I cannot go to the Just Salad on 20th and 6th avenue again. I will not be there with my coworker, A, gossiping about how cold the office is in the summer or how our boss is a coward and doesn’t know how to manage employees. I won’t be there with my mid-day plea of “I wish they could lay us off so we can file for Unemployment.” We were some of the first customers in line when they opened that location, and Just Salad provided businesses in the area with discounts for their first few weeks. That line provided a place where we could step away from the upper management fuckery that was starting to trickle into our roles and wash our brains off from our windowless office with sunshine and fresh vegetables.
For every job I have worked, I have at least one fast casual lunch spot associated with it: the Urban Outfitters I worked at had a great pizza slice shop on the next block, the law firm I was a receptionist at in college had a Fresh and Co. on the first floor, a rich family I worked for shortly after graduating had a By Chloe (now Beatnik) on their block, and I’ll even count the Dig Inn (now just DIG) by my acting school’s old location by the amount of times I think of it when I’m nearby. I am haunted by the fast casual restaurants that are near my old stomping grounds.
These fast casual restaurants are essentially the officer workers’ respite: the fresh getaway to feel like you are achieving a health goal while working in an office that promotes your slouching over the glowing screen you look at eight hours a day. These restaurants reward you for your staunch loyalty with points for their apps, free toppings for your bowls, and unlocking member-only menu items. In the winter, it is dark when you leave your apartment and it is dark when you leave your cubicle. The only sunshine you get is on your way to whichever bowl-focused establishment you choose that day, and maybe to Starbucks if you can sneak away. It feels so good to know you’ll be rewarded for trading in your gig-based life for the mundane and normie job that gives you minimally-accrued sick days. The added avocado is only $2 extra, anyway!
My two coworkers and I were laid off on a Tuesday afternoon in July after over a year in our roles. Our boss came into our fluorescent cave and closed the door to sheepishly tell us that this was our last day, and to please take a few moments to gather our things before leaving. We were locked out of our emails and computers immediately. One of our other coworkers gave the advice to always record your meetings with your boss, and this was the worst day to start this practice. I still have not listened to that recording.
My pleading worked. The timing of my layoff made sense: our CFOs had both left the company abruptly two weeks prior. Selfishly, I also knew something was up when the office did not celebrate the birthdays of mine and another coworker with a usual Insomnia cookie cake. It took several days for the reality of not working there to settle in. In a way, it was great timing: Barbie came out that week, so that was nice!
I hated this job for several reasons but not so much for the actual role I was performing: my everyday tasks were to call leads and get applications to our for-profit institution (this detail I do hate, and learned a few weeks after I was hired) and churn through at least eighty calls. I hated this job not only because it was so mind-numbingly easy, but the environment around the job was incredibly catty. There was an ongoing frenemy relationship between the three higher-up managers, which put my coworkers and myself as pawns in their weird game; each manager would delegate us the menial tasks they didn't care to do, and found perverse excitement in the competition of whose tasks we'd complete. Then, they would fight with each other over who was in charge of our department. It felt incredibly weird to be in the middle of it, as these were people ten years older than me, but it also made me sad: these managers were all “used to be” actors who were incredibly resentful of anyone still acting at our job (ironic, given that I worked at a drama school).
In the weeks leading up to our lay-off, I was using my lunch hour to go to job interviews. They were not jobs I felt passionate or eager about, but anything to get me away from there: restaurants, retail, gyms, and a nail salon. I wanted out by any means necessary. No one would hire me, which made me feel more increasingly desperate and insane. In lieu of a bowl-oriented lunch, I started bringing anything I could eat at my desk to make up for the lost time that I could quickly assemble in the mornings before work. I ate a lot of tuna sandwiches. I brought my lunch the day I was laid-off: a tempeh BLT.
Six months later I am faced with something harrowing: my unemployment money running out in three weeks. I have no real job prospects, just a series of gigs I have grown accustomed to over the years (babysitting everyone’s children in Park Slope, literally doing almost anything administrative for anyone who will pay me on Venmo, getting yelled at over a reservation at a restaurant). However, in the last six months nearly all of my lunches have been freshly prepared by myself. This has not just been for the financial benefit but also for the pleasure I now take in my lunchtime. Even when I know my lunch will be on the go or somewhere other than my apartment, I still prepare something that is fresh, nutritious, and makes me feel proud of the labor I put in. I turn my phone to “Do Not Disturb” and savor my work. I no longer eat over a desk and multi-task my work for fear of being micromanaged by one of my bosses.
I still walk by the occasional fast casual restaurant on my way to a gig, seeing everyone in business casual slacks and button-downs glued to their phones, after just having paid with said phone, walking out the door while typing an email or Slack reply. I feel so sorry for those suckers. But when I become their coworker in a few weeks, will they want to get bowls with me, too?