay stocked, stay alert. Then, work is a battle between employee and customer. We’re on the defensive, trying to push that line of hungry consumers out the door as fast as possible - though their supply of infantry seems endless. During a rush, we don’t see the customers as people; we’re too concerned about the depleting supply of mint chip and splatter of hot fudge on the candy counter to look them in the eye. Like soldiers, we must dehumanize the adversary.
But when the weather is cooler, employees at J.P. Licks, Newton’s favorite local ice cream store, serve only a handful of customers in an hour. Two or three of us cover an entire shift, and we have ample time to lounge in the back room and laugh at obnoxious customers or sit on top of the dip-ins - ice-cream-slang for the monstrous freezers beneath the counter into which we must literally dip our bodies to reach the ice cream. The one room that comprises the retail area is deeply rectangular, with the serving area obscured by a long, high redwood counter running down one side, a space for the line to form down the other, and six stools for customers at the front near the windows. The parts of the walls not covered with bright, chalkboard-style menus are painted white with giant black cow spots. Smells of sugar and chocolate and coffee and sanitizer pervade the place; the hum and occasional roar of freezers obscures the Oldies to which we’re forced to tune the radio. The whole store is tiny enough that we can see a customer entering from any position.
When a customer pushes open the glass door, triggering an automatic “beep-beep” from the alarm system, our reactions depend partly on our mood at the moment - whether we were joking around, solving crossword puzzles, or railing against our lazy manager - and partly on the customer. Let’s say it is Giovanna, a smiling elderly woman who comes in at noon every day. I’ve been working at the store the longest and Giovanna knows it, so when she comes in she heads straight for me and we exchange hellos. She is barely tall enough to see over the counter.
What can I get for you today?
I hitch up a smile without too much difficulty because Giovanna is pleasant and always leaves a tip.
“I’ll have a medium cup of the coffee chip low-fat hard yogurt,” she says, temples creasing with happy wrinkles. I knew exactly what she would order; in fact, I was moving to the yogurt dip-in before she started speaking, but I still thought it was polite to ask.
“Of course,” I say, reaching for an eight-ounce cup emblazoned with our logo, a smiling pink and black cow’s head.
“I’m guessing you’re not going to be too busy today, with this weather,” Giovanna says as I scoop the caramel-colored confection from its bucket. The sliver of sky I can see from the window is mushroom gray, foreboding rain or even snow.
“You’re actually our first customer of the day,” I tell her.
She laughs. “It’s just the addicts like me who want ice cream today.”
If she is right, then the number of ice cream “addicts” willing to brave the New England cold never ceases to surprise me. Some I have come to expect. Sean, who is losing his hearing and walks with a cane, always asks for a tiny dollop of chocolate ice cream on top of his cup of frozen yogurt. He is my favorite customer. Barbara has crazy curly blonde hair and crazy thick round glasses and a son in college she loves to tell us about. We speculate that she must skip lunch entirely to polish off a large bowl of ice cream every day and still stay so thin. Angie, the crossing guard at Bowen Elementary school a few blocks away, comes for our coffee, which she claims is better than what they serve at Starbucks. These regulars accept the oddity of their eating habits and hide their insecurity behind jokes and big tips for the employees so we don’t judge them. It works: tips would be scarce in the winter without their contribution.
It’s the guilty first-timers succumbing to their craving who look really nervous when they walk in the door. The worst are the mothers, the wealthy, well-dressed, made-up mothers picking up their young children from school. They act as though they want to take their kids out for a special treat, but I think they make the trip because they want to indulge themselves. It takes the mother a matter of seconds to order a kiddie-sized cup of chocolate or vanilla ice cream for her child, but she spends several minutes choosing her own dessert.
What can I get for you today?
One middle-aged mother, who comes in a few times in the course of a month, tastes every flavor of nonfat soft-serve frozen yogurt before making her decision. (The wealthy mothers never order ice cream for themselves.) She stares at the menu, mouth agape, for several seconds before requesting a taste of the peanut butter soft-serve. She grasps the sample, which we serve in a tiny paper cup, with her manicured thumb and forefinger, eyes it closely -though she never makes direct eye contact with me- takes a delicate lick from the edge, and then slurps down the whole thing, cleaning the cup with her tongue. Her lipstick leaves a crimson stain on the rim. After several more tastes, she has created a small mountain of used cups on the counter for me to clear, though a bucket clearly labeled “trash” sits just inches away. And she always orders vanilla.
Indeed, most mothers order the vanilla or coffee soft-serve - they are the only flavors that come in sugar-free. At a whopping 10 calories per ounce, they contain little more than skim milk and air. Few women between the ages of 14 and 60 will order anything else: as I ask them what they would like, I watch their eyes wander from the menu to the yogurt machines behind me.
What can I get for you today?
I ask a fit, attractive young woman in a track suit with headphones dangling around her neck.
“Mmm, chocolate,” she replies. I immediately categorize her as flaky; the attentive customers know they need to provide more information.
“Would you like a cup or cone?”
“Cup.”
“What size?”
“Kiddie. And make it on the small side.”
“Sure. Any toppings on that?”
“Oh, no. No toppings.”
“And will that be ice cream or yogurt?”
“Oh, I’m sorry! The yogurt, fat free.”
I don’t know why I bothered to ask.
I do always ask, but first I make guesses - and they are correct, more often than not. One afternoon, I’m working a shift with Jordy, who is tall and poorly shaven and has longish stringy red hair and a soft beer belly. He brings books like On the Road to work but never gets any reading done, and he hits on all the female employees and all the female customers too. Then he messes up their orders and they’ve got to grab napkins to keep hot fudge from dripping on their clothes. Today he’s filling the yogurt machines while I restock the candy counter. I hear the beep-beep of the alarm and look up to see a young Indian woman wearing a traditional sari push a baby carriage towards the counter.
What can I get for you today?
Before the woman can respond, Jordy leans close to my ear as he passes behind me.
“Rum and raisins, of course,” he whispers, mimicking a South Asian accent. I try to freeze the expression on my face to hide my embarrassment from the young woman. A moment later, she orders a small cup of rum raisin.
What bothers me most is that I, too, was expecting her to order rum raisin or pistachio, the two flavors preferred overwhelmingly by Indian customers. I grew up in a militantly politically correct environment, learning never to generalize based on race. Stereotyping the dessert choices of rich mothers never seemed quite as egregious as stereotyping those of Indians. But the data was right in front of me; I liked any method of categorizing my customers to guess what they would order - and being right. It alleviated the mindlessness of the job. After months of observation, I learned that East Asian customers usually order strawberry or coconut almond chip, while black customers prefer maple butter walnut, rum raisin, or coffee.
Age, however, always trumps ethnicity in ordering decisions. When their parents let them choose, little children of any color love to try sweet flavors like cake batter and black raspberry, coated with rainbow sprinkles. They want cones, not cups, but I always give them a cup on the side just in case the scoop starts to topple. As I hand kids their ice cream, I remember the sweet sticky cones of my own childhood, remember trying to lick up all the drips before they ran down my arms, and for a moment my smile isn’t so forced. But the moment passes quickly. Next in line. A teenage boy almost inevitably orders a frappe - the New England version of a milkshake - in chocolate, Oreo, coffee, or cookie dough. If his friends are listening, he’ll order it Extra Thick, adding 50 cents and an additional scoop of ice cream. With the boys, it’s always a contest to see who can order the biggest, most extravagant dessert. It’s the opposite with girls: they want to have the smallest cup of all their friends.
What can I get for you today?
It’s a mild April evening and the line is longer than it has been all winter. In a couple of weeks, the flowers and sun will bring in serious crowds and I won’t have time to think about the individual people whose ice cream I scoop. My customer tonight is a cheerful high school girl with a bouncy blonde ponytail; she cuts short her conversation with her friend to order.
“Ooh, I’ll have a small cup of mint chip low fat hard yogurt with chocolate sprinkles,” she says. She’s so excited that when I hand her the cup, she takes a bite right off the top, not even waiting to get a spoon.
“And for you, Miss?” I say, turning to her friend, who is decidedly more attractive and less bouncy.
“I’ll just have a kiddie cup of the vanilla nonfat soft-serve,” she says. The mint chip girl’s face falls.
“That’s all?” she says. “But you hardly ate anything at dinner - you said you were saving room for ice cream.”
“I guess I’m just not hungry tonight,” replies vanilla girl. Mint chip girl sets her cup down on the counter, all enthusiasm for her confection gone. Jaw clenched, I fill a kiddie cup with vanilla yogurt. I let the snowy substance flow above the rim, piping it up until the swirl I have created far exceeds the regulation three ounces. I hand it to vanilla girl with some permutation of a smile.
Have a nice evening.
shit gotta go i'll add the rest later!