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Job Number Thirteen, Deli Expert Take 3

By this time, deli work was a piece of cake for me. I interviewed with the grocery store manager at the only grocery store in our town, a family owned chain of stores throughout the regional area in my state. I was offered the job right away and given my uniform, too. It had been a very long time since I wore a uniform to a job (since my very first job at the fast food place, actually). At my previous job of retail, we had a uniform to a certain extent, as we were required to wear a specific color. But this was different – they gave me the shirt I had to wear every day I was working at the store, plus an apron since I was working with food.

My first day at the deli was funny. The thing about working in a deli is that you learn by doing the job. They can’t really explain how to use a slicer all that much or how to fill a customer’s order. They just say, “Okay, wait on customers.” And they left to do their own jobs. At least I already knew how to slice lunchmeats. I just had to learn that store’s particular way of doing other things like making sandwiches and trays and things. It wasn’t a difficult job, but it was very, very busy. That appealed to me, of course. Ever since the hectic movie theater, I craved the bustle of a busy shift. I’d much rather keep busy for five hours than stand around waiting for customers (like I did as a cashier).

One new thing for me was dealing with seafood, which was another department we controlled. (Who had the idea to combine deli with seafood? Strange combination there) I love eating seafood, so I found it interesting to learn all about it. Eventually, I’d wish I didn’t know as much, but when I started the job, I liked that part of it.

My coworkers were certainly interesting at this job. We had the dayshift crew who were seasoned professionals, and then the night-crew made up mostly of teenagers and oddballs. I was a switch-hitter, I guess (if that’s even the correct term. I’m so not a sports person), working both shifts wherever they needed someone. The day shift and the night shift didn’t like one another. That was made clear to me on my first week. The day shift thought the night shift were lazy and didn’t care, and the night shift thought the day shift was lazy and left them all of the work to do. Of course, neither shift had it correct, but I was new and didn’t want to get in the middle of anything. I just kept quiet.

I was actually given a nickname at this job. At least at first, a manager started calling me, “Smiley,” because I guess I smiled a lot. I have a habit of wanting to say hello to everyone who walks by me, so that works out well with customer service, too. Customer service jobs always have that rule that if a customer is within a certain number of feet of you (one job was ten, another was eight), you have to greet them in some way. I’ve never known anyone to fully follow this rule… It’s like companies want customers to leave the store annoyed at how many times they were greeted. I don’t know about everyone else, but when a clerk keeps interrupting me to ask if I’m finding everything okay, I get so annoyed! I want to shout, “I would be finding everything okay if you’d just leave me alone so I can look for it!”

I’m not the type to ask questions at the first sign of challenge or difficulty. I prefer to try to work things out on my own first. That gets me into trouble, believe me. It’s just that when I was growing up, I’d ask my parents something and they’d try to get me to work it out on my own before they’d just tell me the answer. I think it helped me in a lot of ways, so I don’t get why jobs don’t like me trying to figure out things on my own. I guess it’s faster if they just tell me the answer, but then I’m not learning anything.

Maybe that’s my problem. I’ve spent so much time trying to work in industries where it’s not good to “learn,” but it’s ideal to blindly follow.

One thing I loved about the deli job was that they let me do things my own way. They had a basic set-up for a lot of things, like making sandwiches and things, but they also let me do my own thing. They trusted me to get the job done, and it was nice having freedom. I also had the chance to be creative, with making party trays. At another deli job (where we made trays for large numbers of people) the owner never let anyone else make them. She did go to school to learn how to do those things, so I totally understood where she was coming from (and honestly, it’s a little nerve-racking, hoping the customer likes the finished product), but at this job, they trusted me to do it.

I also learned how to write names on cakes because customers would often come to get a cake after the bakery department had closed for the day. There were times other employees wrote the wrong names on cakes or their handwriting was absolutely horrid. Customers complained and then got free cakes. I never had a complaint, thankfully. At one point, they wanted to train me to decorate cakes and to work in the bakery department as well as the deli department, but in the end, I couldn’t handle both schedules. The bakery started around 4am but I worked mostly evening shifts in the deli.