My first job was working at a little soda fountain shop in Carmel, Calif. I was 14. It was so demoralizing and humiliating that I wonder how I ever mustered enough courage to apply for another job.
Carmel is a swanky tourist town about two hours south of San Francisco. It was much less swanky back in the 1960s, but it was definitely what’s called “a tourist trap,” and this soda fountain was on the tour bus route. The little shop was calm and virtually empty for an hour or so at a time.
Then suddenly, out of nowhere, a huge bus rolled up and 57 people swarmed into the shop, laughing, talking, overflowing all the tables and chairs. They made their choices from the extensive menu and, before I knew it, their orders for sundaes were flying in handfuls up to the counter.
Skinny, scared, overwhelmed little me was all alone behind that counter, responsible for filling all the orders. And make it snappy, OK? These people are in a hurry!
Huge tubs of ice cream were lined up in front of me — chocolate, strawberry, vanilla, butter pecan, chocolate mint, almond mocha fudge, pistachio, peppermint, coffee, cherry vanilla. On and on, and all the ice cream was rock solid. Scooping really hard ice cream with my skinny little-girl arms was hard, bordering on impossible. But that was actually the easiest part of the job.
The restaurant carried about 21 different sundaes. The Brooklyn Bridge. The Bombshell. The Double Wallop. The Kitchen Sink. Each called for specific flavors of ice cream, followed by specific toppings — hot fudge, butterscotch, marshmallow. And don’t forget the whipped cream and cherry on top.
Time after time after time the waitresses would hand back an order: “No, there’s no marshmallow topping on The Kitchen Sink. It needs butterscotch. Make it again.” Or, “The Bombshell doesn’t have hot fudge. Start over.” Oh!
And let’s not forget the shapes of the bowls: tall, short, long, and everything in between, with each sundae designated to go in a certain bowl. Wrong bowl? The sundae gets sent back.
After just a few minutes, the counter was filled with my boo-boos. One of the waitresses took pity on me and helped scoop some ice cream for a few minutes. She even ate some of my failures. But seriously, how many could she eat? And then, just as suddenly as the restaurant filled up, it emptied out and was quiet and calm again. I’d try to stop trembling before the next busload drove up.
I’d gotten the job on a temporary, trial basis, and I dreaded being asked back the next weekend. I also dreaded not being asked back. But I was fired after one horrible weekend. I never heard from them again.
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