When the perfect job becomes a total nightmare

Some things shouldn’t change. My first job was one that did.

I miss the dragon kite. I miss the picnic table in the back parking lot, the neat stacks of Coca-Cola trays, the recyclables organized next to the green dumpster with April’s butcher paper note forbidding residents of the Ironclad Building from putting their trash in Benny’s dumpster. I miss the parmesan bread twists, the peanut butter chocolate chip cookies, and homemade Focaccia bread. I miss the muffin-offs, setting Brett’s strawberry cheesecake muffins against my blueberry lemon poppy. I miss the fresh produce: crisp and tart apples, blueberries the size of your thumbnail, peaches whose juice drips down your arm and off your elbow.

I miss Benny’s Market as I first knew it. I miss the Benny’s that was all of this.

I only know Benny’s from behind the counter. The first time I stepped inside, I was job-hunting with my best friend. I’d never been there before and our 90-second stop furnished me with only an application—no knowledge of what the place was.

I entered Benny’s the second time, ten months later, a fifteen-year-old in an over-sized windbreaker on a quiet, rainy Saturday in March. A woman in a sweater and high-waisted skinny jeans greeted me. When I asked for an application, she immediately lit up. Pulling a sheet of paper out of a drawer under the register, she handed me a pen with a plastic spoon taped to it and directed me to sit on a stool in the front window.

Minutes later, when I handed the completed application back, she gave it a quick glance and started talking to me about cookies, customers, and cleaning.

She didn’t ask why I wanted to work there, which was good because my only reason was “I want a job.” I didn’t know a single thing about Benny’s.

That changed my first day. Within minutes of my arrival, I began learning how to write orders in Benny’s shorthand (SH for SmokeHouse, LI for Little Italy), handle confused customers (who thought we should have a restroom), and bake cookies that didn’t break (let them cool).

It was the beginning of an era. One in which my fifteen-year-old self woke up early five days a week, all summer long, and nagged my dad to take me to work.

I enjoyed my time at Benny’s. I showed up early, stayed late, never whined about washing the dishes or wiping off tables. I even stopped in on my days off, one time picking up the broom to help my favorite co-worker, Blake, sweep. My efforts were recognized:

Blake: Give me an M!

Co-worker 5: M!

Blake: I’m gonna skip the middle—give me an H!

Co-worker 5: H!

Blake: What’s that spell?

Both: Meredith!

My loyalties didn’t shift when I left at the end of the summer and got an after-school job at McDonald’s. The following summer, the golden arches barred me in four days a week, but Benny’s got me on Mondays and Fridays. And after I graduated high school the next spring, I left the frying vats altogether.

I returned to Benny’s full-force: worked overtime, got a raise, and every Saturday night, after opening the store and working all day, manned a Benny’s food stand at an arts center concert around the corner. Anything Benny’s was involved in, I was involved in. Any questions about Benny’s, I could answer.

But I still didn’t have a concept for what the place was.

“It’s a deli, bakery, sandwich shop. We sell gift baskets, stuffed grape leaves, homemade bagels and stuffed bread, T-shirts, homemade soap, Small-Tourist-Town Dirt . . . . What? Yes, it’s real dirt.”

There’s no quick pitch for Benny’s. It is what it is. Or it was what it was, because it’s not the same anymore.

After summer three, I left for my freshman year of college with bright hopes for my future and peace knowing I didn’t have to worry about finding a summer job for the next year.

When I returned in 2011, everything was the same. At least, on the surface. Brett was still cranky, dropping the F-bomb every other word. Co-worker 3 joined in fairly often, even though (or because) it drove Brett crazy. Co-worker 7 was stuck in a thicker fog than usual.

But my bosses were exhausted. That school year they’d worked without any additional help for the off-season. My first summer there, they’d talked about selling, but now two possible buyers had fallen through and they were beyond ready for a break.

Fifty to 60-hour weeks became my normal. I wanted the hours, I needed the money, and I worked every minute I was there, usually an extra half hour or two or three. I opened the store every day and, before I left, noted what I’d need to do when I showed up the next morning.

When I was home, my mind was at Benny’s. What did I forget? What will they forget? What was done wrong? How can we prevent this? When I was at Benny’s, I was the only person who cared. If a customer had a complaint, I took care of it. If the register needed quarters, singles, dimes, I went to the bank. If sandwiches weren’t being made fast enough, I joined the sandwich board or bugged the sandwich makers.

My bosses were barely there. When they found out about all the things going wrong, they got frustrated and upset, but nothing changed. I was the only person trying to preserve the Benny’s I’d known.

Then Co-worker 3 quit; Blake overdosed and was hospitalized; and in the middle of everything falling apart, my bosses successfully sold Benny’s to people who only knew it from the front of the counter.

“You can do with it,” they told the new owners, “whatever you want. It’s yours.”

My emotions were caught between hope and betrayal. Benny’s was mine. Not actually, but emotionally. Now, it was out of my control.

The new owners hired a woman for daytime shifts whose personality was comparable to a junkyard dog, complete with aggravating barks of direction and a grating, alienating tone toward customers. The worst was when the health inspector showed up, we failed the inspection, and the inspector discussed problems with this woman who’d been on the schedule for two days and still worked by standing around and scowling. I watched their interaction from a distance, wanting so badly to step in, replace the woman’s pushy nasal voice with my own calm, reasonable one.

Benny’s was done for. Or close to it.

I left for my sophomore year of college, praying they wouldn’t burn to the ground the place I’d grown up, the place I considered my second home, where I worked with people I considered family: April and Camilo, my second set of parents; Brett, Erik, Nick, Joe, my brothers; Theresa, Erin, Taylor, Amy, my sisters; Blake.

Summer 2012, I returned to a nightmare. Cookies, muffins, breads came pre-made, frozen, just asking for quality time with the oven. Refrigeration units of the display cases were breaking one after another. Dirt, dust, grime were everywhere. But:

“We passed our inspection!” my new boss said, smiling brightly.

I smiled back, before looking away and dropping the grin.

Who cares about paper towels instead of rags when every surface is filthy? The health inspector, apparently.

I wanted to go back. Back to the Benny’s that was before. Back to the Benny’s with homemade everything, with cobweb-free corners and clean front windows. The Benny’s that operated on energy born from creativity, where food was an art form and anyone was allowed to create. Where a fifteen-year-old girl was trusted with the front counter operations of a decades-old business.

Benny’s former rhythm: hear the front door slap shut, look up from whatever you’re doing, greet the customers with a smile and words, gauge them from a distance (are they looking around, scanning the menu, eyeing the cookies, completely lost?), offer to help even if they say they’re just looking, recommend drinks/sandwiches/cookies, sell them one thing and then suggest another, prepare order accordingly (Hot chocolate? No problem), ring them out, make conversation while the credit card machine runs through, comment on the spoon-pen, bag everything up, stick the receipt in the register drawer, wish the customer a great day/night, return to whatever you were working on when they came in.

*Names have been changed.