A standard offering in any Jewish deli that wishes to retain its clientele is a wide array of pickles and other pickled products. I am not talking about mass-produced jarred products from companies such as Vlasic. Instead, I am referring to lovingly created items that are sold individually or by the pound. They are an absolute must as an accompaniment for sandwiches. In some cases, the sandwich becomes the accompaniment to the pickles.
At Dave’s Deli in Northeast Philly, where I worked in the late 70s and early 80s, pickles were a mainstay. Customers used tongs to select their own pickles from large white buckets that weighed maybe forty pounds when full. There were big, standard dill pickles, pickled tomatoes, gherkins, and my favorites – half done pickles that still displayed a fresh green color from their previous existence as small cucumbers.
For years, Dave’s had been supplied its pickle products by one of the major food purveyors in Philly. But Danny, one of the co-owners of the deli who ran the day-to-day operations, was not happy with the prices he was charged. Although Dave’s was selling a lot of pickles, they weren’t making enough profit to suit him.
Then one day, an old acquaintance – let’s call him Max – stopped by and told Danny that he was opening his own pickle distributorship and could undercut significantly the prices of the well-established competition. He also promised to supply the same quality product that the deli had been receiving. Dollar signs flashed before Danny’s eyes, and he shook on a deal with Max. Then he called the longtime supplier to cancel his standing order.
Danny was pleased with his deal making, but it turns out that his familial co-owners were not so happy. In fact, his mother-in-law, Betty, was very displeased. She knew Max and did not trust him. As I wrote in a previous post, trust in that business was a scarce commodity.
So, as Max made his first few deliveries, Betty was all over him, double-counting the buckets and checking his figures. The buckets came sealed, and we had a special tool to remove the lid when we opened one for display. Until that point, the full buckets were stored in a walk-in refrigerator in the back kitchen. Each delivery was about a dozen buckets, and I often would be dispatched to carry the buckets to the back after they were delivered in the front of the store.
Then one day, I saw Betty – a short woman of at least seventy years – trying to pick up buckets after Max departed. I thought she was trying to move them, but that was not her intention. She announced that the buckets didn’t weigh as much as the same buckets that the deli had been receiving from the previous supplier.
“He’s shorting us,” she declared. (There may have been some profanity accompanying her declaration.)
Danny, of course, did not believe it. He had just set up this new arrangement and didn’t want to see his hope for increased pickle profit destroyed. Betty needed evidence and hatched a plan for the pickle man’s next delivery.
Max had been parking his van a good distance from the deli out in the parking lot. That was out of the ordinary as most of the delivery people parked as close to the door as they could. When he next showed up, Betty went out the back emergency door of the deli, walked around the block of strip mall stores, and snuck up on Max from the far end of the block. What she saw him doing confirmed all of her suspicions.
He was opening every bucket and taking a few pickles from each. Then he would dump those pickles into a separate bucket. He would reseal the original buckets so that they looked new and unopened.
Betty immediately confronted Max, calling him a dirty thief. She threatened to call the police. Max pled innocence, but he had been caught pickle-handed. Even Danny had to agree.
Before allowing him to drive away from the parking lot, the owners of Dave’s Deli extorted a couple of buckets of pickles from Max at “no charge” to make amends for his thievery. Back in the deli, Danny called the original supplier and reinstated his standing order. Although I was just a bystander, I gained a lot of wisdom from this episode. First, of course, the grass is not always greener. Sometimes it is better to stay with the tried and true. Second, greed, which in this case centered on Danny’s desire for increased pickle profit, can lead one to make bad decisions. Finally, someone can bleed you dry just by stealing a little bit at a time. If Max stole two pickles from every bucket from all of his customers, then he stole a lot of damned pickles!