Part II of a III part essay. If you missed part I, you can read it here.
Jack leaves us alone for lunch with 2 different 5-minute recipes informing us there’s a kitchen with a few hobs at the back of the room, and that Felix, Tonya and I will be cooking our own lunch ie two different dishes of pasta.
Tonya volunteers a central position in front of the stove for the Spinach ricotta ravioli, saying she’s used to cooking for her family and her brothers. Tonya is apparently the daughter of two teachers and there is a quiet dignified grace in her manners and posture.
I can see her playing the heroines of big Jane Austen and Henry James productions in Hampstead Heath but instead here she is with me, cooking pasta in a warehouse in Nunhead.
Once Tonya has cooked the Spinach ravioli, Felix and I take our places in front of the stove to cook Venetian Duck Ragu Rigatoni.
Following a 5 minute recipe would not be a big deal, I thought, but it turns out it is indeed a big deal. It turns out the quickest way to get two harmless strangers to despise one another is to put them together in a kitchen and tell them to cook pasta.
‘It’s boiling. Where’s the salt? Where’s the salt?’ Felix asks manically.
What I feel, standing next to Felix on the stove, is fear. I fear that this is the sort of man fully capable of ruining my lunch.
‘Do you mind we don’t salt it?’ I ask
‘Mm sure.’, Tonya responds.
‘What? You don’t salt your pasta? The recipe says to salt it as soon as the water boils, and a professional chef wrote this. You don’t know how to cook pasta!’
I rest a few fingers on the kitchen counter letting the weight of my body and every fibre of my impatience fuse into the marble of the counter.
‘It’s fine. We can each salt our own afterwards.’, Tonya, the pacifier says.
Felix asks everyone their age because he’s a silly 23 year old boy who doesn’t know what’s wrong from what’s right.
‘Oh wow, you’re asking me how old I am? Really?’ I say.
Felix stares at me until it becomes obvious that this is my official answer.
‘Have you guys seen where the plates are?’ Tonya asks, diplomatically changing the topic.
Felix is ruining the Venetian Duck Ragu by pouring too much water into it.
‘I think that’s enough water.’, I say.
‘No, no. It’s fine. It says in the recipe that you should add water.’, he says.
‘Yes but the water is going to dilute the taste and thickness of the original sauce and you’ve already -’
He adds another spoon before I’ve finished the sentence . I want to scream.
Felix turns to me then in a gentle manner, ‘Look, just sit back and relax, the pasta will turn out great, I promise. Don’t worry about it. You look tense - shake it off.’
He says this in a soft voice, and there’s a genuine moment between us then. I wonder if Felix will tell me what I should do to shake it off. To shake life off. Because I want to, I really want to but he does not.
Instead he screams, ‘FRESH PASTA, MADE DAILY!’ into the boiling pot of Rigatoni, and I can see his spit particles descending into my pasta.
I step back from the stove, and watch Felix, one spoonful of water at a time, ruining the one sacred thing I daydreamed about all morning. The free, restaurant-quality pasta lunch. To hell with 23 year olds, honestly. To hell with them.
Lunch, as it turns out, is a revelation. That is Felix’s Venetian sauce is a watery, tasteless disaster as expected but Tonya’s spinach ravioli is a revelation.
Never has spinach tasted more like the nurturing tang of the earth. Never has ricotta tasted more like a duvet of fatty comfort that wraps around you then floats you to a land of opportunities and untarnished potential.
The pasta itself is so fresh, you want to tear it open like a curtain and walk through it in a velvet bathrobe, holding an espresso and a newspaper.
I can taste the cackle eggs, the posh eggs, the no-one-knows-what-they-are-eggs. Cackle, cackle, cackle, my brain whispers as I swirl it around.
‘You enjoying it?’ Felix asks.
I look up and raise a gentle eyebrow. I don’t particularly like being interrupted during a meal but you can’t expect these 23 year olds to understand that, in 10 years time, once your hopes and dreams have drifted away like a raft in a storm, all the sacredness of life will be contained within one single spoonful of pasta.
‘Was I making noises?’ I ask.
Felix laughs.
‘Yeah. You went mmm mmmm.’
Tonya looks at me with a lightly concealed smile on her face.
‘Oh well, it’s bloody good, isn’t it.’, I say.
I forgive even Felix for making a bad Rigatoni.
It’s not bad.’, Felix says.
After lunch, Jack talks us through the ingredients. The meats are from Borough market. The cheese is from Neals Yard dairy.
I lean back and listen in an optimistic trance. Indeed, I notice that after lunch everything feels just that little bit lighter.
The ravioli has taken the edge off. Even Jack starts looking like a helpful, little elf. So what if he likes to stretch his legs at random times during the presentation? Surely that just shows the company promotes employee wellness and exercise.
I can finally see myself working this job, and selling pasta on the street. Why not? Why the hell not?
I tap the end of the pencil against my chin and muse on it, coming to the natural conclusion there’s something dignified, almost romantic about selling pasta.
You’re selling food, nurture, comfort, glorified wheat. Isn’t wheat the foundation of the food pyramid, the basis of life itself?
Also, it’s not like you’re on your own. Apparently, you’ll have a sales buddy standing and selling right next to you during the 5 hour shift, and God knows I needed more friends.
Next up, Jack takes us through the payments. We earn £22.50 on each sale, and we are expected to drive 3-5 sales per 5 hour shift.
‘And if you make no sales?’ Felix asks.
‘If you make no sales in 5 hours then…that’s a problem.’
‘And you go home with nothing.’, Felix continues.
‘Yeah, and if that happens, I’ll be honest, that’s not going to work for you, and it’s certainly not going to work for us. I mean if you want to keep working 5 hours for nothing, that would be a bit strange.’
Felix laughs.
‘What do you mean? I mean even if we don’t make any sales, we’re still on minimum wage.’ I ask.
Everyone turns to me then.
‘No…they didn’t tell you this over the phone?’ Jack asks.
‘Tell me what?’
‘It’s a commission only job.’ Jack says.
What the hell is that supposed to mean?
I stare. Everyone else stares back. I keep staring, waiting for the arrival of words so I can stop staring.
‘Your pay is the commission you earn on each sale.’, Tonya offers.
‘Oh yes, I know, but then on top of that there’s the hourly minimum wage that you know…people are supposed to get paid, right?’
‘No.’, the elf says.
‘I’m only paid if I sell the pasta?’
‘That’s correct.’
This is not seeping through the pumpkin.
‘So…if I don’t sell any pasta, I don’t get paid?’
‘Correct.’
Still not seeping through.
‘So…you’re saying if in 5 hours…no one buys a pasta subscription from me and I’m standing out there for the full 5 hours then -’
‘YOU ONLY GET PAID IN COMMISSION!’ Felix shouts, throwing his head back in exasperation.
Then he adds, ‘FRESH PASTA! MADE DAILY!’
‘You’ll be fine, you just have to sell the pasta.’, Jack says in a more soothing voice.
It was absurd. Surely, it was absurd. I had never heard of working for free before. I look at Tonya for support but she’s quiet.
‘Right…right…And, out of curiosity, that’s legal?’
The elf starts laughing, and Felix picks it up. Tonya smiles, as graceful as ever.
I thought we might all turn to Jack in a socialistic strike against workers exploitation but instead, everyone has turned against me.
The naive 35 year old who didn’t know that she was going to work for free. The universe administers its second slap of the day, and this time, I stumble.
‘3-5 sales per 5 hour shift is what we’re looking for.’
I take several sips of my coffee, trying to brace myself.
‘Now if you hit 5 sales, as a special token of our appreciation, we will reward you with a bonus. Why? Because we’re a nice company who cares about our employees, that’s why.’, Jack says.
I am comforted by this. I wonder what our reward will be. A massage? A John Lewis gift card? A day trip to Brighton?
‘And the special reward is…drumroll Felix.’, Jack continues.
Felix abides and beats his hands on the table.
‘A WHOPPING 30% OFF our pasta.’
I spit up. First I think no one will notice but the mouthful of coffee that was meant to soothe me was a particularly big one.
‘Here you go.’, Tonya says, handing me a handkerchief, and I smile a toothless smile with coffee droplets on my chin, presumably reminding Tonya of her grandmother.
‘So as I said a whopping 30% discount.’, Jack continues.
I look down at my salmon pink cashmere sweater with a distinctive line of brown now running through it. My best sweater. Was it worth it? Was any of this worth my best sweater?
Because we’re a company that cares about our employees, that’s why.
I had worked in sales for quite a while and knew that most companies rewarded you with actual money or something else worthwhile, anything else worthwhile. Not here.
This pasta company rewarded you not by giving you money but by getting you to spend money, the very money they had just paid you, on one product exclusively which was their own goddamn pasta.
‘Back in our own pocket’. That’s what their incentive program should’ve been called. It was a joke, and I had sacrificed my best sweater.
I start gnawing the pencil but don’t notice it until my mouth starts to taste of pencil. The elf turns to me.
‘What are you worried about? Talk to the group.’
I’m desperately hoping this company doesn’t actually exist !
I never met this Felix person, so perhaps it’s unfair of me to say, but I do not like him.