Can I help who's next?

I've worked food service long enough to know that, for a student working part time, the real benefit of a crummy job is not the paltry minimum-wage paychecks (although they do have to be the main motivation -- I wouldn't work these kinds of jobs for free). Speaking from the perspective of an overprivileged student, it's hard to describe the "real benefit" in a way that doesn't sound snobby -- "seeing how the other half lives", etc. -- and because it's undeniable that class differences keep the food service industry running, I don't mind admitting that there is some truth in these descriptions. Over the years, it's done me good to do simple, practical work that doesn't take much of a brain and generally has no room for people with intellectual pretensions. If that sounds bad, I should also point out that working fast food has probably caused me to question the meaning of my "full-time" occupation -- making much of literature written a couple millennia ago -- more often than it has caused me to doubt the value of my part-time work. At the end of a day in the library, I may or may not have learned anything particularly enlightening to myself, and odds are very good indeed that the day's work will never have any great meaning for the world at large. On the other hand, when I finish a day's work at a cafe, I know that I am at least part of the reason that dozens of people who came in hungry left not-hungry. That's a quantifiable, useful result. To put the case dramatically, when taken collectively, we food service workers help to keep people alive. It's a rare liberal arts student or professor who can say that.

Starting work at Toby's has brought all of that rather heavy reasoning -- applicable to menial workers the world over -- back to me. What I've especially enjoyed over the past couple of weeks, though, has been the utter Britishness of it all. To be efficient in a fast-paced English cafe, it's no good hanging on to certain American habits of speech and manner that just confuse people and throw them off (and invite constant teasing from co-workers!), so I've adapted quickly. On my first few days, for example, I got ribbed constantly for the way I pronounced tomato and basil. It's not as easy as you might think to get the vowels right, either: in tomato, the 'a' should sound like the a's in avocado, but if you use the same a in basil, you're talking like the queen: if you're not royalty, it should sound like the a in apple. Then, there are a whole class of American expressions that won't get me teased but will slow me down at work. The English will do a double-take if you ask them if their sandwich is "for here or to go." In Britain, the customary (although more long-winded) question is, "is that to have in or take away?" I've also learned to stop asking if people want butter on their sandwiches (the idea is still incomprehensible to me) because to the English, this is a given rather than a gross-out. Just slather it on, no questions asked! There are also certain words that just do not signify the same thing in American and British English (a Saussurian concept -- hm, maybe this does tie into my research after all). Salad is a good example. For an American, salad is a bowl full of lettuce and/or spinach with a variety of other vegetables, croutons, etc. mixed in and dressing on top. For a Brit, salad is a garnish of lettuce -- literally a few leaves -- and possibly a slice or two of tomato and/or cucumber depending on the situation. We're talking the amount of veg you'd automatically get on a hamburger from McDonald's. A salad, by contrast, is the full-on American deal. So if someone asks for salad with their wrap, throw a mouthful of bunny food inside the thing and roll 'er up. That simple.

Those are just the functional basics. If you want to sound like you belong, you have to be more subtle. In a casual joint like Toby's, most of the time, don't say thanks -- it's "cheers." Those from blue-collar backgrounds and through-and-through British say "ta," but you wouldn't catch a Bristol Uni student or a foreigner using that one. When it's busy, don't yell, "Next!" or "Can I take someone's order?" but, "Can I help who's next?" (don't let your intonation rise on the end of "next," as always when asking questions Britishly). Don't pronounce baguette the American way -- bag-ette, but instead, big-ETTE, quickly and with the emphasis on the last syllable. Ciabatta isn't pronounced with the Italian vowels as Americans say it, but the second a is like the one in apple. Also, refer to nearly everything sweet and containing flour as a cake (regardless of its lack of resemblance to that dessert you stick candles in and eat your birthday) -- except for chocolate croissants, one of which is a pain-au-choc (and for goodness' sake, when you do pronounce croissant, do so in a way that does justice to the French you had at school, even if your father is a bin man!).

As you can see from this sampling, I've learned a lot in the past couple weeks. Perhaps more than I've learned in my actual research (and the more I work, the more I feel that "research" deserves quotations marks around it -- or "inverted commas", as they say here). Maybe that should worry me; or maybe it just means I'm achieving some kind of useful balance in my life. I'll report back on that question in a couple of months...