So, readers, wherever you are, I have some news.
After countless weekend evenings moving amongst the city’s scuzziest cocktail-swirling bar frequenters and serenading them with the same top 40s mix every night past ten o'clock, I have left the Martini for another sector of the food industry: a very well-respected and groovy grocery outlet.
Now, I know some of you may see this as an interesting move, considering the positively overflowing wealth of story material that presented itself during each shift at the Martini. Don’t get me wrong: I do miss the dysfunction dearly. Probably too much. But, every writer needs a new muse every now and again, and it seems it was time for me to get my ass kicked by hauling around boxes of bananas instead of chirping into the phone like a Chihuahua and assuring the guy on the other end that yes, there is a dress code. Sneakers are ok to wear. No, baseball hats are not. Yes, we have valet parking. No, I cannot stash your gym bag, suitcase, jacket or laptop behind the host stand.
Restaurants are very good at revealing very specific aspects of a person, or a family. Who we are when we eat out is a distinct version of ourselves, and it plays off whatever mood our meal companions happen to set. Diners, perhaps unrealistically, often expect a private experience in a public place. “We’d like a private booth so we can talk,” a grabby and slobbering couple will beam at us hostesses, but everyone knows that eating out is, in effect, a performance. Some are better at it than others—the grumpy older man who can’t read his menu because the lights are too dim and probably wishes he was home instead comes to mind—but we’re all aware of it, subconsciously or not.
Now, watching grocery shoppers up close is something very different indeed. Already into my second week (with…for our purposes, I’ll call it The Shipyard), I’ve noticed a radically different affect among the customers. When we shop for ourselves, we’re preparing for an extremely private experience: a dinner at home. Our decision-making process is honed, specific, written down on slips of paper. We’re mostly reluctant to stand out.
What that means for me here at Balls in Your Coffee is a new set of lifestyles to accommodate—no longer the young banker wanting to get as plastered as possible as quick as possible, but more eco-conscious twenty-somethings with ear gauges, energetic screaming children, stubborn elderly Russian women in colorful scarves, and bright-eyed couples playing house by going domestic and buying bagged arugula and french bread together.
And there are neon mesh shopping-cart-collecting vests. Oh yes.
Let the games begin.
