Every Saturday, we’ll be posting a new illustration by David Lester. The Mecca Normal guitarist is visually documenting people, places and events from his band’s 29-year run, with text by vocalist Jean Smith.
I work in customer service at a gourmet food store. One of my preferred co-workers is James. He’s a very nice guy, a writer and historian in his late 50s. He’s fun and serious and he speaks five languages. Basically, he’s a good egg. James and I were answering the phone prior to our early closure on New Year’s Eve day. A big part of customer service is the array of queries that come through by telephone. This provides me with a portal into mainstream concerns. Sociologically speaking. I myself don’t own a cell phone, but now I know what all the people with phones pressed to their heads are doing while they’re walking down streets, using public transit and driving. They are phoning stores to ask if they have specific items in stock in special sizes and fancy colors. Very fucking important shit. In the case of my store, customers phone about cookware, gourmet food and small appliances: juicers, mixers and waffle makers.
I was dusting around the perimeter of the customer service desk when the phone rang for possibly the 50th time that morning. I reached across the desk and grabbed it, hoping it was the standard—“What time are you open until?” But no; it was a man asking if we had rings to make pancakes round. I had seen someone returning a silicone star-shape that was meant for eggs, but my co-worker at that time had referred to it being for pancakes and I tell you, a lot runs through my mind during these transactions which, in my department are usually returns of unwanted or broken gizmos that I myself don’t use. Why do people make eggs or pancakes into shapes? Is it for the kids? Where do they store stuff like this in their kitchen? Do they make other shapes? Do they ever have eggs that aren’t geometrically shaped?
Earlier that week a positively professorial looking woman in her 50s brought back a one-liter bottle of olive oil she’d been unable to open. It had a standard metal cap with a perforation that should have broken while being twisted, but hadn’t. The metal broke above the perforation. “I cut myself,” she announced, whereas I simply wouldn’t have. “I’m very sorry about that,” I replied, looking for a knife to run around the perforation, to break the seal. As one would.
Back to the guy on the phone looking for pancake rings. He was going on about pancakes needing to be round and how surprised he was that we didn’t have a ring for that purpose. “Not a small ring like a cookie-cutter, but a good sized pancake—like they have at McDonalds,” he said.
I was leaning across the counter, balancing on one foot, holding a duster in one hand, trying to think of something he could improvise with when I finally said what was on my mind. “I’m not sure why you’re not getting round pancakes when you pour your batter into your pan. What is preventing them from being round?” James, who had been standing there scowling at what he was hearing, picked up a pencil and started to write something on scrap paper. I was listening to the guy continue to explain his frustration with insufficiently round pancakes when James held up the paper, which I anticipated would tell me about some piece of equipment in aisle 3C or somewhere else in the store. Neatly written in his scholarly hand: 1st World Problem.
“Don’t Look in the Mirror,” from Janis Zeppelin (Smarten UP! 2003) (download):
