The break room at Farrell's
Northridge, California, 1982-1983.
I worked at Farrell's. Behind the 1920s styled ice cream parlour with its red flocked wallpaper, checkboard floor, mirror-backed ice cream counter, old-time candy shop, bass drum, siren and hourly renditions of Happy Birthday, were the spaces customers didn't see.
First back bar, hidden by a wall open on both sides. On one wall, condiments and coffee were prepped and ready to circulate out to tables by wait staff who didn't have to break stride. The other wall had a passthrough to the kitchen with a heatlamp and a metal carousel where wait staff secured orders to the side with a plastic ball and spring that snapped tickets into place then rotated to the kitchen.
Further back, through the swinging doors, the kitchen. Grill, fryer, small reach-in fridge below the prep area, stacks of freshly-washed plates steaming from the dishwasher on one side, the pantry with racks of canned ingredients on the other, the walk-in fridge ten steps away.
Behind that, stainless steel sinks and slicers for food prep, leafing lettuce, slicing tomatoes for plate garnish that would would be ignored on the side of the plate, and end up toted in plastic bins along with unsteady stacks of hot-fudge-sticky dishes, silverware and pools of melted ice cream to the back wall, where they would be pushed on a belt of rollers into the industrial dishwasher.
I'll get to the point of all this in a minute.
The manager's tiny office was in the furthest corner, down a short hallway off the dishwashing station. The hallway doubled as the break room, where you sat at a narrow shelf on chairs that were too unsteady for customer use, facing a wall with the time clock, faded OSHA regulations and the handwritten work schedule. Written by Diana, a girl (most of us working there were still in high school) with excellent penmanship, usually in thin red marker, sometimes with little drawings and embellishments. Who was working A shift (10-5), B shift (5-close, usually midnight but could go as late as 2am on weekends), others given staggered start times anticipating the night rush.
Schedules are inherently ephemeral. No one archives those. Plus it's been over 40 years. The Farrell's chain died, was resurrected, and died again since then.
But I can remember 25 of those names. First and last. And I think the reason was Diana's handwriting. A cold printout of the schedule (we barely had printers then) and those names would have evaporated from my mind just like the OSHA regulations did.
I'm not often pleased with my brain, but I do appreciate when it prioritizes handcrafted things in my memory.