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.”
The next Monday I begin a week of schooling and working the line under close Cosí College supervision at a different branch. I learn the four Cosí questions (Can I help you? Mayo, mustard, or vinaigrette? Would you care for a drink with this? For here or to go?) and the six reasons for discarding bread (undersized, cold, hard, burned, soggy, misshapen, or torn with holes). I am also given two shirts, a hat, a copy of the 27-page Cosí Sandwich Bar Crew Member Handbook, and the 22-page Cosí College Sandwich Maker Manual.
When I return to the Third Avenue restaurant the following Monday, everybody greets me talking exactly like my 13-year-old son: “Wassup?” instead of “Good morning.” “Wasshappening, homey? My bad. This ain’t the hood.”
Downstairs I am picking up something heavy when a baker shocks me by saying, “Careful there. Don’t want to croak you, Pops.” They all call me Pops or Popadopolis, but this seems friendly enough, if not entirely gratifying to the ego.
I've been told that men are predators and, if that’s so, we must have hunted in packs, because that’s how we eat. When one person comes into Cosí, he or she eyes the offerings like a single wolf looking at a healthy stag and then retreats without ordering.
But when it rains, it pours. It’s lunchtime now, and the line stretches out onto the sidewalk. Three or four people stand coyly near the mouth of the oven, trying to decide what they want or even if they want to eat at Cosí at all. Meanwhile, 20 others in a terrible hurry stack up behind them. I’d learned in Cosí College that nobody should go 15 seconds without being acknowledged.
“I like a challenge.” That’s what I tell myself, heart racing, sweat pooling in the fingers of my vinyl gloves. “If you’re ready to order, please step down!” I yell and grab a piece of bread.
The sound system is playing “My Blue Heaven.” I grab a piece of bread, which is so hot it burns my hand. While running a large bread knife through it to open the pocket, I begin to shout in the direction of the customers. But I’m also concentrating on the knife. It’s possible to cut the bread incorrectly. I have done so. Then you have to throw the piece away and the bakers hate you.
“Can I help the next person, please?”
I catch the eye of a middle-aged woman with short blond hair and thick glasses. I wave my bread at her and she comes out of the line of deliberators and up to the counter.
“Can I help you, Miss?”
She points at the tray of tomato, basil, and mozzarella.
“Would you like that?”
She nods.
“Is that all you want?”
She nods again.
Another two sandwichmakers have moved between me and the oven. I’m not moving fast enough. One of them is angry: “Don’t baby-sit the bread.”
I move down.
I give her three slices of tbm.
“For here or to go?”
“For here,” she says.
I’m turning to the back counter to wrap her sandwich when I hear her ask a question. “What kind of cheese do you have?” I turn back to face her.
“Swiss, Cheddar, and Brie.”
She points to the red chicken.
“That’s tandoori chicken. You want that?”
She nods.
I give her a large scoop. “Mayo, mustard, or vinaigrette?” I ask.
“Mustard.”
“Honey mustard or Dijon?”
“What’s that?” she asks and points.
“Spinach artichoke spread.”
“Give me some of that.” By now the two other sandwichmakers have passed me. I need to poke between them to get at the spread. Does she want lettuce?
During the rush it’s not uncommon to have nine people in an aisle about four and a half feet wide, all hollering and banging into each other. If the word pandemonium hadn’t been thought up yet, this would be a good time to do it.
She does want lettuce.
I turn to the stainless-steel counter behind the line and get her a piece of romaine lettuce.
“Vinaigrette on that?”
“No.”
I ask her to go down to the end of the counter: “I’ll bring you your sandwich.”
All of this takes much less than a minute, and I might have to keep working like this for a couple of hours.
I open the sandwich paper with a vigorous snap of my wrist. I insert the sandwich. I wrap it in aluminum foil, make out my Cosí slip, and streak to the end of the counter. There are three middle-aged women with short blond hair standing there. I have no idea who ordered this sandwich.
Un coup de feu is what Orwell called it when he was working as a plongeur at Hôtel X. Feverish activity forces intimacy. I enjoy running the New York City Marathon because when you come down off the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge at mile 16 and the crowd yells “You’re great!” you’re stupid enough to believe them. Prolonged exercise breaks down barriers. I love the people I run with. I assume they love me. Running that hard, you don’t have the energy for hate. Same with making sandwiches.
Ordinarily, I run five miles a day. Working at Cosí renders this unnecessary. After work I hobble over to Grand Central, swill down a Coke, and try to remember which end is up.
Whatever your character flaws, they come up in your work, whatever that work may be. I’m terrified of displeasinganyone. I want to get a smile from every customer. In order to do this, I ask too many questions: Would you like vinaigrette also on the lettuce? Can I cut your sandwich in half?
Halfway through my first day, the manager of the sandwich line came up to me. “Would you do me a favor?” he asked, putting a gentle hand on my shoulder. I knew from my experience at Reader’s Digest that if you’re a manager and you want to criticize somebody, you should touch them at the same time. This seems to ground the criticism.
“Sure,” I said.
“Would you please not cut everybody’s sandwich in half? If they ask you to cut it in half, then do that. But don’t offer to cut everybody’s sandwich in half. You’re slowing the line.”
He was right. I knew he was right. The expertness with which I was handled fit neatly with the philosophy of the place. We served excellent food. And we ate the food we served. (Each worker is entitled to a free sandwich and a drink.)
I remember working as a dishwasher years ago. We used to wash the dressing off the salad and serve it again. Seltzer was put in the pastry displays overnight so that “today’s baked goods” stayed damp enough to keep up the illusion. None of this was happening at Cosí.
One day when we’re only moderately busy, I hear somebody say, “Slow G.”
“Who’s that?” I ask.
“Just an expression we use,” I am told.
“What does it mean?” I ask.
“Slow Grandpa,” I am told.
“Is that me?” I ask.
And there is a terrible silence.
“Slow.” That was the word that stuck. I head over to Grand Central, down into the basement and up the escalator. I can’t say for sure if the escalator is running or not. That’s how tired I am. Tired and disheartened.
The next day I try never to pause at the bread board. Always to grab my loaf and move right down the line, cutting it open at another station. As soon as I get a piece of bread, I begin to wave it in the air and call out for the next customer at the top of my lungs. Usually there’s so much other noise going on that you don’t hear yourself, but once there is a lull in which mine is the only voice. I notice. So does everybody else, and at least one person snickers.
It isn’t until the Tuesday of my third week on the job that I make a sandwich you might have taken a picture of. Up until then I’d always thought, “God, I hope nobody opens the bread and sees what a mess I’ve made.” But finally, on day 12, I hit my stride. I am still slow, but I think I see competence off in the distance.
The day I quit, I go down to shake hands with my manager. She is in her office, eating her complimentary Cosí sandwich. We shake hands.
“So, I have to know,” I say. “Has anybody ever been slower?”
There is a pause as she chews her sandwich. She swallows. “Plenty of people are slower,” she says. “A million people are slower.”