the sandwich

I leaned my head down and heard my neck crackle like popcorn, after doing not a lot of anything. Yikes.

I set my gaze hard my work list for the bakery and likened it to a ten-gallon bucket of clam chowder getting spilled in a kitchen that doesn’t belong to you.. like, it’s going under the refrigerator.. do I really have to clean this up?

‘But it’s under the refrigerator!’ you whine.

You weigh the personal as well as professional scales about your dedication to sopping up cold, congealed clam chowder from underneath a refrigerator that doesn’t belong to you. What’s your personal responsibility like? What accountability do you get paid for? Do you really have to clean this shit up? Or can you go scorched-earth and pretend that it’s so not a you problem?

To be clear I’m the dumb Millenial shmuck that’s getting down on their knees and thinking, ‘Goddamnit. I’m totally cleaning that shit up.’

Thus, ‘Bakery,’ filling orders, which isn’t my job and I super don’t fucking want to do. But, the previous pastry chef had an alcohol-fueled breakdown and abruptly left so here I am, picking up her pieces.

He was walking past me in his monogrammed chef coat and stopped. He set his hand on my wooden workbench and looked at me with serious intent.

“I didn’t get you a sandwich.” He was stern, as though he had just suggested I had terminal cancer. A pause.

He looked at me and watched for a reaction. I had none. I sincerely didn’t know what he was talking about.

“What?” I said, drying a large plastic tub with intention of filling it with pastries for cafe orders.

He doubled down on his body language. He set the paper lunch bag in his hands down on the bench, crossed his arms over his belly and with more emphasis he says, “I asked everyone what they wanted for a sandwich and I didn’t ask you.”

“Oh, okay,” I said, warily, still uncertain of the subtext. I worked diligently along, drying the tubs.

His body language suggested he was stumped at my reaction, of which there was none. Was he exasperated? 

‘Jesus fucking Christ.’ I thought. I smiled, almost apologetically, and gave a small shrug. He goes on.

“I went out to my favorite spot to get Bahn Mi’s for the team and I know you noticed in the office when we were all eating them and I didn’t even think to ask you what you wanted. I’m really SSOORorry.”

His emphasis was on the ‘sorry.’ 

“It’s okay,” I muttered, through a thick sheen of sweat that unwarranted and unwanted work allots. I did see people eating, but in a catering company I see people eating all the time and I’m not the person to ever ask why.

“Would you like my other half? I have it just on my desk over there..” he trails off and motions as if to suggest that I could float thankful in his arm-energy wave to the weird, not-mine sandwich happily, in the office we share.

“It’s okay, man. I didn’t notice anything about sandwiches and I take no offense to not getting one.” I give him permission to let go of his responsibility to provide me with this mystery sandwich. Is this real life?

Say ‘Sandwich’ one more time..

He is not satisfied with my response. He toe-taps. He self-corrects his too-small glasses. Shifts. He motions towards the bag he set down on my workbench.

“I have this one, too, I got it for J’za but it could just as easily go to you,” he starts to say before his voice quietly trails off in the fashion that would suggest that PLEASE GOD DON’T PICK THIS ROUTE. (J’za is the President of the company; ‘Seriously, what is this sandwich?’ I wonder to myself.)

I pick up the cue in this emotional battle for a sandwich that I didn’t know existed, or that I wanted in the first place.

“It’s OKAY, man. How about next time?” I smile for the first time in seven hours at him, hoping this will be enough to end this surprising reaction to something I didn’t ask for, know about, or desire.

He BEAMS. “Yes! Next time, you’re gonna LOVE this place!” He scurries off in a weird, frenetic pace that leaves me standing still in his wake, abjectly confused.

So I pick up the pack slips and continue working. Only another five hours to go, I hope.

What the fuck…?