I did a lot of things this summer, but mostly what I did was work. For the last year and a half or so I've worked at a deli about a block off campus, but most of our clientele is older people from the local business park. I make sandwiches, I slice meats, and we deli-men get to choose what music we listen to on the stereo.
Surprisingly, we run into very few problems running the stereo democratically. We can all get down to RJD2 or Neon Indian without incident, so it's like, whatever.
I guess I'm fortunate because the people I work with are all interesting and cool—but it's just that everyone else at the deli is so terrible. Believe it or not, slicing two pounds of prosciutto is a major pain in the ass. And when someone comes to the counter in the middle of our lunch hour and asks for seven fresh cannolis, we all look at each other with the same exhausted misery.
We're all college kids—we're tired, we're poor, we're probably hung-over. So in the face of such inconsiderate patrons, we project our shared animosity onto the one outlet we have complete control over: the stereo.
And we listen to some pretty hostile stuff.
Make no mistake—I'm a pretty amiable dude. But I can only be friendly for so long when I've got three different adults cursing at me for slicing their pancetta too thick and their mortadella too thin. It rouses some sort of beast I never knew was inside me—and boy, oh boy does this beast love Slint's Spiderland.
Admittedly, this stereo gimmick is a pretty childish act of rebellion—customers make us miserable, so we're going to make them miserable, too. We can't contaminate pasta salads or over-charge packages of gnocchi, but we can totally make middle-age prudes listen to oppressive, angular post-rock. It's the one minor object we can wield in our own defense.
But make no mistake about it—I don't think cruel intentions are really the point. I think of it more territorially. We surrender authority to the deli and band around the stereo as some polar entity. It's more defensive than it is thrilling.
Dark rock like Jesu or Pelican helps us define the two sides of the deli dynamic. But sometimes a dynamic even this stark gets blurred. When I'm working the cash register, I expect to catch some slack from an old-timer who can't handle the decibels I've given Zola Jesus' Stridulum EP. I brace myself for a mother to let me know how much she appreciates us subjecting her young son or daughter to the coarse language in Swans' Children of God. Some people get pretty upset about this stuff.
I've been through this a lot. One afternoon this summer I put No Age's Weirdo Rippers on the stereo a few notches above normal talking level. A father comes in with his son, grabs some cheese from the cooler and walks my way. ""What is this?""
Ah, crap. I have to shout back, ""No Age.""
""Who?"" This time he's louder.
I lower my voice to make it seem like the volume on the stereo isn't as loud as it is—that's the sort of faux-psychology theory you can convince yourself is true when your back is against the wall. ""No Age,"" obviously.
I'm already preparing my apology—we're cleaning up from lunch, it's almost the weekend, this is a bootlegged copy and the sound levels fluctuate and I didn't have enough time to adjust the stereo and it wasn't intentional I promise—but he beats me to it.
""I like it,"" he says.
Sometimes working in the deli isn't so bad.
