Sure, I'll Join Your Cult by Maria Bamford;

Author:Maria Bamford;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2023-09-05T00:00:00+00:00

There’s probably a solution to the nonworking WiFi, but I get it, Shayna. Let it ride.

And yes, you can slide by doing a not-great job, especially in Minnesota. Customers and colleagues will be disappointed, but it is unlikely that they will say anything to your face. Los Angeles has higher expectations (a tighter, more skilled job market, millions of people who know how to show up, how to work, and how to be pleasant while doing that work).

Los Angeles food service is at professional-sports level. Each citizen of LA—whether you are ordering Cheetos from a food truck or vegan caviar from a golden vitrine—everyone in LA County has the right to request sides, on the side of the side, less of this, more of that, and FAST. People on the coasts send food back. These big-city types have had the best and they don’t have TIME. They may have endless patience in the wait for their dreams to come true, but not for waiting more than three minutes on a triple-shot cappuccino, “bone dry.” Up until my move to California, it had never occurred to me to speak up if I got half-frozen chicken tenders. They’re cooked at the factory, right? If some kid in the kitchen is having a bad day at work, why make it worse by sending back what they so nicely slid out for me with a piece of their pretty, long brown hair on a plate?

After my Space Travel stopped, I needed money. I tried to get back into food service with one (1) graveyard shift at a twenty-four-hour deli in Century City, but upon greeting a table full of Westside teens with orders including essay-length drink requests and single maraschino cherries on the side, I quit. From there, I applied to a coffee shop in the Little Ethiopia/Fairfax district of LA, and my anxious presence was almost immediately recognized as what you might call “unabled.” But the bakery owners didn’t fire me. They allowed me to stay on working after hours, in the back, packaging brownies, croissants, and lemon bars for this new thing called Starbucks. It was me and five young strong guys from Honduras and El Salvador, loading trucks. I knew enough Spanish to understand that they had a nickname for me, Cara de Cebolla, which means “Onion Face.” Ha-ha!

One of the guys at the coffee shop, whom I made friends with, was named Bernicio. He was going to community college and took two buses to get to this bakery for work at night. One night, Bernicio and I were spanglishing and he asked, “So, wait, you have a college degree?”

“Yes.”

“And you’re working here?”

“Yes.”

“Por QUÉ???” (Why?)

Bernicio was pissed at me for not taking advantage of every advantage I had been given, which included every advantage. And he was correct.

I was an idiot.

At the same time that I was working at the bakery, my car was falling apart and I couldn’t pay my rent to the pimplord. On top of that, in an effort to have a good time, I got a pretty nasty STD from a fellow space traveler.

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