I’ve been working at the same job for five years. This statement feels weird to write down, because college students—twenty-year-olds—don’t work the same job for five years. Professionals in suits with briefcases and sedans work the same job for five years. And I now find myself among their ranks. I have a career, a career that is unfortunately neither lucrative nor productive: I have made a career out of scooping ice cream.
There’s nothing quite like a good, old fashioned summer job. Though I wouldn’t say standing for hours on end, sweeping and mopping, and touching the germs of a thousand dirty dollar bills rank particularly high on the list of “Things I Enjoy,” I have loved the summers I’ve spent working at my mom-and-pop ice cream stand.
On a normal day at work, I usually roll into the office a full three minutes before my shift starts, to give myself a comfortable amount of cushion time. I greet my boss, a jovial little leprechaun of a man with a receding hairline and a full beard, who favors Crocs as his work shoe of choice. He texts me frequently, with emojis (the smiley face, the ice cream cone, the heart, etc.). I also greet my beloved coworkers, primarily women from all walks of life, one of whom is my very own sister—by blood! Eighty percent of our nightly conversation is a belabored and exhaustive unpacking of the most recent episode of The Bachelorette. We will also watch and discuss both The Bachelor and Bachelor in Paradise, but The Bachelorette is our favorite.
The next three-to-four hours are spent serving ice cream, which inevitably involves interacting with customers. This take-out only ice cream stand is the epicenter of the small-town summer social scene. There are some customers whom I know by name, just because they come so frequently, and because the number of years I’ve served them ice cream is equal to the age of a kindergartner.
I alternate between working the register and making the orders. Sometimes, when I put a cone out the window, the customer reaches out to take it, and then in a nightmarish last-second twist of fate, they grab MY ENTIRE HAND as they take the cone, their warm, fleshy fingers closing tightly and definitively around my own inevitably sticky digits. The worst part of this scenario is that the customer rarely seems perturbed. They smile warmly and withdraw their hand from around my own at a snail’s pace.
At least once a night, we perform the meticulous, careful ritual known as “changing the CDs.” We have a big stereo that plays music both inside and outside, for us and our customers to listen to. We usually play something vaguely folk-y or jazz-y, but we once stumbled upon a CD in the back of the shop that appeared to have been burned by hand. Scribbled hastily across its surface in pen read, “To Kim, From Sandra.” Naturally, we played the CD. On it was two solid hours of vigorous pan flute punctuated by majestically aggressive eagle calls. To this day it remains my favorite CD, and I have no idea why Sandra gave it away.
Promptly at 9PM, we close up shop for the night. But even more importantly, promptly at 9PM we switch the stereo from “To Kim, From Sandra” to 98.3 FM radio, and a little syndicated program called the Delilah Show. Delilah listens to the trials, tribulations, and sentiments of callers, and then picks songs especially for them: she is a self-described expert at picking these songs. She plays primarily Phil Collins, Coldplay, and selections by Beyoncé, Taylor Swift, and Megan Trainor that are just outdated enough to confuse the listener.
For the whole summer my hair smells like the waffle cones that we make fresh daily in the shop. And the entire right side of my body is much, much stronger and more muscular than my left all year long, simply from the act of scooping with my right arm. People always ask me, “But Elizabeth, why don’t you just scoop with your left arm too?” And I’m always shocked that they believe me to be so coordinated! Any attempt on my part to scoop with my left arm would inevitably lead to disaster (read: a lot of ice cream landing on the linoleum and not on the cone).
But despite these downsides, I love my career, and I’ll miss it as I take my hiatus to “get an education.” It’s hard to come back to a bustling urban area, to leave my beautiful, bucolic hometown, a place where life is as easy as a small twist with sprinkles. I’ll be okay, though. I have somehow, miraculously, managed to trick other employers into believing that scooping ice cream has provided me great customer service and retail experience. And I have endless opportunity to show off in the Ratty and impress everyone with my soft serve skills in a way that I hope is endearing and magnetic, but is in reality probably just obnoxious and “holding up the line.”
Thus, as summer comes to a close, I’m celebrating my five-year work anniversary at an ice cream stand, and I wouldn’t want any other career.
Images via, and via author.
