This summer, I worked in a deli. Yeah, that’s right, a deli. Screw some internship or summer school or other stereotypical Wharton shit, I’m down with the blue collar, minimum wage, road-to-nowhere jobs (read: I forgot where On Campus Recruiting is). May thru August, I was out learning on my feet gettin’ battered from the school of hardknocks. It was great, all day, every day – I didn’t have to wear a blue or white Oxford with khakis, I didn’t have College kids trying to get my autograph, and I sure as hell didn’t have to bend over for the I-banking I-Shaft coming up my iAss. All I had to do was serve customers, fill orders, and make America fatter by the hour. Fuck the rest of my corporate sellout Wharton classmates – they’re all tools. Only tools I need are my butcher knife and my label printer.
Anyways, while feeling slightly sorry that I had tarnished the Wharton name, I managed to pick up a few things those elitist profs back in Huntsman Hall could never teach me. Here’s what I learned:
Drug dealers can’t fuck me over –
I became an expert at guesstimating weights in my hands without scales, which means the next time my coke dealer Armando tries to screw me on the eight-ball, I’m gonna Wu-Tang his ass and bring the pain.
“You Can Call Me Al” by Paul Simon never gets old, even when incessantly blasted over the system PA–
I bet Garfunkel hates hearing it though, especially when he doesn’t have enough food stamps to pay at the register.
Girls don’t like guys who work in delis–
Why else was I dumped two weeks after I started working there? Dumb bitch doesn’t know what she threw away! Come on ladies, union benefits are awesome: partial medical coverage after two year’s service plus a 50-cent raise! Who wouldn’t want a piece of that?
Before anyone gets pissed off about the joke above, other stereotypes are not true–
not every Irish person that comes in orders potatoes, and Hispanics shop at our deli even though we don’t have beans in the salad case.
Unions are just like fraternities–
Nationals takes a huge chunk out of your dues, you rarely see the benefits of joining in the first place, and alumni want nothing to do with you.
People are idiots–
Now I know I have a weird name, but I’m no fool, unlike the dumbass who told me, “Jonathon, they spelled your name wrong on your name tag.”
Do not fuck with the people who serve your food–
This is nothing surprising, but it bears repeating. If you are a bitch, we will stomp, spit, smush, drop, ferment, pulverize, and generally fuck up your food if you piss us off. We work with knives, spinning blades, and hot ovens. Do not fuck with us.
That’s all I learned, I guess. Overall, I’d say it was a rewarding experience. Rewarding, that is, in the sense that I have researched how blue-collar America works before I graduate and LBO their livelihoods. God I love myself.