How did I get behind the stainless-steel counter of the Cosí Sandwich Bar at Forty-fourth and Third in New York City? Writing a book about jobs. Why Cosí? Because they were the only people who would hire me. Nobody else would. Or not for more than minimum wage, which, in case you’ve forgotten, is $5.15 an hour. I thought I’d try to see what sort of job I could get if I were downsized. Remember downsizing?
Andrea hired me. She is the general manager, a slender, humorous, dark-haired woman in a Cosí shirt with a collar—collars indicate management. Sandwichmakers start at $6.25 and wear T-shirts. We all wear chinos, except for the bakers, who earn at least $6.75 an hour and are outfitted in white pants and shirts. Managers wear beige baseball hats. The rest of us wear black ones.
I gave her my résumé: Benjamin Cheever. Former journalist. Former Reader’s Digest editor.
“You haven’t worked for ten years?” she asked.
I said I’d been writing. I said I’d published three novels.
“Terrific,” she said. “This will be very different from the literary life.”
I said I knew that.
Andrea explained that I would try out first for a day, “to see if it’s something you think you want to do.” She said I should come in the next day just before 10 a.m. “I’ll give you a shirt and a hat, and I’ll put you to work. Afterward, we’ll give you a great lunch.”
I was ecstatic. I walked to Grand Central and called my wife from one of the pay phones. She had her doubts. “Don’t you suppose you’d rather work at Le Bernardin?” she said.
I exploded. “I don’t have a job at Le Bernardin,” I shouted. “I couldn’t get a job at Roy Rogers. Starbucks won’t call me back.”
I told her I had an interview at Ranch 1 in an hour.
She said that wasn’t going to help.
The manager at Ranch 1 did offer me a job. But she told me the work was hard. “I can see you’re an older gentleman,” she said. I said I’d try other places first but asked if I could come back. Any time, she said.
The next day, I show up at 9:30 a.m. My shift is from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. I change in the rest room. I am introduced to the head of the sandwich department. He is a young black man whose manner is both friendly and relaxed.
“What can I do?” I ask. “I don’t know anything.”
“You can make the vinaigrette,” he says, and shows me how. I follow him around that morning, doing what he asks. I bring up ice for the line. I put the paper liners on the metal trays on which sandwiches are served. I fill up plastic cups with ice and ice water. I refill the vinaigrette bottles and also fill soufflé cups with salad dressing for people who want it on the side.
Everything I do, he says, is perfect.
The sandwich business at Cosí (coffee and muffins are sold starting at 7 in the morning) begins at about 11 a.m. and gets most intense between noon and 2 p.m. It is a sort of joyous hell working there the first day. I am the only white man on the line. At first I think this might be a problem, but one of the bakers bursts that bubble immediately. First he calls me “homey.” Then he calls me the “n” word.
The one time I do get in a quarrel, he comes popping around from the oven where he works and says, “Why can’t we all just get along?” This makes everybody laugh.
The only other time race comes up is when an outside manager visits the store and compliments one of the women on the line. After he leaves, several of her colleagues turn to her and point. “You’re white,” they say. “Now you’re white.”
She is the only woman working on the line.
“How old are you?” she wants to know.
“Old,” I say. “Very old.”
“How old is very old?”
“Fifty-one.”
“You should be retired. Don’t you want to retire?”
I shrug.
“What makes you think you can keep up with us young folks?”
I say I’ll have to see.
“What did you do before this?”
“I wrote books.”
“Why are you doing this now?”
“For a change. And because people seem more interested in buying sandwiches than they are in buying my books.”
When I get off work at 2:15 p.m., I am exhausted. My hands are raw from the hot bread, and my throat is hoarse from shouting “Mayo, mustard, or vinaigrette?” Riding the train home, I get a seat in front of a posted advertisement that features a man of about my age sitting back in his chair in a corner office. Out the window you can see the Manhattan skyline. On his desk there’s a computer and a telephone. With his chair tipped back, his hands clasped behind his head, he’s on top of the world.
The text: “Tomorrow he could be crawling under the carpet. the truth. deal with it. reuters. www.reuters. com.”
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