After last week's post on Arnaud, I find myself reflecting that serious subject with a desire to do something a bit more lighthearted. As such, I wanted to share a more amusing story from one of my summer jobs. I'll go back to France and deeper things next week.
It was the summer of 2005, I had just graduated from Cal State Monterey Bay with my degree in human communications with an emphasis in creative writing and social action. Like all college students, my head was full of all the possibilities my professors drilled into me, all the things I could do with the time spent. Of course, life wasn't so simple, and coming home from a certain independence was very hard, so I got a summer job at a local roadside attraction. I won't mention the name of this place, but it was one I enjoyed going to as a kid. It had hay rides, animals that you could feed and pet, a pie shop and it sold fruit out of a large barn in the center of everything. The stand prided itself on the notion that everything they had was local and fresh, picked right from the land around as it were.
Being a young, impressionable kid fresh from college, I figured one job was good as any and I didn't mind being relegated to replenishing the fruit that people purchased. What I did mind was the fact most of my job was spent peeling labels off of fruit that we then sold to the customer. Many of the labels were local, but some were from fairly far and my "social justice" self at the time didn't like that I was telling people it was fresh picked when I'd just scraped off a label. Eventually it just became habit, as I didn't want to make waves. It didn't take long for me to make a slip.
A bright, sunny September morning shone through the roof and onto the neatly piled fruits and vegetables. It was only eight thirty and the shop was already bustling. My supervisor was just behind me, talking to another worker and I was busy piling up some oranges when a woman came up with a bunch of bananas and handed them over.
"Where did these come from?" she asked with a smile.
Almost without thinking I replied, "Dole."
My supervisor stared at me. Every other worker stared. I felt all their eyes and I felt the weight of those bananas in my hand.
Now I ask, dear reader, what would you do? Here I was, standing there, with this woman staring at me with Bananas that don't grow in California. I am to say that they do, and yet I cannot. It was one of those little moments of honest hubris that create the speed bumps in my life.
Regardless, my answer seemed to satisfy and she bought the bananas anyways. The story had a happy ending for her. As for me, I was reassigned to scooping ice cream as far from fruit as humanly possible.
So ended my one job stocking shelves of fruits. I suppose it was for the best, and I went on to bigger and better things. Life can't be complete without little anecdotes to reflect on and for me, this misadventure in retail would be one of many to come.
