A Working Stiff's Manifesto (3 page)

“There's a lot of paperwork here,” I tell him. “Might be a while.”

“Just fill out the tax stuff and throw the rest away,” he says, then quickly corrects himself. “Or take it home.” He looks at his watch. “We need to get going. We have to unload the truck.”

Unload the truck. Now I see why I got through the interview so easily. I'm over six feet tall and appear to have considerable lifting power. I pull seventy-pound boxes off the refrigerated delivery truck and realize that it might not have been my fine haircut or charm that got me the job. John was sizing me up like a medieval lord looking at a prospective new serf, checking me for labor potential. As I unload the truck, John tells me stories about how hard he has worked, ever since he was a teenager, in the meat and fish industry. He is a few years older than me. When he was twenty-one, he bought the meat and fish store from the man who taught him the business, and ran it up until a year ago, when he came to work for the Market. He is unclear about what happened to his store, or why he found working here preferable. He mentions that he is a type-A personality, a workaholic who just can't stop himself. He tells me this as he watches me, hands in his pockets, barely looking at the ice-filled Styrofoam boxes of fish he is supposed to be checking for quality. He is more interested in the weather, reminiscing, and the tightly-clad women we can see going into the store's front entrance. It's only my first day with him, but he appears to have come to terms with his workaholism.

We go back inside, and I am introduced to the junior manager, an Italian fellow named Ippolito. Ippolito is making the schedule for the fish department. It turns out there are only three people who work the fish counter, and I am the third, which explains my rapid and untested hiring. I thought they were looking for an ass-kisser with a good haircut, and it turns out they wanted someone, anyone. These two chiefs were obviously desperate for an Indian. I become more confident of my status.

As I am putting the crates away in the freezer, I hear pieces of a conversation between Ippolito and John. Ippolito is asking for a raise, I gather, and John is hemming and hawing. I shut the freezer door so they won't think I'm eavesdropping. I've seen this scene before, and I already know how this is going to turn out.

When the fish has been neatly stacked in the freezer, I come outside, and Ippolito is alone, filleting flounder. I watch his hands, trying to pick up silent pointers on fish cutting. No doubt he has done this before. His nimble hands remove the meat from the bones of each fish with a few deft strokes. When I look up, I realize his cheeks are flushed with rage.

“How much you make?” he asks me, still cutting the fish. He has a thick Italian accent but his English is good. “How much they pay you?”

There's no way around it. It's a direct question, and I figure he's a manager, he's entitled to the information. “Twelve dollars an hour.”

“Motherfucker,” he says. “That motherfucker.”

I nod sympathetically.

“You cut fish good? You better than me?”

“Uh, no.”

“But you cut fish before, right?”

“Sure.” Worst comes to worst, I can always claim a blow to the head or carpal tunnel syndrome to explain my suddenly lost abilities.

“You cut flounder good?”

“Flounder … that's always been a problem for me.”

“Because they are flat, right? Flat fish are hard.” Ippolito is smiling now, enjoying the brotherhood of us fishcutters, those who know that flat fish are hard. He hands me the knife. “Cut me a flounder.”

It's go time. I've seen him do at least ten of them, and I have a built in excuse—flat fish are hard—so I dive right in. I pull a flounder out of the box, insert the knife under the skin the same way I have seen him do it ten times, and the knife strikes a bone right away. I wriggle it around, but I can't get the knife away from the bone.

“Here, let me show you.” My secret is out, and Ippolito seems to have expected it. He slowly inserts the knife, makes a few deft movements, and lifts the meat from the bones. Like magic. He hands me another flounder, and again I strike bone.

“You cut fish before?” he asks again.

“Sure. In Alaska. Long time ago.”

“Alaska fish, maybe they are different,” he says, his voice fatherly and kind. A light goes on as I suddenly realize the situation. Ippolito knows damned well Alaskan fish and Atlantic fish are pretty much the same. He's not a bad guy, I figure. He knows I can't do the job, but I imagine they've been working him to death the last few weeks, especially if he was teamed with Workaholic John, and he just wants some time off. He's willing to work with me just to keep me here. After all, I'm polite and I have a good haircut. And if I turn out to be a complete fuck-up, hell, he didn't hire me, John did.

And so I'm in.

Ippolito spends several hours showing me how to cut fish, and he tells me his life story. He's been cutting fish since he was a kid, growing up in a small fishing village in Italy. He came to America three years ago, married an American girl, and got a job cutting fish here in Scarsdale, New York.

They hired Ippolito at eight dollars an hour, probably because he couldn't speak English very well back then. Despite the fact that he is now almost fluent, his wages haven't gone up that much. Two years later, he now makes eleven. Then they hired me for twelve.

Instead of giving him a raise, John then decided to give Ippolito a title, junior manager. The responsibilities consist of making the schedule for one person, me. Basically, his managerial perk is to schedule me whenever he doesn't want to work, but he is limited because he is still getting an hourly wage. He needs to give himself a decent living, and he can't give me overtime. The Market is not going to give me eighteen dollars an hour to mangle fish. In fact, they're not going to give me eighteen dollars an hour for anything, ever. They have some kind of computer system, I am told, where lights and buzzers go off in the payroll office the minute anyone receives overtime, and regional managers and district managers and various other executives fly in from the golf course and start screaming. So Ippolito's big perk is to schedule me Sunday mornings, which he has been working for the last two years, and now he can finally go to church with his wife.

Ippolito is a loyal, competent, hardworking man and I am an incompetent drifter making more money than he is. The Market will eagerly pay security guards to watch monitors on six-figure security systems to make sure that we don't steal three-dollar bottles of salad dressing, but they won't give this man the money he deserves, even when he politely asks for it. To them it is a game. How little can we get him to work for? Poor wop, barely speaks English, let's crap on his head from a great height. Ah, look, our best employee makes less than that haircut we just hired, let's make him a manager. And everything is all right. Ippolito 's wife is pregnant; he's not going anywhere. I don't have a wife, and no one else wants my job, so I get anything I want.

I respect Ippolito for knowing he is getting screwed, and I respect him more for mentioning it to me. A lot of people in his situation would abuse me because I got lucky. He could spend all day complaining to John about how incompetent I am, trying to get me fired, but where would that leave him? Working Sunday mornings again. Then the Market would eventually hire someone else, maybe someone who cuts fish as well as he does, and then he'd have to feel threatened about losing his manager position. Me, I'm a nice, easy-going guy, I do what I'm told, I work Sunday mornings, and best of all, I'm incompetent. I'm no threat to anyone. I'm fitting in nicely.

The next few days go by peacefully. By my second day, I am trusted to run the entire fish counter by myself. Ippolito comes in at seven, cuts most of the fish, and leaves at three o'clock. The Market closes at seven, and there is an hour of closing duty, so both of us manage an eight-hour shift. Best of all, I only have to spend the first three hours of my shift with a supervisor. After that, I am on my own.

Like most modern itinerant workers, I've waited tables for long enough to be proficient at customer service, and am soon on the fast track to success at the Market. Zoe comes by and notices me chatting amiably with some regulars, who make a point of telling her what a splendid individual I am. She doesn't even mention that I am still wearing the same shirt she told me to exchange during our first meeting. After nine days, I get my first paycheck, over $400 for a forty-hour week, and rush out and buy an oxford. I'm one of the team.

My regular customers take to me. One of them brings me a pen, an expensive ink pen with elegant designs on it. He owns a company that makes them, he tells me. Later in the day, I am over at the coffee stand and notice that the Market sells those pens. Maybe his company sells them to the Market, or maybe the guy's just bringing me some of the Market's stock as a gift. I don't know. At any rate, it's the thought that counts.

A few evenings later, I'm minding my own business behind the fish stand. It has been a slow day, a clock-watching day, and I am eating a chocolate bar while doing inventory. Zoe comes back behind the stand.

“Hi,” she says brusquely. “Where'd you get that chocolate bar?”

“I bought it,” I say. I have carefully read the Market policy on eating lunch and taking breaks and cigarette smoking, all of which they'd prefer you didn't do, but if you must, there are ten pages of guidelines on exactly how. I know them all by heart. I'm a lunch-eating, break-taking, cigarette-smoking machine, seeing as I'm stuck back here in a very unbusy store by myself for eight hours at a time. I know that all items bought from the store by employees during their shift have to be accompanied by a receipt. “I have my receipt right here.”

She nods without looking at it. “Where did you get this pen?”

“A customer gave it to me.”

“He gave it to you?” Her eyes narrow with suspicion.

“He said he owns the factory where they're made.”

“This is one of our pens.”

“He gave it to me.”

“Do you have a receipt?”

“He didn't give me one.”

She looks at me as if I am the worst-lying pen-stealer she has ever encountered, and shrugs and walks off.

After that, things go downhill quickly. The next day, we get a rare rush, seven or eight people at the stand at a time. I have everything organized, waiting on people as quickly as I can. They have formed a line, and I get them one at a time. Zoe comes up to the stand.

“Wait on that lady,” she tells me, pointing at an ill-tempered older woman, as I am wrapping an order for the lady in front of her. I assume Zoe will finish wrapping the order, so I put it down and approach the next lady.

“Can I help you?” I ask the ill-tempered one.

“Yes, I'd like two pounds of salmon steak.”

“Hey!” yells the one I was just waiting on. I look around and realize that Zoe has wandered away, but is still watching me. The lady's unwrapped order is sitting where I left it. I go over and start wrapping again.

“Why did you ask me if you could help me before you were finished with her?” howls the ill-tempered one.

“All I want is my order,” the one waiting for the wrapped package cries out with exaggerated patience. Other ladies at the back of the line start rolling their eyes and wandering off.

After it is quiet again, Zoe comes up to me. “I don't think you should be alone back here,” she tells me. “You can't handle it by yourself. I'll tell Ippolito.” She looks at me a moment. “Is that an oxford?”

I'm not sure exactly what I've done to draw her attention, but she's got her teeth in and she won't let go. She starts with me on a daily basis.

“You'd better get back there,” she tells me one day when I'm going out to smoke. “We've got customers coming in.”

I've been back there for five hours and sold one piece of fish. I have already asked one of the butchers to watch my stand for a few minutes. We take turns. When I come back, he goes.

“Rocker's back there,” I say.

“I'd feel more comfortable if you were back there too.”

I go back. Smokers are always fair game. Rocker smokes his cigarette in the freezer with all the meat. I still care, just enough, to decide this is unsanitary. It's also freezing.

Rocker the butcher has been putting up with Zoe for over a year, and he doesn't care about anything anymore. He is a lifetime butcher who recently lost his own business to bankruptcy, and Zoe has been trying to get him fired since John hired him. He doesn't say “Have a nice day” enough and never wears an oxford.

That night, Rocker and I start closing the displays down at ten to eight. Zoe comes over and screams, “Eight o'clock! That's when we close! Eight o'clock! Refill the ice tubs!”

I have already emptied two ten-gallon ice tubs, and she wants me to refill them for the final ten minutes of the shift. This involves going downstairs to the ice machine, a process that takes ten minutes. By the time I'm done, it will be eight o'clock.

I shrug and go downstairs and refill the ice tubs and throw the ice away as soon as I have returned to the fish stand.

“Good,” she says.

“It's just going to get worse,” Rocker says, while he takes a wrapped pork loin, slides it down his pants, and winks at me.

And so I learn to steal stuff.

I've been there long enough to know where the cameras are, and I devise a system. One of my jobs is to use leftover fish to make free samples of various dishes, which I leave out for the customers to give them ideas on how the fish can be prepared. This job requires that I wander around the store and take items off the shelves, sauces and marinades, and take them back behind the counter, away from the cameras, to use in the preparation of the dish.

I wander around the store and grab anything I can get my hands on. I grab soy sauce, bags of coffee beans, yogurt, chocolate bars, more pens, and stockpile them in the back at the end of each shift. I grab tape, staples, even fish knives.