Sweet, Sweet Solstice in Silverton
June 13, 2014
Wanna Buy A Rock? (Silverton Style)
July 11, 2014
This essay relates to my restaurant job in the ice cream section. Seems like I’m capable of writing about all sorts of weird stuff in my life.
Word Count: 844
You Scream, I Scream,
Why not Scream for Ice Cream
Some people may find this hard to believe, but I like working the ice cream section at my restaurant job. Not quite as much fun as when something I’m writing falls into place perfectly, or the exhilaration I get from skiing down a mountain in knee deep powder, but it does have the distinction of ranking right up there in terms of jobs. You may be asking yourself, wait a second-isn’t the job of scooping ice cream analogous to that of digging ditches or inspecting hole placement at a donut factory? Yes, in certain situations it is, but hear me out on this one. Over the past three summers I’ve grown to enjoy the simple act of scooping ice cream.
Always an interesting experience while I’m doing it, and the pros far out weigh the cons. Let’s list the pros shall we? 1. First and foremost, when people come to get ice cream from us they’re generally in a pretty good mood. After all, they’re on vacation so that has a lot to do with them being happy, upbeat, and for the most part walking around with a nice smile on their face. As with everything in life there are exceptions of course, but his group of curmudgeons with the perpetually grumpy outlook and feelings that life has been so unfair to them are few and far between. We’ll ignore them and concentrate on serving the folks in a positive frame of mind instead.
2. During the height of the season we like to keep the freezers full to the brim with twenty-four different flavors of the stuff. I’m not sure what it is about having such a wide variety of the sugary confection on hand, but all those choices gives folks lots of options and its fun just watching people decide what type of ice cream they’re about to reward themselves with.
3. All those choices brings up my next reason to like serving the stuff. Just figuring out new and innovative ways to write the flavors on our caulk board is always an interesting challenge. Who knew I’d come to enjoy working up different color combinations and squeezing words and letters into a smaller and smaller space? Lettering never really appealed to me in Cartoon/art School, but in this situation it seems to have done the trick.
4. We’re increasingly serving tourists from all different parts of the world. This includes lots of folks from Latin America and Spain. Another opportunity for me to practice speaking the lingua franca of those parts of the planet? You bet. Making a fool of myself has never been an obstacle for a linguistically challenged individual such as myself, so usually I’m never hesitant to just jump right in with my limited Spanish language skills. “Limited” being the operative word in this case.
I could practice the few words of Swahili I still remember from my time in Kenya, but that was thirty years ago and most of the utterances I still recall are cuss words. Not too much call for those. Come to think of it, there isn’t too much call for speaking Swahili in general around here. Why is that?
5. It is such a kick serving kids. Just watching them decide upon the ice cream of their choice is such a hoot. They generally go for the standards (“Vanilla”, “Chocolate”), but exotic flavors are also popular (“Bubblegum”, “Cotton Candy”, “Superman”-you know-the stuff with lots of colors.
Then when I ask them if they want their dessert in a cup or cone watching the ensuing argument take place with their parental units is quite the treat as well, a family comedy unfolding before my very eyes. 90% of the time the kid demands their ice cream be served to them in a cone. Mother or father wants it served to them in a cup for cleanliness reasons. Grandparent eyes roll and the kid begrudgingly accepts their fate. Usually I compromise by serving it to them in a cup and sticking a cone on top. This atonement gesture on my part generally works, but sometimes the kid still can’t get no satisfaction (Mick and Keith were right).
Often the kid wants a topping as well, and most of the time its sprinkles. They like them so much that I’m waiting for the day when a youngster asks me for just sprinkles and no ice cream. This will happen and mark my word, probably before the Cubs win the World Series for all you baseball followers out there.
I generally consider myself a fairly happy person. Every once in awhile I do get upset and this generally has to do with me feeling some sort of injustice has been foisted upon a person. That or having to deal with differences of opinion/politically. Working the ice cream section isn’t going to put me in the Donald Trump tax bracket any time soon, but it never fails to provide me with a pleasant working atmosphere. That in itself is why I like scooping the stuff.
