Labor Day: Let’s Celebrate Sleeping Instead

I was cutting the stems off wilting lettuce to give them that “just picked” look. The phone rang in the produce department’ refrigerated back room. I picked it up with frozen, blue fingers.

A strange, maniacal voice shrieked, “Just how big are your melons, sonny?”

Long sigh.

“Mom, please stop calling me at work.”

She laughed diabolically and hung up.

Another kid was working himself through college at the Price Chopper supermarket with me. Sam, who lectured me about the poetic genius of M.C. Hammer, told me he was only there until The Village Voice discovered what a brilliant music reviewer he was. In the meantime, Sam was another victim.

I’d walk in and he’d be cursing another burn from the shrink-wrap machine. “Some old lady keeps calling and asking about my cucumbers,” he’d growl. “How many old lady perverts are there in the world? Maybe two? And I have one calling me.”

What was I supposed to say? “Oh, yeah, Sam. I forgot to tell you. It’s my mother.”?

It was just so wrong.

She once showed up in the store during the pre-dinner rush. I was throwing out new heads of Iceberg and she rammed me with her shopping cart. “Yooz people have the worst produce this side of the Mississippi!” she screeched in her fake old lady voice. She held out a hard, brown rutabaga. “You call this lettuce?!” she screamed. “I’ll tell you what it is. It’s highway robbery!”

Several other customers looked over. I foolishly played along, thinking they’d realize it was just a very lame joke. I shook a real head of lettuce threateningly. “Lady, how would you like some lettuce upside the head?”

Another customer’s hands flew to her mouth.

OK. Not the reaction I was aiming for.

I shot the woman a reassuring smile. “It’s just my crazy mother,” I explained.

Her eyebrows arched. “You talk to your mother that way!?”

I turned around but my mother had vanished. The customer scowled at me. “You should be ashamed of yourself!” She jammed her cart against my big toe and tsked-tsked toward the cookie aisle.

Each Labor Day, I find myself reflecting on all of the jobs I’ve held since my fifth grade paper route. This year I’m particularly perplexed by all the anti-illegal immigrant sentiment out there. Millions of illegal aliens, the complaints go, are stealing jobs. In fact, according to one recent poll, 27 percent of Americans believe an illegal alien is now working as U.S. president.

Which makes perfect since to me. If I had to choose between being president or standing in a soup line, I’d just request an extra slice of bread with my Chicken Noodle.

Assuming my mother wasn’t serving it.

For that matter, who’d want any of my former jobs?

For my first college work-study job at Johns Hopkins, I worked the Eisenhower library’s underground stacks. This involved crawling into the belly of the place to reshelf all the books that people plagiarized from. For $5.50 an hour, I mastered the Dewey Decimal System and got bossed around by Scott, a man with virtually no teeth (mistakenly shelved in section 567, fossilized cold-blooded vertebrates) and even larger gaps in his personal hygiene (section 541, theoretical chemistry). Occasionally Scott gave us a break from listening to him recount his personal conquests in Baltimore’s alleys (section 546, inorganic chemistry) and reshelving books (section 365, penal institutions’ cruel and unusual punishments). Instead (hold on to your hats!) we got to scan all the shelves for missing, incorrectly placed books. Scott, with little Tiger Wood arm pumps, treated their discovery like we’d hit the Powerball. Six months later, after seeing the sun for only two hours a day, I had lost half my body pigmentation. I finally quit after it became clear that all the women in Baltimore were waiting behind Browney’s Tavern to get defiled by my boss. (Section 365.2 penile institutions)

So I went upscale. I took a job at an expensive, fine dining establishment called The Phoebe Snow, run by a Cuban maître-d’ named Raul. The Phoebe Snow featured French table service. French table service, in case you’re wondering, involves tuxedo wearing heroin addicts who push carts up to diners’ tables and, while making Bananas Foster, accidentally light fires in their laps.

It also features busboys. Busboys piling dirty dishes onto enormous black trays. Busboys hoisting precariously piled trays high into the air. Disgusting busboys then sucking the leftover lobster from said trays, thus tripping and dropping table service for ten onto the heads of elderly couples celebrating their golden anniversaries.

Every night after 10 p.m., someone would ask me, “Where’s Raul?”

I’d quietly lead them into the private dining room, put my finger over my lips and point beneath the buffet table. “Lift up the tablecloth,” I’d say. “He’s under there with an empty champagne bottle between his legs.” Then I offered some advice. “Don’t ask to have next Thursday off so you can interview for elephant cage cleaner at the zoo.” I’d say. “He won’t remember.”

There’s more. I’ve sold tickets for vintage steam train rides. I even learned to read Greek to help a blind dissertation writer complete her Ph.D. in Greek literature (she kept falling asleep and yelling at me for it). I alphabetized tens of thousands of SAT scores at a college admissions office. I taught English in the third world, which, frankly, was about as useful there as disco dancing lessons. I even taught history in the U.S., which taught me that American parents with two lazy children still expect a teacher with 120 students to make sure their children do their homework.

I quit my supermarket produce gig one afternoon when they called me up front to bag groceries for May, a sweet, elderly cashier. A man in full motorcycle leather, including a large cap, was buying a single pack of gum. May cried out in alarm. “Oh, dear! You’re bleeding!”

May seized a tissue from her sleeve. Before she could politely dab the man’s bloody forehead, he jerked his head away. His hat slammed onto the conveyor belt and a leaking pot roast rolled out. May screamed. The man pulled a knife, shook it at me and ran out the door. He leapt into his car and a pork loin fell out of his left leg.

So this Labor Day, I have a message for all you wily illegal aliens out there wanting to steal my job: you’re welcome to it.

Just don’t answer the phone.

By Chris Barrett, Publisher