[NB: I'm happy to report that this piece appeared on NPR.org the week of 10/21/09!] In the summer of 1981, I spent my days behind a red neon lox in the window of a kosher Jewish delicatessen 10 miles outside of midtown Manhattan. My job description included short-order cook, cashier, and in a pinch, Russian dressing-maker. Probably the best parts of that job were my cohorts, a crew of butchers, kosher deli owners, and waitresses who made the place into a screenplay that should be sitting in my drawer. Donald, the head butcher, more than a little resembled Jack Nicholson in The Shining, and brought the house down each Friday afternoon, just before shabbos, when he stood in the doorway wielding his largest butcher’s knife over his head, shrieking, “Honey, I’m home!” Even by 1981 standards, the deli was very old school, mostly catering to the alter kockers who had made urban Clifton, NJ, their home for the past 4 or 5 decades, after moving from Brooklyn to the suburbs to raise families. Morris, one of the owners, had emigrated from Poland in the 1950s and still bore a number from Auschwitz on his forearm. He said very little to 18-year-old me except, “Heideleh! Make Russian!” Which was my cue to hit the back room with the ketchup, relish, mayo and a long spoon. His partner, Nathan, another Ashkenazi, from the Ukraine, was far chattier, putting his arm around my shoulder and offering me nibbles of whatever was good that day: the kasha, the whitefish salad, the sable. By the end of the summer, he had so familiarized himself with my palate that he knew exactly what to give me as a going-away present: a ½ pound of fresh sturgeon.
Every shift, I would cook hot dogs and liver steaks, each to custom order, while listening to the customers alternately telling us jokes or kvetching about their day. The blue-haired ladies made a beeline toward Donald, who sliced their meats and flirted with them shamelessly. A few minutes later, out they strode with 3 pounds of fresh coldcuts and a tub of macaroni salad tucked under their arm, blushing, primping their hair a bit, and smiling. Their husbands, meanwhile, had stopped to hock strawberry blonde “Lyn the Shiksa,” who gave them big goyische smiles and, every once in a while, a free bar of halvah to her favorites. When business was slow, Donald and his assistant, Ronnie, would toss slabs of meat back and forth between them, or threaten to order a pepperoni pizza, making the owners come running, waving their fists in the air.
Fast forward to August 2009. I now live in suburban CA, just 2,943 miles from midtown Manhattan (and on some days, you can feel every one of them). My friend asks me to pick her up a sandwich at the Vons supermarket. I go up to a guy making sandwiches, but am greeted with a deafening silence. One of the other customers advises me that orders must be placed at a computer terminal near the front door. I stand in front of the black terminal, a selection of sandwich photos before my eyes. There is no Donald, no Morris, no Nathan—just a flat screen bearing flat sandwiches. To be fair to the machine, I am given a hundred options for my sandwich: lettuce or no, tomato or no, toasted bread or no. And since my friend has been quite specific, I get to scroll down through several screens, carefully selecting the substitutions and omissions she’s requested. The screen blankly assents to whatever I choose to add or subtract, without opining, as Donald would have, “What?! No pickle? I don’t know, Mrs. Feinberg—are you sure you’re a Jew?” Finally, I submit my order into the aethers and stroll over to the counter, where 3 young men are struggling to read a ticket and assemble one roast beef on rye. This Morris would have never abided. “Whatsa matter with you? Gimme that, I’ll make it!” the 67-year-old would have demanded. The Vons’ sandwich boys’ anxiety becomes my anxiety, and I become overwhelmed and text my friend. “There are 3 guys on your sandwich,” I say. “Well, by all means, get them off! We don’t want that!” she replies.
Then I glance around and everyone else is on their BlackBerrys, too. Whatever just happened to waiting patiently and kibitzing? I think. In Clifton, NJ, by now, grandsons would have been asked after, grandbabies’ photos would have been whipped out, Obama’s healthcare plan would have been hotly debated, and someone’s bubbe would have been trying to fix up the cute young waitress with her Schatze. Here at the Vons, the Japanese woman to my right is buried in a text message, the guy next to me has his iPod turned up so loud I can hear the Red Hot Chili Peppers' every bassline, and the mother with her 2 kids in a stroller is yapping loudly on a cell phone. We are having a war to see who can be the least present—and we are all winning.
I glance over the counter to try and grasp how this whole operation is run—where my order comes in and how it translates into a turkey sandwich on ciabatta. I see one long stream of tape issuing from another machine. A supervisor who is trying to read it to them and translate the computer jargon. And 3 guys scratching their ballcaps, who look like they would be ever so much happier if a pushy gal from just outside NYC got in their faces and said, “Hey! Turkey on a roll, no bacon, and put mayo on it, not ranch. You got that? No ranch! And hurry up, I gotta get outta here, my friend’s waiting, can you kick it out?” And I would have been just the girl to do it.
