Despite finding myself crankier and more short-tempered as I get older and often wishing for a more peaceful quiet existence far from the maddening crowds of New York City, I can't seem to leave.
Sometimes I even think about moving to the 'burbs, or even worse - the South! Yikes! But the flavor - nasty as it is sometimes - keeps me here.
Case in point: on a particularly hot and nasty July afternoon I was making my way from one thankless underpaying shift at a job I was too good for, to another slightly-less gratifying gig. As I tended to do at that time, due to the abject poverty that working these two wonderful jobs subjected me to, I stopped at 2 Bros. Pizza on Broadway in Midtown to get "lunch".
This particular branch of the 2 Bros. chain was in the midst of a price war with King Pizza - a considerably more grungy establishment next door to it. While the other 2 Bros. branches were charging the usual $2.75 for 2 slices of pizza and a can of soda, this branch had the super sizzlin' summer deal of $2.25 to counter King's undercutting price of $2.50.
As a person not in a position to afford food fit for human consumption, of course I was deeply drawn to this establishment every single day of that very hot July. Despite lines that stretched to the corner, inside-the-store temperatures that made in unnecessary to heat the pizza ovens, and less-than-warm service from the minimum-wage counter servers, I was getting some much needed nutrition - or at least I was stopping my belly from rumbling while I worked the room at EC English.
I was on one of those extra-long lines in there one day when I decided that life couldn't possibly suck more. Here I was, a well-educated pseudo-intellectual writer/teacher/would-be entrepreneur, scurrying through a sweat maze of grease and homeless diners in the greatest city in the world. I was just another rat in the race. Sad. I had to get out of this place!
But then, something happened. I saw "Shaquilana". I have no idea what her name was, but I like to think of her as a Shaquilana. Anyway, Shaquilana was standing about 3 people in front of me on line just as I was getting within the 15-minute-wait zone. She was radient. She wasn't sweating at all and seemed totally at peace with her environment. It was like she didn't even smell the overflowing garbage cans or the homeless diners who hadn't changed their adult diapers in days. She stood there, filing her long bedazzling polychromatic nails while casually eying the pizza slices behind the plexiglass counter. She did this with such an air of ease that it made me wonder, "what's going to happen when she gets to the cashier?"
You see, the 20-something cashier - let's call her "Yolanda" - though, again, I never knew her actual name - was what laymen would call a big ol' bag-o-bitch. As a veteran line waiter-oner of this establishment, however, I preferred to think of her as a person with a difficult thankless job who just happened to have a very unpleasant personality.
I, personally, never made direct eye contact with Yolanda. She projected a very angry tone whenever she announced the tally: "Two-twenny-fai, NEXT!", and so I was sort of terrified of asking her any questions or speaking or even...looking at her.
At this point in time, Yolanda and I had a well-established relationship and despite never speaking to her, I felt I knew her well - and I knew that she was not going to like Shaquilana.
I stood for the next 12 minutes or so, entranced by my musings about what interaction was to come. I sensed that there would be a slight dislike between the two women and possibly a rude remark or two, but it turned out to be much better.
When Shaquelana got the point where she was facing Yolanda, she should already have spoken to one of the Mexican pizza-oven attendants who slapped the undercooked slices of pizza onto a flimsy paper plate at the customer's request. But Shaquelana was new here. She simply didn't know. However, it wasn't just the fact that Shaquelana's didn't order properly that caused Yolanda to stare deeply into Shaquelana's ear, it was also the fact that Shaquelana was not making face-to-face contact with Yolanda. Shaquelana was looking at her smart phone - conveying the sense that she was too busy to look at Yolanda.
Shaquelana gestured toward the pizza with her free hand and said, "just one".
At that moment, I think every man on the line who had been eating here for more than a couple of days, became very still and silent.
"One what?" - Yolanda patiently inquired.
"One slice. You sell something else?"
Yolanda puffed away the dark hair from her brow and her Mexican cohort handed her a grease-soaked paper plate with a particularly gnarly looking slice on it.
"Wait, hold up. Na-na-na-no! Not that one."
--Shaquilana started tapping one of her shiny multi-colored nails on the plexiglass in front of the pies.
"I want that one. Yeah. Gimme that one on the lef".
"It's a DOLLA!" shouted Yolanda.
With that, Shaquilana unrolled a dollar bill and slapped it on Yolanda's hand and Yolanda handed her the same greasy slice she had before.
This is when I finally saw Shaquilana lose her cool. She dropped the slice back on the counter and told Yolanda what time it was.
"I just told you I don't want this nasty ass slice. I want that one o'er there. I am a payin' customer and I want that one! That one!".
--"This shit's a dollar, OK? So you don't get to pick the damn slice, bitch! You can't pick and choose whatever you want and you take what we give you! That's how this works. (Yoanda held on to the S in 'works' just long enough to make her point.) If you don't like it you can take your damn dollar and stick it up your ass and get off my damn line."
Shaquilana was briefly silent and eerily still.
"Why are you talkin' to me like that? You think you can talk to me like that because I'm black? Is that what you think?"
--"Yes, I am talking to you like that because you're black. You are a reggala Sherlock."
Apparently, that remark got Shaquilana her slice for free - the better one too.
I could have used a free slice but I didn't think I wanted to anger Yolanda twice in one day, so I let it go and enjoyed the nasty slice Shaquilana didn't take. It was fine. It's a dollar slice. I get it.
Anyway, that's why I need to be here in New York sometimes. We keep it real here.
