The first time that I stepped through the doors of Dave’s Deli in Northeast Philly, I was sixteen years old and had no way of knowing that what I would learn there would shape the rest of my work life. It was my first real job – you know, one in which taxes are deducted from your pay – and I was a nervous high school kid.
A friend named Kurt had told me about a part time opening where he worked. It was only for Sundays, 8:00 AM until early afternoon. The job was to serve customers from behind the fresh bread counter – bagels, rolls and loaves of rye, pumpernickel and challah. At the end of the shift, the job also involved cleaning, sweeping, emptying trash cans and taking garbage to the dumpster. Getting hired was deceptively easy. Kurt vouched for me and that seemed to be enough. I don’t remember any interview as such.
Maybe it was so easy to land this job because the pay was not great. It was 1971, and the minimum wage rate set by the U.S. Government was $1.60 per hour. My starting pay at Dave’s was $1.25 an hour. I don’t know if that was legal or not. Maybe there was a loophole for hiring inexperienced teenagers who didn’t know a thing.
My education started on day one as my first boss ever, Danny, gave me a white apron, showed me how to put it on, then started the first class on how to watch every penny for the business. Danny and his wife Sandy were co-owners of Dave’s along with Sandy’s parents, Betty and Dave. They all worked long hours in the store. Although the older man had his name out front, Danny ran the business.
And speaking of a name being out front, one of the first lessons I received from Danny was about the large red neon DAVE’S DELI sign in the front window. As customers entered the store, the fresh bread counter – my new domain – was directly on the right. They could not come behind the counter but had to ask for whatever baked goods they wanted. The counter abutted at a ninety-degree angle a front plate glass window that looked out on the parking lot. Just inside the window was the neon sign, hanging unprotected at about elbow level for anyone working that counter and especially dangerous for a clumsy kid. Danny’s first words of wisdom to me concerned that sign.
“Joey,” he said, “be extremely careful around that sign. If you break it, you’re going to have to work a lot of Sunday mornings to pay for it.”
His second lesson was all about dealing with suppliers. The fresh baked goods came to Dave’s from a handful of different Philadelphia bakeries. The customers had their established preferences, so rye breads from two different bakeries were stocked. There were at least three different bagel suppliers, to cover the various production methods (egg versus water) and to ensure that customer demands could be met. What this meant was that every morning before opening there would be many bags of fresh baked good piled up outside the front door.
Danny taught me the bread boy’s job. First you brought in the bags, separated out the various bakeries, then pulled out their packing slips. The next step was to laboriously check that every single item was there. That meant that if one bakery indicated they had delivered four dozen bagels, you had to count out each one to verify that there were 48 of them. As orders were confirmed, the bagels, rolls, and breads were then displayed in the most eye-pleasing and tempting manner.
So, that first day, Danny showed me the basics, told me what to do when a customer asked for something, then he left to tend to other matters. I went about checking in the orders. When I was finished doing that, I wasn’t sure what to do next, and Danny was nowhere in sight. So, I stood behind the counter, waiting for a customer, with my hands in my pockets.
Seemingly out of nowhere, Danny appeared and said sarcastically, “I don’t want to bother you because I see that you’re busy.”
My hands shot out of my pockets.
“Joey, you should never stand around doing nothing. There is always something you can do to make yourself useful.”
When you think about it, that was a powerful concept to be taught on the first day at my first job. Dave’s Deli and Danny provided many more lessons as I worked there on weekends and fulltime during summers through high school and college, eventually performing every role in the store, except slicing lox. Stay tuned.