Factotum

I quit my job at Subway over an argument with my boss. I was 18 years-old, had graduated from high school early, and worked at Subway as a second job in an effort to pay for college expenses. My primary job was as a bank teller at Harris Bank on Roselle Road. This was before there were ten Subway shops in town and before there was a bank on every corner. One of the girls I worked with at the bank was dating a guy (who was old enough to be her father) who was opening a Subway franchise. We were friendly at work and she asked me if I’d like to earn some extra money on my days off. I had worked at food places before, so I knew the industry a little bit.

My first job was as a fry cook at the Sizzler, which had a salad bar and an all-you-can-eat fried shrimp dinner. I would turn over what seemed like hundreds of dripping, greasy baskets over each night. I quit that job one night in the middle of a Friday rush. The manager was yelling at me that I was going too slow. I didn’t like the way he was talking to me, so I took off my apron, threw it on the floor and said, “You fry these damn shrimp then,” and left. My mother told me he had called three times in the five minutes it took for me to drive home.

Working at the Sizzler was way too much of an eye opener for me about what happens at a restaurant. One night, again during a busy rush, a guy asked for his steak to be cooked well done. He ordered the biggest, thickest steak we had. The cook was not happy. He knew this steak would take forever to cook well. In an effort to hurry the process, he put the steak on the floor, and jumped on it with both feet. In his defense (if there is one), the steak was covered in plastic wrap.

I also worked at a Chinese restaurant in the mall. My primary job was to chop the heads off of ducks (frozen, but whole) for the house special. I had this large clever-like knife, and I had to cut the head off at just the right angle to penetrate some bone. I was sure I heard tiny frozen screams each time I severed a head.

I left that job in a hurry, as well. My brother, Darrell, had come home from the Air Force after five years, newly married and living in our basement. A bunch of the neighborhood friends were going to the drive-in that night to hang out with him. I was scheduled to work. I wanted to go to the movies with everyone, so I lied to my manager. I told him my parents had announced that they were getting a divorce and I was moving with my mother to Arizona—that weekend. The manager felt bad for me. I played the part perfectly.

Little did I know how prophetic I was being because a year later, my parents got divorced and four years after that, I moved to Arizona (sans mother).

Whenever I eat at Subway, I think about the argument I had which resulted in my quitting. The required uniform was a subway golf shirt, black pants and black shoes. Simple enough. I went into work one evening, after a day shift at the bank, and before I went out to serve customers, the owner stopped me.

"What color are those pants?" he asked, sitting at his desk looking over some paperwork, trying to look important.

I looked down at my pants and thought to myself that it was an obvious answer. But I played along.

"Black."

"Black? Are you sure those are black? They're not dark blue?"

There were customers waiting to be served and I felt like the line of questioning was a waste of everyone's time. I actually liked making the sandwiches at Subway. Back then, they were one for the few sandwich shops around. They were certainly one of the few with a proven system like they had. They required their franchisees to order Subway supplies, one thing which was the frozen loaves they used for their "Fresh Baked Bread." Each shift I worked, I was busy baking bread. They also had a specific way you were supposed to cut the bread. It was almost like creating a scoop for the meat and toppings to sit inside.

I wanted to be on the floor helping the customers, but this guy wanted to belabor the point of color schemes. It wasn't even my store to begin with, it was his. We went back and forth for a few moments, his insistence that my pants were blue, mine being that they were, correctly, black.

He gave up after realizing that his plight was futile. I worked my shift, cleaned and closed the store, and decided I was done. I was supposed to come into work the next day, which was a Saturday. He and his girlfriend had a party to attend in the afternoon, so he asked me to come in on a day I normally did not work. By the time I was a half hour late, he began calling my house. I didn't answer, letting the machine get it instead.

All he kept saying, the three or four times he left the message was, "Where are you? You're supposed to be here working. I'm supposed to be at a party. Where are you?"
The following Monday, I went to the bank, prepared to hear from the girlfriend about my absence. The only thing she said to me when she saw me was, "You're done there. Bring your shirt in tomorrow."

Over the years, I'd have jobs that came and went in similar fashions.

The job as a hotel operator at the famous, "Purple Hyatt" ended badly. I had to answer the phone with a perky, "It's a wonderful day at the Hyatt Lincolnwood; how may I direct your call?" I worked the 7a-3:30p summer shift. A tough shift for a 21 year-old who was about to go into his final year at college. I just stopped showing up because it got harder and harder to wake up so early.

I worked the night shift for three weeks at the Hamilton Hotel in Itasca. My job was to set-up meeting rooms for the next day. I had to wear a light tan shirt and brown pants which, together, looked like parts of a Marine uniform. I'd get that from people sometimes when I stopped at the White Hen for coffee on my way to work. People would "hoo-ha" me. At first, I corrected them, but after it happened three times the first week, I just let it go with a nod and a smile. That job was hard work. I could never get used to sleeping during the day and working through the night.
The manager was Jimmy Vanacora. He was one of my best friends from the time I was about ten until I was 13. Jimmy was a workhorse who made his employees work for four hours without a break, jam all of their day's worth of mandatory breaks together during lunch, and then remain working until our shift ended. It was brutal on my feet. I couldn't find a pair of shoes that would keep my feet from killing me at the end of the day. I couldn't take it anymore and quit that job one Friday night, again over a night out with friends. I actually quit the job from a pay phone at the drive-in. Jimmy wasn't happy and I haven't seen him since.

I've been a dishwasher, a bouncer, a tax code filer, a public works guy, a hot dog slinger, a social worker, a full time volunteer. Not all of the jobs ended badly, but most of them did. Endings typically happen because someone needs to move on.

The most ridiculous still has to be fighting over the color of my pants. I was reminded of this today when I ordered a Roasted Chicken on wheat. The guy behind the counter, in the required uniform, accidentally rang me up as an employee. This was his fourth time working at a Subway, he told me; three times at that location.

"Four times," I said, "wow. I never made it past one."

He looked at me and said, "Good for you, dude. I hate it here, but I keep coming back for more. Why, I don't know."

Amen to that.