Worth My Weight In Buttercream

It's only Tuesday, but I'm already beat. Here I am, back in the world of the overworked.

It's a necessity, really. My mom is out of a job, the economy is dismal, and because I decided that I really do enjoy eating and being able to buy myself toothpaste, I got a job. Never mind that NYU offered me work-study money that I will never receive because they're in a hiring freeze. Never mind that I'm a double major with a schedule that reflects as much and a SENIOR RECITAL (in all caps, because that's how it exists in my brain) inching ever closer in my calendar. I had to find some sort of job, and find it fast.

Of course, I turned to cupcakes.

Or, really, cupcakes came to me. My mom, who graduated from the Institute of Culinary Education back when it was Peter Kump's (sorry to date you, Mom) received a job posting through ICE for a Sales Associate/Cupcake Froster and passed it along to me because, well, someone who has owned their own restaurant (her) is clearly overqualified for the job. But you know who's not? Me. The 21-year-old student and Cupcake Lover with a big, dimpled smile and a genuinely friendly demeanor.

So I applied. I interviewed. And I got the job on the spot. What can I say? Apparently working for Martha, The Queen of All Things Domestic pretty much qualifies you to hawk cookies and cupcakes behind a counter. Who knew? Although I am not, as it turns out, frosting cupcakes, I am SELLING the cupcakes, and that is fine by me. I also mop the floors when I stay till we close the store, and I almost always accidentally splash mop water on my face. Mmmm nice.

But I'm okay with a faceful of mop water... really. I grew up around this business. After my mom went to cooking school, the kitchen at home became a different sort of environment. We were taught to hold a knife vertically when we walked and to hand it, handle first, to whoever was requesting it. If I ever passed someone whose back was turned (and by someone, I mean my mother, my brother, or possibly the two unsuspecting dogs) I was to say "Behind you!" with enough gusto that they could hear it and know I was, in fact, behind them. We always had massive, industrial-size boxes of saran wrap that put limp, unsticky supermarket wrap to shame. We were told to wash our hands for 26 seconds as we said the alphabet, taught to turn the handles of the pots to the side so that they didn't stick out and endanger anyone, instructed to curl our fingers when chopping anything, so that if we were sliced we didn't lose a fingertip. And in the event that we did, we had finger cots in the medicine cabinet. Don't know what those are? Now you do.

Finger cots: for when you don't want blood to get in the food.

When I was young, I made my mom a book of "Good Chef/Bad Chef" helpful hints. Good chef, of course, brought his meat to temperature and kept his raw chicken far from his mise en place and the other components of his dish. Bad chef didn't wash his hands or know how to keep his souffle from falling. In middle school, I could have told you the symptoms of E. coli and the various ways and reasons you might get it. Later, when I worked in my mom's bakery and after, her restaurant, I learned the ins and outs of counter service and small restaurant work. I am fluent in POS systems. I know just how many crumbs one croissant can make when handled by a small child (Hint: A Lot.) And I also know for a fact that the phrase "If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen" should not be taken lightly. It is hot and tough on the aptly-named hot line. If you can't take it, maybe you should be a pastry chef. (Ohhhhhh snap.)

Which brings me back to my cupcakes-and-mop-water duties. The place I work is not a bakery -- the baking is done off-premises. The cookies are tasty, but that's not why people spend $75 a pop on twelve -- YES you read that correctly -- twelve sugar cookies shaped like "Designer Handbags." This is more a novelty store than a restaurant. A place where adults' eyes widen just as much as the snot-covered children they bring with them. A place where a vanilla cupcake with vanilla buttercream can look so enticing under the bright lights with the frosting dyed hot pink that a typical New Yorker will sit, munch, and lick their fingers after picking at the crumbs.

And my job is to sell the fantasy. Today, wearing my uniform (a HOT PINK T-shirt, of course) and pigtails under my little hat, I sold my own sugar-coated smile along with the iced cookies. Sure, it's disconcerting to know that one hour of my time is worth approximately three and a half squirrel-shaped cookies (with glittery tails, no less) but I'll take it. You do what you gotta do. And I don't mind it. I like being back in a place where the aprons come back from the laundry wrapped in plastic. I like the feel of bakery tissue between my fingers, the way it feels to wipe down a coffee station with a cloth towel. Sure, I'm tired after sweeping and mopping and generally being around the scent of sugar and butter (tonight I took off my shoes when I got home and found a green sprinkle between my toes) but it's a nice job and I will work hard. Because that's the number one thing I learned growing up around well-worn recipe books and mixers big enough to hold a small child... If it's your job, you do it, and you do it well.