The very first ‘nice’ job I got was at the Macy’s Cellar, which wasn’t exactly a full service restaurant although there were fast busboys in white shirts and bowties running around cleaning tables. It was kind of
nice, slightly expensive place to eat where the guests get in line and tell the guy behind the glass, who at that time was me…I think I was maybe 19 years old…and you tell me what you’re having and then you stay in line listening to the piped in shopping music and the cumulative roar of the conversations of diner’s voices. It also served as a kind of employee lunchroom if you had the scratch and the time to get through the line and pay at the register.

The menu consisted of quiche of the day, popovers, cinnamon rolls, Chinese chicken salad, tuna salad, taco salad, chef’s salad, Cobb salad, and all sorts of dated and out of fashion salads in great big glass bowls full of chopped big chunks of iceberg lettuce with lots of ranch dressing or 1000 island dressing and different sandwiches like Monte Cristo and lox and cucumber with butter and this sort of thing and my job was to be the first cook the guests would see and ask,

“What can I get for you today?”

“I want a Chinese chicken salad.”

“Great. Anything else?”

Remembering, big smile, while simultaneously filling the glass bowl with lettuce and fried won tons, still fawning over the customer, and doing it fast like she needed the salad yesterday and I’d turn to the next cook and say, “Chinese, dude” and slide the bowl down to him. He puts on chopped chicken breast and canned Mandarin oranges and chopped green onions and some other bland and canned and fried ingredients of no particular importance. You wonder about what Chinese people thought about such a salad…of course we also served burgers and French dips with au jus…

“I’ll have a hamburger, medium.”

“Great. Would you like cheese on that? Gruyere, Ementhaller, cheddar, white cheddar, pepper jack, American cheese, blue cheese.”

“Do you have provolone?”

“We do have provolone.”

The customer generally couldn’t hear a lot of the kitchen talk because there was so much residual noise between the imitation music and the voices of conversation in line and at the tables behind them. Plus, the kitchen cooks and sandwich makers are all constantly giving and/or receiving all kinds of constant verbal cues and instruction…Gimme that…On your left….I’m behind… Behind…Right over…behind….on your right…Yo… hand me the mayonnaise, Yo…They’re making all kind of sandwiches, turkey on sourdough, and half sandwich/soup and soup and half salad combos with French onion soup and with the melted gruyere on top of the crouton on caramelized onions and salty powdered beef broth, which was actually pretty tasty but not very nutritious…very popular…and patty melts and tuna melts…eggs and bacon in the mornings, and etc…ad infinitum…