Selling pasta at minimum wage

From the highs of well paid corporate to the dregs

This is part I of a III part essay.

It’s located in one of those warehouse estates with plenty of locked doors, and no reception and for 15 minutes, I am approaching delivery drivers going, ‘Pasta? Do you know a place that sells pasta?’

I don’t want to be late for my training day so I only opt for the long explanation if the driver looks confused. 

No one knows what I’m talking about until someone does. 

‘Yep - next door!’ 

When I enter the warehouse next door, all I see is a carpeted hallway and an open toilet with a plumber lying down on the floor hands deep into whatever he’s fixing. He turns his head in my direction. 

‘Pasta?’ I ask, and he points upstairs. 

I take the stairs two at a time and walk straight into what I imagine are the head quarters of the operation. An office of 15 people, beating down on their keyboards, not a single one of them glancing up for my arrival until a younger man from the conference room behind me waves me over. 

‘You’re here for the training day?’ he asks. 

‘Yes.’

Grand, grand. What would you like? Coffee, tea? Tea, coffee? We’ve got it all. I’m Jack by the way.’ 

Jack, I’ve been told over the phone, is the manager who’ll be teaching us all about how to sell pasta. 

He has the face of a chirpy 17-year old elf with eyes as light and unraptured as a cloudless sky. I can tell that Jack has not encountered a day of true suffering in his life, and I instantly dislike him for this reason. Well, this reason and the fact that he is 17. Reality is slowly seeping into the grey matter. 

A 17 year old is going to teach me how to sell pasta. The universe administers its first slap of the day but it’s a light slap, no stumbling involved yet.

Inside the conference room, I find Tonya, a young woman wearing a white shirt and graced with the posture, complexion and slicked back hair of an actress, and a guy named Felix, slouching on his chair, and dressed in a bomber jacket that says ‘Rushmore’. 

Jack leaves the room to get my coffee. 

‘You done sales before?’ Felix asks Tonya whilst taking off his bomber jacket. 

‘No but my boyfriend does this so I know of it. You?’

‘Nah…I’ve just finished my MA in chemistry. I’m a failed scientist.’ 

‘Oh right..I thought there was a lot of money in science.’ 

‘Nah…there isn’t.

Both Felix and Tonya look about a decade younger than me.

Felix turns to me. 

‘You done sales before?’ 

‘Mm…yes. Yes, I have.’ 

I do not say I’ve been doing sales for 12 years because it’s too early in the morning for tragedy. 

Jack, the little elf, gets straight to business when he returns. 

‘Right, so this is a 4 hour training day. So you can get to know us, and we can get to know you. Heads up, this isn’t for everyone so if you don’t want to be here, that’s fine. You’ll have some nice, lovely pasta for lunch, and  after that, if this isn’t for you, we can both go our separate ways.’ 

Wow, bold opening. 

Jack paces up and down in front of the projector using a lot of jumpy hand gestures. It looks less as if he’s presenting and more as if he’s dancing to a soundtrack that’s not playing, and quite frankly, it’s hard to watch. 

On the word ‘pasta’, he turns to us with his hands mimicking little guns. It occurs to me whilst I watch him that he reminds me of a particularly stringy string of spaghetti. You just want to untangle it but you can’t. It’s all jumbled up, and there’s no sauce either. Just a very annoying, stringy bowl of pasta.  

‘Whatever happens is all good.’ 

Now a clasp of the hands on the desk. 

‘Most of the people who work for us are actors, creatives, people who can fit us into their schedule…We all have our reasons for being here?’ 

The elf pauses here, spaghetti arm settled on the right hip, and looking at each of us in turn. 

Oh, no please not. Let’s not go into the reasons we are here. 

He points at Tonya. 

‘Yes…’, Tonya starts. 

Oh God. 

‘I’m an actress.’

‘There you go! An actress! Look at that - she’s an actress! Nice.’

It’s turned into a self-help group? I glance around but no one follows my incredulous glancing around. Why is Jack doing this? 

‘Have you been in anything I’ve seen?’

‘Not really.’, Tonya says. 

Silence descends. It’s a sad kind of silence.  

I understand then why he is doing this. This was their corporate training strategy. They break you down and then they get you to sell pasta. Yes, that was it. 

Before sending us out into the streets to sell pasta subscriptions, they wanted us to know who we were. We were unemployed, creative, deadweight scum.

‘I was an extra in Downtown abbey though.’ 

I felt sorry for Tonya then. She was too young and did not know when to keep her mouth closed. 

‘Wow, look at that. An extra in Downtown Abbey. Look at that! Good for you Tonya!’ 

Jack points at Tonya then glances at me then at Felix.There’s a condescending arrogance to this man that I did not see before. The elf thinks he’s better than us. He’s better than us but he’s here to help us. The worst kind of elf. 

Jack turns to Felix. 

‘Yeah, not an actor but I want to work like one day a week just so I can tell people I have a job.’

Felix, who was not a writer, had reached into the very nub of the matter. In many ways, that was exactly what I was doing here too. 

The elf then turns to me. Tonya and Felix turn to me. 

Oh no. 

‘Mmm…I…Yeah’

‘Not an actress?’ Jack asks. 

‘God no., I say. ’

Tonya gives me a long look. 

‘I…’

I could not say it. 

‘Bit of everything?’ Jack asks, helping me out. 

‘Yes…I…yes, bit of everything.’ 

If someone was going to shoot me from behind at any point in my life, this would’ve been perfect timing. Clonk on the table and no further explanation would be needed. 

‘Now the reason I just asked you that was not to put you on the spot but to prove my point, right? Bottom line is I know what you’re all thinking. Your dream is not to sell pasta. And we know that your dream is not to sell pasta.’

Jack was wrong. I was not thinking that. What I was thinking was, what the hell am I doing here? 

Why is a 35 year old woman who’s just come off a well paid corporate job listening to a theatrical 17 year old talking about pasta in a warehouse in Nunhead? More importantly, why did a 35 year old woman even agree to sell pasta on the street at minimum wage? 

Of course, the question was absurd. I knew very well what I was doing here. 

I was here for the same reason that most people found themselves in odd, obscure little places doing odd, obscure little things. I needed the money. THE MONEY. THE FUCKING MONEY.  

Finally, after the group therapy session, Jack moves on to what we are actually selling. 

‘Cacklebean eggs. Pasta made of cacklebean eggs. If I want you to remember one thing from today, it’s Cacklebean eggs. Did you get that?’

Jack is standing up but his his leg is stretched out on the swivel chair, for no apparent reason. 

‘What did you want us to remember from today?’ Felix asks. 

‘Good one!’, Jack says. 

‘What are cacklebean eggs?’ I ask. 

I lean back, looking forward to a list of gastronomical qualifiers. 

‘They are just…posh eggs.’, Jack says. 

To someone who was quite fond of pasta and ate it almost daily, this struck me as an unsatisfactory answer. Pasta wasn’t just food and fuel, it was something bigger than that. I treated a hot bowl of pasta as many people treated pubs and alcohol, that is as a direct route out of this terrifying, paralyzing little thing called reality. 

In fact, one of the things I had looked forward to about today’s pasta training was to learn more about good pasta, and how it was made. 

It became clear though that Jack, who’s worked for a pasta company for 4 years, did not know anything or rather could not give less of a damn about pasta. 

Still, I kept my eyes firmly on the prize. I was convinced that Jack would soon get to the most relevant part of the training. The way I saw it, one of the pivotal reasons for working for a pasta company was that I fully expected to go home from work after each shift with a fresh box of pasta. Surely, this was the very least they could do.

Jack returns to the pitch.

‘The most important thing to remember is that we sell fresh pasta, made daily. We make the pasta and within 24 hours, BOOM, it’s delivered to the customer’s door. That’s the one thing I need you to remember from today. Fresh pasta, made daily. OKAY? FRESH PASTA, MADE DAILY.’

I can’t help but think that Jack believes actors and artists are people who don’t only suffer from unemployment and delusions of grandeur but also from severe learning difficulties. 

‘Do what you need to do to remember that.’

Jack stands in a wide-leg, arms on hips power pose tilting his body first to one side then the other side. 

‘Say it out loud in your head, jot it down in your notebook. Fresh pasta, made daily. YOU GOT THAT? FRESH PASTA, MADE DAILY.’ 

Tonya is scribbling away in her notebook. 

‘Fresh pasta?’ Jack says, pointing at Felix. 

‘MADE DAILY!’, Felix screams. 

I’m tempted to cover my ears but only end up smiling weakly at Felix, a man in his early 20s with his whole life ahead of him, and his lungs, evidently, full of air.