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Between college and graduate school, I worked a variety of terrible jobs for little more than minimum wage. During that long summer of 1993, I spent my mornings making calls for a telephone survey company; in the afternoons, I punched in commercials at a conservative talk radio station; and at night, I worked the closing shift at a local sub shop.
By the time I arrived at the restaurant for the evening shift, I was usually in a foul mood. One of the features of the sub shop job, though, was that I was able to work by myself; since business was usually slow after 7:00, I was able to sit and read -- or at least not have to speak with co-workers with whom I shared almost nothing in common. The drawback, however, was that I was responsible for cleaning the entire store and making sure it was in decent shape for the morning crew. If the kids working the afternoon shift didn’t clean up before I came in, I would have an especially long night of washing dishes, cleaning plastic ingredient trays, and scrubbing floors.
One evening, I arrived at work to find near-tornado conditions in the back of the store. The place was an utter wreck -- garbage and dirty dishes everywhere. The two kids who preceded me quickly punched out and scrambled away, while the afternoon manager explained that they’d had an unexpectedly busy afternoon and hadn’t been able to tidy the place up. Then he left, muttering something about having to pick his kid up from baseball practice.
After my colleagues had all left -- and thinking the shop was empty -- I freaked out. I tossed a garbage can across the back room and kicked a cardboard box.
“Fuck!” I screamed. “Motherfucking fucking fuck! Jesus goddamn Christ!”
I kicked another box and threw a pile of kitchen utensils against the back of the filthy sink.
“Fucking idiots! Fuck!” I was not feeling especially creative with my anger.
More clattering as I shoved a stool against the walk-in freezer on my way toward the front counter. Turning the corner, I found an angry-looking father and his wide-eyed daughter, who appeared to be about eight or nine years old. He glared at me as I slapped on a pair of disposable gloves and asked for his order. I was surprised to see them, but I was too angry to care about the impression I had just made.
Grabbing a couple loaves of sub bread, I feverishly sawed them in half, then proceeded to slap piles of turkey or ham or whatever it was they wanted onto the sandwich. After about ten seconds of this, the father leaned toward me and spoke in a slow, surly voice.
“I don’t care what kind of a day you’re having,’ he said. “I don’t appreciate you throwing my food around.”
At this point, his face was about two feet from mine. I held a small, sharp knife in my right hand, and with a little bit of effort I could have gouged out his eyes while explaining that the sandwich was not, in fact, his yet. I wanted to do this very badly. I was tired of working shitty jobs for shitty wages, and I was tired of catering to people like this. I was sorry for my outburst, but his attitude toward me cleansed me of any guilt I felt for exposing his daughter to a stream of profanity. I was not, in other words, a model of customer servitude at that exact moment.
It all happened so quickly, though. If I had been a little more exhausted, or slightly less concerned about my future, or a little less eager to avoid a messy cleanup, I would have stabbed him in the face. I always wondered how it was that a person might suddenly snap and attack a total stranger.
Now I knew.
But I kept my composure, grunted out an apology, and finished making the two sandwiches without incident. I took his money, wished him a nice evening, and gave his sandwich a hard, punishing squeeze as I gently placed it in the bag.
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