7 Stages of Grieving

I am now in the final days of my work at the ice cream store and I’m sure you, the reader, are just as excited as I am, because after next Tuesday you won’t need to hear about it anymore.

Even though I have a couple more days to go, I feel I have already been blessed with a little bit of hindsight and can already look back on the experience from a week and a half from now: I think I would describe my ebb and flow relationship with work as similar to that of the 7 Stages of Grieving.

I started work with the idea that I wanted to practice my Hebrew, make friends and learn a little bit about  the ‘minimum wage’ culture of Israeli society.

The first Stage was ‘Shock and Denial’:

I was definitely in a numbed state disbelief that I had in fact got a job in Israel, “how exciting!” I thought with wide-eyed naivety.

Then the ‘Pain and Guilt’ set in:

I was struck with insufferable pain and guilt of my decision to work there, both physical and emotional.

The physical was just the other week when the carpometacarpal join in my left hand was sprained from scooping the Dark Chocolate ice cream. My thumbs were also swollen from overuse (mainly from texting out of boredom), so I had to learn to scoop with my right hand.

 

The Third Stage is ‘Anger and Bargaining’:

I started bargaining with my boss as to how many shifts a week I had to do; he wanted 7 double shifts, I wanted two. I started saying “why me?” and muttering profanities as the ice cream behind the sneeze protecting glass.

Then the ‘Depression’ sunk in. I pictured my corpse frozen in the ice cream display and the other workers scooping my body into sugared covered cones.

When I reached the 5^th stage, “The Upward Turn”, I decided to give my notice of retirement from the gelataria business and pull myself out of that half dug grave.

‘Reconstruction and Working Through’ came next, I now can look to the future, and become a more productive member of society.

The final stage is ‘Acceptance and Hope’ – I’ve accepted the experience and decided to bottle and repress it in the back of my mind, to later seep out in forms of physical abuse to small kittens.

As they say in Israel “היה טוב, אבל טוב שהיה” “It was good, but good that it was” (rough translation).

In reality it wasn’t as bad as I thought I was while I was in it.

Outta here!

Lately the ice cream shop has been melting my mind, and not in a good way. So the other day I decided to give my notice and just work till the end of the month, and finish that chapter of my life earlier than expected.

I felt like I was going to have to break up with my boss. I wanted to find the perfect moment, be a man about, and not do it over the phone, but face to face.

I was going to let him down easy, the whole “It’s not you, It’s me” routine.

I thought up this whole story so as not to leave him suspicious that I was in fact leaving because the job was sucking my will to live. I was going to do the ‘complement sandwich’.

Eg. “this job has been a great experience, if I have to scoop one more ice cream I might just cook my face in the waffle machine, but I have really enjoyed working here.”

After two days of brooding I finally told him, ended up just blaming it on the army – “I need some time off before”.

He was completely unfazed.

I can imagine that kind of job had a high turnover of staff, but I thought we had bonded!

Before I finish there the boss is going to milk me for all the hours he can get, but it doesn’t matter coz after that life begins!

Going to go hiking in the hills, camp, eat food from a coal fire, and find an oven, couch and table which mysteriously walked out of my apartment this week. You know, just get back to walking to beat of my own drum.

Got Milk

One of my professors at uni used to say that Milton, who was blind and so got his daughters to write down his poems for him, used to wake up in the morning full of verses he had dreamt about and say “he wanted to be milkd” which is a fun metaphor. Without comparing myself to Milton, or putting sick images in your head, I just want to give a pashut update.

Start with the general:

This country’s disregard for nut allergies has just caught up with itself. Someone was killed by a Belgium waffle she was told was not coated with Nutela but rather chocolate spread (Read more). The waiter was wrong, the girl died. We all knew this was going to happen sooner or later. You lawyers out there, I’m wondering, who gets charged for manslaughter?

In other news, university students are now entering their second week of camping outside the municipal building protesting the rent prices. You can smell the camp from a larger radius each day. There was a huge march in Tel Aviv as well

This started as a protest about the high prices of cottage cheese (which has become the icon/scapegoat for the high prices of all milk products). It’s funny to see the students merge the two causes in their banners which read: “Let’s go live in Bibi’s Cottage house!”

Cottage in English is a word used for a small house, but in Hebrew it just means a house made out of cottage cheese. Funny image.

Meanwhile up the road each Friday afternoon DJ’s and bands pack the streets for a pre-Shabbat street party which are a barrel of fun. This week they covered a small area with sand and small kiddie-pools and splashed around the blearing music. If your ears didn’t melt from the heat, they would have from the music.

Still working at the ice cream store. The ice creams still taste oh so sweet and are so brightly coloured that this week a kid actually smashed her face against the glass trying to get a closer look.

I publicly apologise for laughing.

But it was hilarious head this massive thud and seeing a face print on the glass, and then the three second pause before the crying begins. She was fine after her parents stuck some ice cream in her mouth.

Despite this, the work is actually sucking the life out of my soul. To hold my sanity together I decided to embrace the inevitable shattering of sanity hoping that the paradox would confuse the system and I would leave each shift unharmed.

Halfway through tribal dancing with my eyes coated over with white chocolate spread I remembered that my boss can watch the cameras from his computer at home. Too bad I had also just used the toilet with the door open. He can enjoy that in his spare time I guess.

The other way I not amuse myself is by turning each request into an innuendo – In your end-oh!

We have a flavour called ‘alfahores’ which is based on an Argentinean biscuit, but Americans come in drunk late at night and just read half the sign and ask “What’s an ‘Alpha-whore’?”

Then some people come in and ask “Can I try your Belgium chocolate?” Having dark skin I just take a moment, laugh to myself and carry on.

Then after they take eat my Belgium Chocolate they ask if they can pay me.

Then there’s the people who say “ah its dripping all over me” and when the freezers are on too high they say “it’s so hard” and I’m just like –“ YEH IT IS!”.

See what this place is turning me into, a sick old man!

Anyway, that’s all from me, I’m out!

Ice Cream

Finding a job and a place to live has been great, I move in in a week and I’ve already been working for a week. I really enjoy being a part of the Ben Yehuda back drop. Seeing Birthright groups come and go and satisfying pregnant women’s craving for Snickers ice cream and Coconut sorbet. I have to admit I have started to find the work a bit mind numbing.

Two days ago I did an 11 hour shift. Which means I probably wiped sticky ice cream of the tables 55 times, scooped 123 ice cream cones (give or take) which is about 356 balls of ice cream (give or take), made 14 waffles, 12 milkshakes, 5 take away tubs of ice cream, and 4 lattés (they were for me).

Now after you’ve tasted the 26 different types of ice cream three times, you already feel a little sick, so you need a latte for some savoury. Then your mind starts playing tricks on you. You forget who ordered what ice cream and end up giving whisky flavour to a 3 year old (which is fine, they’ll just sleep well). You forget what language you meant to be speaking to the customer (Hebrew, English or French). You even forget what languages you speak. It ends up sounding like this:

  Customer: Shalom

Me: Errr…

Customer: Can I try the Twix ice cream

Me: Errr…. Weh

Customer: That’s delicious

Me: Tu vous gutey encoure?

Customer: What?

Me: Oh, סליחה, רוצה לטעום, I mean, ah, what?

<then I blame my confusion on the noise>

Me: Sorry the music’s so loud, what can I get you?

Customer: What music?

Me: … (I don’t have an answer) …We don’t have that flavour.

Customer: … (silence) Can I try the mint chocolate chip…

You get the point

I was worried that my mind was going to melt like a little boys ice cream in the Middle Eastern sun, I was worried my mind was going to get smeared all over some hungry kid’s face.

I decided to start playing mind exercises to make sure I don’t lose mine.

When I whipped down the tables I estimated how long the ice cream had been smeared over the table for. There are a lot of factors; temperature, humidity, sun/shade, thickness of the blob, even the sugar content of the flavour.

As I used my finger nails, brute elbow grease, and a thousand sprays from the Windex equivalent I turned physical labour into actuary.

It gets a little worse.

Yesterday I found myself speaking to the ice cream. “C’mon Ferrero Rocher, get in the cone, I’m always so good to you, whenever people ask me for my recommendation you’re my go to guy, why are you being difficult”.

I looked up at the confused customer, and fade out surreptitiously and faded back in with the words of the song playing in the background pretending I was singing it all along…

Besides the worry that I’m losing my mind, I also worry that I might have lost my bandaid in a scoop of strawberry sorbet.

Other than that, I get lots of visitor which is fun, and I think I’ve mastered waffle making.