Concerning Pickles, Salary, and Sour Faculty

One summer long ago I completed a typical teenager rite of passage: I got a job at a McDonald's. This particular franchised store had been bought by a wealthy Texas businessman who gave it to his wife as a toy to relieve her boredom. The store was located in the middle of an affluent neighborhood in Houston, evidenced by the line of Cadillacs in the drive-thru lane. The wife was a rule-driven perfectionist who spent big chunks of her day scrutinizing everything the employees did, full of criticism. I never could swirl vanilla soft serve into a cone elegantly enough to please that woman. It was the worst job I ever had, mostly because no one in management believed that I had a brain or could be trusted. Let me give you an example.

McDonald's isn't where people go to "have it their way." The menu items have standard condiments, and cooks assemble the sandwiches even before anyone orders them. Even so, employees can key in "no onions" or "extra ketchup" if someone doesn't mind waiting for the customized burger.

One day, a spoiled brat dressed for the tennis courts entered my line and ordered a Quarter Pounder with extra pickles. "By extra, I mean lots," she informed me. I surmised that she was a repeat customer who knew the rules at this particular McDonald's, where extra meant four pickles instead of two. "If I don't get lots of pickles," she threatened, "I'll have to see the manager."

I keyed in extra pickles and yelled back to the cook, "That's a Quarter Pounder with lots of pickles!"

The cook's response was "Extra mean fo'."

"If she doesn't get lots of pickles, she's going to complain," I emphasized.

"Extra mean fo'," the cook repeated.

I couldn't blame him, really; that was the rule. If the owner spotted a customer chewing on a burger piled high with pickles, the cook would pay.

When the special order arrived on the rack, the girl asked, "Are there lots of pickles?" I pretended not to hear her question, wrapped the Quarter Pounder, and placed it on her tray. I had done my part to please her. I hated the job and didn't care one way or the other if she was happy.

Spoiled Brat didn't even bother to take the tray to a table, unwrapping the burger right in front of me. She lifted the bun and counted the four sad pickles. "I ordered lots," she said angrily. "I want to speak to someone in charge."

I got the manager, a self-important ex-jock. He brought the owner in tow. I watched as the two of them wrestled with the situation. On the one hand, Spoiled Brat was a little bitch wielding pickles as her pathetic source of power [She looked smart enough to know all that salt would make her blow up like a watermelon]. I could tell the owner thought that this girl wasn't old enough to question the Exalted Franchise Handbook that said four pickles qualified as "extra." On the other hand, the girl was not asking for anything unreasonable.

Was it worth all the drama over a condiment on which the success of the store certainly did not depend? Eventually the three of them negotiated a Quarter Pounder with six pickles. Of course, by this time, the original burger had gotten cold and subsequently trashed. Despite that financial loss, the owner never would have considered disobeying the franchise manual and allowing the cooks to put six pickles on a sandwich if a counter person shouted back "Make that LOTS!" None of us could be trusted; we were all out to ruin her profit margin.

I was reminded of my one summer working at McDonald's during the department grading of the freshman composition final exams. One topic this semester was "A job I wouldn't wish on anyone." I evaluated many compelling essays on totally sucky jobs that these poor kids do for minimum wage. They are told when they can eat and use the bathroom, what to wear, how long they must stand in the hot sun. The most memorable paper explained the duties of a ground traffic controller at the international airport. Those poor folks apparently spend eight hours a day on fiery hot asphalt, breathing car exhaust and suffering the abuse and danger of irritated drivers trying to pick up passengers at the terminals. By the end of the grading, I was feeling really lucky to be teaching English as a source of income. Unfortunately, a vocal group of my colleagues do not share my position.

After the grading, I was accosted in the department office by one of our more alarmist professors. She wanted to know if I had received the questionnaire for another colleague's "research" project. I had in fact gotten the email, read the questions on the attachment, and immediately deleted the file. The "researcher" didn't want to discover a yet unknown answer to a question; he just wanted confirmation that he was already right. It wasn't research; it was biting the hand that fed us. Here is an item from the questionnaire:

When the college's compensation plan was first implemented, I had ...

• A high level of confidence that the president could deliver on his salary promises.
• Some confidence that the president could deliver on his salary promises.
• Minimal confidence that the president could deliver on his salary promises.
• No confidence that the president could deliver on his salary promises.

Yes, despite a 10 percent raise last year and another 5 percent this year, my colleagues still aren't happy. In their heads, they had already spent the second 10 percent we were supposed to get this year, making plans to put pools into their backyards or trade a Ford for a BMW. They all want to live as though they are lawyers without having to put in the long days and face the stress of billable hours.

Meanwhile, I went back to my air-conditioned office, decorated in my quirky style, and began working on the changes I am making to the research class for the fall. I will be teaching this class in an entirely new manner, which means that I will be altering how I spend much of my day. I can add brand new assignments like stacks of pickles, and I don't even have to ask permission! No one doubts that I have a brain, and everyone knows that I will behave in a manner that agrees with department outcomes. The trust and freedom my administrators give me are priceless, and a fifteen percent raise over two years ain't half bad either. I really don't understand why faculty complain so much.

Trimming the Bush

Okay, I admit it: In a few areas of my life I still procrastinate. I go too long between haircuts. I might have 11,000 miles on the car before I take it in for its 10,000-mile service. Sometimes the basenjis get their Heartgard on the third or the fourth of the month instead of the first. And I usually let the front bushes get a little "Amazon" before trimming them back. Such was the case until this past weekend:


In some ways I'm happy that I waited as long as I did because I was able to take a couple of interesting pictures. I finally bought a book to help me with my photo woes; the subtitle really caught my attention: Simple Techniques for Taking Better Pictures. Its author, John Hedgecoe, claims that photographers have to "see the potential in a subject." So I took the camera outside and shot this:


I used the "portrait" setting so that I got the crisp foreground in contrast to the blurred background. I like this photo because it looks like a serpent or a sea monster tentacle slithering towards the viewer. And the bush was indeed acting like a dragon: snatching at the car as I pulled into the garage, slapping at my face as I walked past it to the front stairs.

Not everything about the bush was reptilian, though. I also took this picture which reminds me of a flock of ducks heading south for the winter:


What I like about these pictures is that I took them on my residential street in the middle of a sprawling metropolis, but I could say that I shot them during a trek through El Yunque and no one would know that I was lying!

After the camera came the clippers, reducing my "rainforest" to landscaping that makes my neighbors happy:


The basenjis, meanwhile, sat on the back porch, hot and bored:

Elizabeth's Kryptonite

This morning I made the mistake of accompanying Elizabeth to Publix. Everyone has a weakness, and Elizabeth's is shopping for groceries. She promised, "This will only take half an hour. All I need is some breakfast and lunch stuff for next week." I knew better than to believe those words. I can shop an entire grocery store in fifteen minutes, from the time I cross the threshold to the moment I tell the bagger, "No thanks, I can take the cart to the car myself." Elizabeth, however, takes two hours to food shop.

Usually we make the long drive to Whole Foods together. [Post-cancer, I prefer as many organic items as possible.] That store is so small and cramped that we are hurried along by the tight aisles, teetering displays, and bumper-car mentality of the other customers. But this Saturday I didn't need much and Elizabeth wanted big, firm cherries instead of the overpriced, bruised, drippy organic ones from Whole Foods. So against my better judgment, I accompanied her to Publix. I knew as soon as we walked in that I was in trouble as the wide aisles, high ceiling, and perfect pyramids of fresh, firm fruits and vegetables called, siren-like, even to me. I thought to myself, Wow, I can buy some of these beautiful yellow plantains, some of these gorgeous sweet potatoes, and a package of plump pork chops. What a meal that would be!

But we are all born with super powers, and one of my gifts is to block the evil rays of product placement, "shopper" music, and flattering lighting. I knew that the plantains would sit on the counter until tiny flies start to buzz around them, that the sweet potatoes would turn into puddles of filthy juice in the vegetable bin of the refrigerator, and that even if I tossed the pork chops into the freezer, another hurricane would come, I'd lose power for eight days as I did for Charley, and the chops would end up in a garbage bag at the end of the driveway, headed for the city dump.

Food displays are Elizabeth's kryptonite. They rob her of motion and power, make her a zombie who can squeeze the same lime for five minutes. Elizabeth had, for example, hotdogs on her shopping list. Because she was born in the Bronx, there is only one hotdog as far as she is concerned: Sabrett. Although the decision was already made in her mind, I had to shiver in front of the sandwich meat case watching her pick up first Nathan's, then Hebrew National, reading the labels and gauging the plumpness of the cellophane packages. "It's going to be the Sabretts. Just throw the damn package in the cart," I growled.

The cart was another problem. I didn't bother to get one of my own because Elizabeth had assured me, "Just a few things." But then when she started loading up the rack underneath, having already threatened to crush the five things I had decided to buy with her six-packs of water, I went to get my own. We crawled along each aisle, Elizabeth choosing items she will never cook for what will inevitably be hell week, the last week of the semester, when we're just too exhausted to do anything but order pizza or go out. I saw this future, but mesmerized by the Publix displays, she couldn't stop choosing foolish purchases.

Just call me Grocery Girl. Faster than the express check-out lane. More powerful than the seductive lure of rotisserie chicken. Able to skip entire aisles with a single authoritative push of the cart.

The Cockroach

Mrs. Perfect owns a silky terrier named Muffin, Button or Zipper—I can never remember. I call the dog "the Cockroach." She's the color of a giant palmetto bug and scurries around so quickly and erratically that she seems to have six legs. Mrs. Perfect also has a white picket fence, the slats of which are spaced widely enough that the Cockroach can escape, which she does daily. The dog then runs across the street to leave pee-mail on my lawn for the basenjis and, if the cat is out, yap at and chase Felix. Eventually, Mrs. Perfect will realize that her dog is loose and stands on her steps to shout, "Come here!" a command the Cockroach ignores. Then Mrs. Perfect will come stomping after the dog, shouting, "Come here! Come here now!" which the Cockroach believes is an invitation to play and so initiates a chase down the street. It's obvious who is the alpha in that relationship.

On most days, I find the Cockroach merely annoying. If she squeezes through the fence when I am working in the front yard, I have to tolerate her standing in the street barking at me. If I want to walk the basenjis, I have to wait until Mrs. Perfect finally catches the Cockroach so that my dogs don't mistake the little mutt as prey. Yesterday, however, was different.

I was watching the news when Yo-Yo and Bug ran to the front window, their attention fixed on the drama unfolding outside. The Cockroach was loose again; Mrs. Perfect was chasing her over my front lawn. This time when the Cockroach came to terrorize Felix, Felix was already in a stand-off with Joey, the neighbor's cat. The situation was tense, tails low and twitching, ears plastered against each cat's head. The Cockroach came roaring up anyway, with Mrs. Perfect shouting, "No! NO! Come HERE!" One of the cats, I didn't see which, wheeled around and swatted the Cockroach, startling her enough that Mrs. Perfect could finally scoop up the dog and take her home.

When I took Yo-Yo out for her walk later that evening, Mrs. Perfect [who must have been watching for me?] ran out on her steps and shouted across the street, "Did you hear me yelling under your windows?"

"Yes." I thought, silly me, I was about to get an apology for the noise and trespassing.

"Muffin [or Button or Zipper] was after your cats ..." [Because I'm not married, Mrs. Perfect believes every cat in the neighborhood belongs to me.]

I started to say not to worry, that the cats could take care of themselves, when Mrs. Perfect added "... but they got her." Matthew, her son, wailed, "Her face is bleeding!"

It was then I realized that the whole situation, in Mrs. Perfect's eyes, was my fault. If I didn't have a cat who liked to lie on the front sidewalk, her dog wouldn't have gotten scratched because, of course, it wasn't her fault that her perfect white picket fence wasn't escape proof or that she had no control over the Cockroach. There was no problem with her dog in my yard terrorizing the cats, but it wasn't okay that the cats defended themselves.

I expected that today she would come over demanding that I pay a vet bill, but she must have told the story to enough people whose sympathy was with me because I never got the visit. It's too bad that spraying the yard perimeter with Raid won't keep that damn dog out.

Grass Seed Defiant

Weather-wise, Sunday evening was a perfect night. The afternoon thunderstorms had blown through much earlier than usual, so the sky was nearly cloudless and the humidity relatively low. The dogs and I were out on the back patio fighting over the two chairs [whoever got up to get a drink or chase a squirrel lost his/her place until someone new got up to sniff the bushes or check the time]. At one point, I tried to shove Bug off, but all he would do was collapse even deeper into the cushion and flash his white belly to be rubbed. So I went inside and got the camera. The evening light sparkled on the smooth, green, very long grass blades, and I wanted to see if I could capture the moment.


When I saw the picture above, I thought immediately of the Francisco Goya painting The Third of May.


On Monday afternoon, the Hurley Men, who service my lawn, came with their big mowers and "executed" that defiant grass with its revolutionary agenda—just as Napoleon's troops did the Spanish rebels in the painting. But I know all of those individual blades, mulched and crisping in the hot sun, have become martyrs who inspire the survivors to challenge my oppression, rise up over ankles and the concrete patio edge, and shout, "It's a good thing you don't live in a neighborhood with a homeowners association!"

Photo Woes

I am used to having the upper hand in most of my relationships—especially with pieces of technology. Computers tremble when I tap an inept user on the shoulder and say, "Let me sit there and see what I can do." Mighty TechnIsis can make those machines behave.

Whenever I reach for my new digital camera, however, it constantly reminds me that I am as unskilled a photographer as I am a brain surgeon. I had wanted to take magnificent portraits of my dogs, for one thing, but I usually end up with something like the one below when I load the images into my computer:



So today I decided to shoot the hibiscuses in Elizabeth's front yard.




It's hard, I've learned, to fuck up flowers.

Would You Like Some Coffee with Your Sweet'N Low?

Every Summer B, I teach two classes for a program designed to give first-generation minority students a head start when classes begin in the fall. I love working for this program because of the homogeneity of the students. Community colleges attract everyone from dual-enrollment high schoolers to seventy-year-old life-long learners. The students in my Summer B courses, however, are all cocky seventeen-year-olds who believe their recent high school graduation makes them incredibly sophisticated.

Observing these students is great fun because so many of their experiences are brand new. Most of them are sexually active; some of them have the babies to prove it. Many of them have already begun their experimentation with drugs, alcohol, and outrageous interest rates on credit cards. But they still have so much to learn!

Take, for instance, Genelle. I had booked a computer classroom in the Learning Resource Center (our fancy way of saying library). The provost built a cafe on the first floor, and in the spirit of Borders or Barnes & Noble, students can have drinks with them anywhere in the building, even the classrooms full of expensive technology. Genelle had purchased a large coffee to bring to class and grabbed a handful of Sweet'N Low packets for flavor. Seventeen packets, at least. Maybe the cafe was so busy that no one had stocked the regular sugar and Genelle just didn't realize there was a difference. Maybe she was concerned about her weight and making different food choices. Since these students consume sugar in all forms—chugging Red Bull and Pepsi, running to the bookstore during break for Zingers and M&Ms, bringing Ziplock bags full of Twix and Froot Loops—seventeen packets of real sugar would not have surprised me.

What became obvious, though, was that Genelle had never used Sweet'N Low in her short life, for I watched her tear open one pink packet at a time, dump it into the coffee, and stir before she reached for another. It never occurred her to taste the coffee between packets. She has probably never heard that salting an entree before taking a first bite is one way to signal to a corporate boss that an employee doesn't make smart decisions. I was too dumbfounded to yell, "Genelle, for the love of god, stop!"

Genelle swept all of the empty packets into her palm and threw them in the trash can. I started class; she blew on the coffee to cool it. Everyone knew when Genelle took the first sip because her "Gah!" startled us all. Luckily for her computer, she sloshed coffee on her jeans instead of the keyboard.

I don't remember when I learned that artificial sweetener packed more of a punch than real sugar. I do know that I would carefully taste anything new I encountered now. It's a shame, really, that I have outgrown all of those "sweet" surprises that youth still get to enjoy!