The Lunch Ladies
Food service is a physically demanding job. You stand the entire shift, taking orders from a self-renewing line of students, and moving the big spoons and tongs again and again. When the food runs out, you have to stick your hand into a 150-degree oven, and lift out a hefty tray of bulk servings to supply the work stations. I worked in Sadler, my college’s dining hall, for a semester during my sophomore year. Financially, I didn’t need the job because my parents were supporting me, but I enjoyed making some extra money. When I cluelessly searched for an oven mitt, an older, more experienced worker teased me for having delicate hands. A seasoned staff member will no longer need an oven mitt — their hands have lost sensitivity to heat. The plastic-ceramic plates become solid weights when you fetch hundreds at a time, and sometimes they can burn your hand en route, being freshly sanitized out of the dish machine.
If you walk around the cafeteria you will see different stations with the same familiar people, but most students don’t know their names. The card-swipe lady stands behind the register, and the pasta lady stirs the pasta. One day the familiar face may become a new face. People come and go. Food service is, for many, a transitional job; it is less of a career but more of a living. You swap time for money, and you save that money.
Among the workers I knew in Sadler, there were a few that I connected on a deeper level. One Saturday night I met Nicole at the made-to-order sandwich station. The two of us were partners for the shift. Nicole has big eyes and a big nose. She wore a pair of thick framed glasses, and was dressed in her white apron and chef coat with her big hair wrapped in a hair net. The managers were trying to get rid of the lunch-lady look by giving out round black hats, but there was no way to fit all her dark hair under one.
Nicole had been here for five years. She just recently received a certificate from the managers that recognized that. When the previous dining contractor pulled out from the college, Sodexo took over and renewed the contract. The company brought their own managers and workers, keeping only a few of the previous employees who had the best reputation, including Nicole.
As a student, I only worked a 4-hour dinner shift twice a week to balance my classes and workload. But the hours were much different for a full-time worker. Early in morning, Nicole would wake up, take a shower, and clock in at 6:30am. She would be in Sadler until 9pm four days a week to prepare and serve food.
After learning that I was new, she reassured me, “I will make your shift as breezy as possible.” When there wasn’t a line, she wiped down the deli glass, ran to the back for more bread, and brought dirty utensils to the dishwasher, moving and moving and moving. I remained relatively still in the station and made sandwiches for the students. When Nicole saw students she knew, she paused for small talk and jokes, with a bottle of spray and a towel still in her hands. At the end of the shift, the manager gave us a checklist of roughly twenty items. “Sanitize the cutting board,” check. “Put away the left-over food in the fridge and label the date,” check check. The chicken salad was three days old, so it probably had to go. As we signed our names on the bottom of the checklist, Nicole bought me two chocolate bars as a friendly gesture and then she cleaned the floor with a broom. After that, I secretly hoped to be paired up with Nicole again at work because she indeed made my shift as breezy as possible.
We bonded over the fact that neither of us have a driver’s license. Nicole grew up in Queens, New York, and moved to Virginia because of her brother, who got a job in Virginia first. They are now roommates and keep each other company. Nicole said that family is the one thing that matters the most to her. Being nine hours of train ride away from home, Nicole didn’t go home unless the students did, so the fellow food service workers here are her family. She reminds me of the line in Fast and Furious, when Vin Diesel says, “The most important thing in life will always be family. Right here. Right now,” as he tilts a Corona beer and toasts his gang.
Talking about her biggest worries, Nicole mentions the bills and her child’s health. “No one here knows that I have a daughter,” she confides in me a year after we meet. “She is seven years old, and she lives with my mom in New York.”
She had planned to have a child at the age of 28, when she was in a steady long term relationship. “I was happy, excited, and scared,” she said. Having a child came naturally to her as she was the oldest of four, and she helped raise her much younger siblings. She was no longer with the father of her child, but he remained friendly, and had been part of her daughter’s life. Nicole described her daughter with deep affection and pride, but there was a tinge of ache in her voice when she talked about being far away from her daughter, and living in different states. Eyes brimming with tears now, she apologizes and reaches for the paper towels.
“I just cried yesterday.”
I ask why she cried.
“Because I miss her,” she responds firmly, “Last time I saw her was in August. I am going home this next break. If I get a break.” The managers hadn’t decided yet whether the cafeteria would remain open for fall break.
She pulls out her phone and slid through photos of her daughter: a little girl with the same big eyes and nose as Nicole, in a classroom, at a baseball game, next to a swimming pool, and in a movie theater.
But there are no photos of Nicole herself. There are no photos of herself on Facebook either, only a dozen pictures of her daughter, nieces and nephews. “I use Facebook mainly to keep up with friends and family,” she explains. Her employment information, last name, and place of residence hadn’t been updated for at least five years, reflecting a distant past in which she lived in a different state, and carried a different last name. It is not the case of rare usage, like how some people only check Facebook once a year so their page looks like untended gardens. Nicole has been posting fairly actively, her last post being only 2 hours old. There is a consistent stream of women’s empowerment quotes such as “Be thankful for the little things,” and “Beauty tip: take care of myself more, worry less ;).”
I ask Nicole if there would be another five years. She says, “I love y’all — the students and the staff here. I enjoy working here, and I get attached to people. But for my next job I would like to go into customer service or home care, because I love dealing with people.”
Another server that I have connected with was Ashleighe, the glamorous make-up princess who shows up to work every day with a full set of foundation, extended eyelashes, mascara, and glossy lips. The color of her eye shadow changes daily, but her hair chronically mimics Marilyn Monroe. “Both of us are cuuuurvy,” she meant herself and Marilyn Monroe, of course. I can spot her from a mile away with her flamboyant styles, even though she is dressed in the cafeteria uniform like every other server.
Ashleighe has a big personality. “Some people are just intimidated by my confidence,” she said. During the summer when the cafeteria was closed, she worked in Colonial Williamsburg. The food servers’ schedule is in sync with the students’ schedule. They return and leave as the semester begins and ends. For the past summer, Nicole went home to New York City where she spent time with her daughter and babysat.
The managers switch people around wherever they are needed. I have found Ashleighe behind the Mongolian Grill, Hometown Cooking, or pushing a cart of plates around. But I saw her most often at the Mongolian Grill, where the temperature was so high I worried that her make-up would melt. I usually give her a bowl of vegetables that I have picked, and she adds beef, noodle, and teriyaki sauce, then hands the bowl to Maria, her partner. Then Maria uses two metal spatulas to quickly cook the combo. I hear the metallic clink clink from the spatula fast moving on the grill, and then my bowl is returned to me again. During the process, we would make small talk and hold up the line behind me, but she didn’t seem to mind.
When she is not working, Ashleighe attends cosmetics school with the plan to become a make-up artist and open her own salon. She says this with a positive certainty, that it would happen soon. Besides doing make-up, Ashleighe also cuts people’s hair at a nursing home. One time, I ran into her when I was dining, and I mentioned getting a haircut.
“Your hair is silky. It will make a wonderful weave.” she touched it longingly, “I would cut it from here,” she pointed above my neck.
“Please don’t make my hair into a weave,” I protested.
The college newspaper The Flat Hat interviewed Ashleighe. In the video she says, “When I see people walk around in socks and sandals, or wearing plaid and polka dots together,” she turns her eyes straight into the camera, “I’m coming for you.” She is the undercover fashion police in the college’s cafeteria.
Ashleighe’s cell phone background is a picture of her children — she is a single mother of three. In October, domestic violence awareness month, she shared a story on Facebook that she had a physically abusive husband who repeatedly beat her. She kept the abuse a secret at first because her husband said that it was “family business,” and that it would make them look bad. She questioned herself why she stayed with him, and wrote, “Fear is crippling when you feel you’re alone and you have no one to turn to. It keeps you chained up and it keeps you prisoner.”
Eventually she sought temporary asylum at a women’s shelter. She moved to Williamsburg to start a new life, and was finally getting her divorce papers. She shared her story to encourage women who underwent domestic violence to seek help, to stand up against it.
“A day in my life a lot of people cannot handle,” she said in The Flat Hat video, “I have a set of twins that are four, that are autistic, and I have a five-year-old daughter, and I have a mother who is staying with me right now, who has cancer. So this year has been the hardest year for me, but I’m making it.”
Making-it is the common theme among food servers. When I got hungry just before bed time, I would go to Sadler Late Night, where I had seen Charafa at the register. Charafa immigrated here from Morocco; she wears a green hijad to match her green uniform. Her husband came to the U.S. first, and she petitioned to reunite with him. The U.S. immigration set up an appointment date and time which was non-negotiable. Going to the appointment was her only chance to come to America. Unfortunately, she gave birth to her daughter the day before the appointment, and a few hours after the delivery, she had to pack up, leave the hospital, and travel to the city where the U.S. embassy was located.
After Charafa came to the U.S., she started working in Sadler at night. The Late Night station stopped serving at 12, then she cleaned the station for another 30 minutes to an hour. Her husband worked during the day so they could take turns taking care of their daughter. They were making it in the new country.
Shuhan, a student server on a scholarship, was Charafa’s partner for a while. Towards the end of the night, Shuhan felt tired, but she was afraid to complain because everyone else was also tired. She showed Charafa how much the students’ tuition at the college was: In-state was over $30,000 and out-of-state was over $50,000. Charafa thought it was an astronomical number. It was hard for her and her husband to imagine how many hours of their work would translate into this money. Students were paid $9 per hour, and seasoned staff members, depending on how much experience they have, were paid $12, $15, or more. The window separated the food service workers and students, and it also separated the two socio-economic worlds.
When I served behind the window with my white apron and hairnet, people who I went to the same classes with or had been in the same clubs didn’t recognize me. They stood before the window and asked for macaroni and cheese without showing any signs of recollection that they knew me. A different context, a different me. My identity was not a student anymore, but a food server. And they didn’t really know food servers.
Serving food is hard work, so it was not surprising that people lose their smile after a while. Sometimes their patience as well. My arms and back was usually sore after the shift, but I got used to it. A woman I worked with dropped a tray of food while she was pulling it out of the oven. “Shit! Who the fuck put it in like that?” With the dinner line approaching and the floor awaiting a mop, we both felt the tension. Through some conscious or subconscious way, people can sense that you are tired, or stressed, or impatient, even though you are not trying to actively convey those feelings. One time I saw my friend Alice when I was serving in Hometown Cooking. Alice was my freshman hall mate, and she was delighted to find me behind the window. Just wings no drumsticks, please. She felt comfortable to make requests with me, but she always felt intimidated to make these demands in front of a full-time staff member.
The second semester of my sophomore year I got a new job in residence life which paid much better, so I stopped food serving, and came to Sadler to eat just like before. I said hello to Lenny, the chef who was always behind the burger station. Damien waved his hand at me, and Ashleighe came out to give me hugs. Danielle, with whom I made sandwiches asked, “Are you coming back?”
“Just to eat.”
“That is for the best,” she said.
