Immanuel acting manager April 1, 1985
Immanuel is a broad-shouldered, puffy-face Latino with a
hint of Asian thrown in.
You can tell in a glance that he’s friendly, but competency is
another matter. He shuffles around the Bloomfield Dunkin Donuts with a slow,
steady pace that accomplishes as little as possible in the most amount of time.
The other employees of this Dunkin tell me he likes to do
cash receipts more than he likes to do the work.
“A born manager,” one of the employees say.
But is he?
His sloped demeanor is utterly relaxed, lacking any of the tension
typical of managing a store.
He coasts through the store, telling people what he wants,
sometimes getting into a squawking match in Spanish with one of the other
bakers, who insist he is wrong.
But he must be right more than he’s wrong since the plaque
on the wall near the kitchen says he once was honored as employee of the month.
I’ve never seen him wear the manager’s uniform. Maybe
because he lacks the sharp edges physically people expect in a boss. He’s more
a slug than a shark in a cutthroat business like this, more suited to some warm
beach as sunset, the afterglow of which shows in his smiling eyes.
He always eats. The sweeter the better, though he said he’s
partial to jelly sticks – which are crullers injected with jelly and covered
with fine powdered sugar.
“These are the only thing worth eating in his whole place,”
he says, and since he’s tried everything, I believe him.
He makes a point of going into the manager’s office as often
as possible to count the cash, even before the shift is concluded, like a squirrel
taking account of buried acorns to make sure it has enough to last the winter.
Yet though the small square window in the manager’s door, I can still see him
munching away.
He’s almost a character from a Neil Simon play, counting and
recounting then losing count when the bills get stuck together because of his
sticky fingers. I watch him wipe jelly off the bills with a moist paper towel,
only to have the towel stick to the bills as well as his fingers.
When he thinks on his feet, he gets in trouble.
He says he shuffles because his feet hurt and gets very
nervous when he hears the store owner might show up, doing his best never to be
around when he does, although Mr. Brown the owner has been conveniently away for
several weeks and isn’t expected back for another three weeks, at which point, Immanuel
will cease being manager and get relegated back to the ranks of the kitchen
staff.
Immanuel aches to get the acting part of acting manager
removed so he can continue doing what he’s been doing in his acting role,
despite the fact that Mr. Brown’s brother is the real manager, only fortunately
away at the same time Mr. Brown is.
Mr. Brown’s brother disliked Immanuel, despite Immanuel
having worked here for four years, three years longer than Mr. Brown’s brother
has.
The brother constantly criticizes everybody, especially Immanuel,
even when the fault is someone else’s such as the baker or the finisher, ultimately,
the brother finds a way to lay blame on Immanuel which upsets Immanuel immensely.
Unlike the other places I’ve worked, the pace of work here
is quick, but not always good.
The brother, in his nastier moods, speculates as to whether
Immanuel is secretly an agent for the other Dunkin on Broad Street, sent here
to sabotage the Bloomfield Avenue store, hoping to destroy the morale here and
make the other Dunkin look good in the eyes of the corporation.
Nobody but Immanuel takes this accusation seriously, since he’s
been here too long, and has none of the capabilities a spy would need.
For all Immanuel’s flaws, he has great pride. He wants us to
produce a good product he can be proud of, and he is never short of praise for
us when we do good work, even he’s too busy licking the jelly and sugar off his
fingers to ever shake our hands.
Comments
Post a Comment