(You know the drill, all names have been changed.)

Today, I’d like to tell you the story of my first job. My 15 year old self described the role once as ‘the maitre’d in a greasy spoon’. That about sums up my hatefully optimistic attitude to the whole thing. 

I still can’t work out whether it was incredibly gruelling work, or whether I was just a lazy child (who went to school for five days of the week and worked a 9-5 waitressing job for the other two). When it comes to having a job as a child, apparently the tough nature of the work is what pushes the whole thing into illegality. 

Actually, I just checked it, and kids under 16 can’t work in commercial kitchens even though it would be generous to describe a kitchen like the one I worked in as commercial. 

I never lifted any boxes, if that helps. 

My mother started her first job at 14. She was desperate to prepare me for the thrills of capitalism and to get me out of her house, so, of course, I was regularly assured of the thrills of labour. For a small portion of my childhood I believed it too – that it’s all some self-aggrandising experience capable of fulfilling you forever. That I was special to be the first of my friends with a job that sucked up all my time, made my feet ache constantly, and caused me to always smell like a deep fat fryer. I was in for a shock. 

But, there’s a few observations of labour that 15 year old waitress Molly and current freelance writer Molly (and literally every other normal person on the planet) share:

1. Work is fucking shit

2. Money is very nice

3. Widespread, small scale revolutionary action combined with the utilisation of the suburb as the community is the only way to ensure lasting social and economic reform in Western, hyper-capitalist, city-based society.

Naturally, a job was to be had at the first available opportunity. Not that I was trying too hard to seek that opportunity out, mind you. As a teenager I very much liked my weekends. Perhaps this was why getting a job felt so serendipitous. The way I had been desperate to impress, to get my parents off my back, to find some freedom. Suddenly I was afforded the very thing that would solve my problems. It was clear, however, that I would have to do the only thing I’ve never truly wanted to do. 

Work, bitch.  

The Castle

The place at which I was to be employed was not what I had expected of my first job. The Castle was a small, dank and dingy cafe, housed on the bottom floor of an otherwise empty wimpey-no-fines. My little sister took a ballet class in a community centre across the street, so we’d go to the cafe for heady, indulgent, greasy food at suspiciously cheap prices. The orange and purple sign with a graphic castle and two Celtic crests was peeling, there were an assortment of cars from the last decade parked outside, and the front wall had been knocked down in two separate places. It was, without doubt, the least pretty place in town.   

In truth, I loved the other cafe in the area so much more. It was set over two floors of a 17th century home, exterior complete with all the quintessential, monochromatic Tudor woodwork. Feather boas were strung from wrought iron coat stands, writing sets lay strewn about carved wooden tables. Upstairs, however, was where the real magic happened. Rose petal cake, blueberry and white chocolate loaf, finger sandwiches, cinnamon profiteroles and hot chocolate with cream, edible glitter, diet coke in a glass bottle. My magpie mind went crazy, as did the minds of the other yummy mummies whose daughters were in ballet and wanted an excuse to schmooze over a latte. The mothers and aunties used to battle it out with the with the husbands and little brothers on whether to go to the Nook or the Castle. 

On this particular, fateful occasion, the Castle won. I didn’t mind much, though. I quite like sausages. 

The Oath 

It was always blindingly hot in there. So hot that the windows fogged up in the rain to the extent that, if it weren’t for the blinking bar sign, it might not even have been open. Inside, white walls were covered in kitschy little signs that summed up hard work and the futility of being in witty limericks. There were nine tables, covered with vinyl tablecloth in a  yellow and orange check, menus stuck to them with Jantex residue. Each table had salt, vinegar, and two of the most traditional red and brown diner bottles for sauces. There were lots of things about the cafe that I wouldn’t notice until I had to stare at them for 8 hours every Saturday and Sunday. 

We were crammed in next to the drinks fridge; the cafe was exceptionally busy on this day for some reason. June, the manager, was storming through the dining area, running her hands through her hair and throwing meals in front of wet customers. She was doing both jobs that were needed to run the establishment in such high-traffic times – cooking and serving, kitchen and front of house. I overheard her using some choice words with the table next to us, taking the opportunity to chastise her ex-assistant. She had had a history of not very good helpers, and it pissed her off how especially shit the last one was. He broke her dishwasher, took cigarette breaks every 15 minutes, and randomly decided not to turn up for work. 

“‘That’s it’ I said. ‘You’re done,’”  she told the group of regulars huddled around their novelty mugs of tea. 

She had had three different helpers since we’d begun eating there a few months before. She went through them pretty quickly, it would seem. With my glasses tinted rose by my mother’s appreciation for labour, the red flag was amiss to me. 

“Should I ask if I can work here?”

My mother smiled as if I had just said exactly what she was thinking. She positively lit up, in fact. 

“I mean, I’m not 16.” 

“That doesn’t matter.”

My step dad disagreed, but in a burst of motivation for labour and desperation to please that has been unknown to me ever since, I asked June if I could do it. She said yes. It was as easy as that. She didn’t ask how old I was, she just cared if I could do the work I would need to do. My mum bigged me up, as she usually always does when it matters. 

“I’ll have her Saturdays and Sundays,” June said. 

“No problem, we’ll drop her off and pick her up,” Mum said. 

I was to work 9am through close (usually around 5.30 if we were lucky) every weekend. June managed on her own in the weekdays because it wasn’t as busy. For this time, I would be paid cash-in-hand at a rate of £40 per day plus any tips. I didn’t particularly care about the tips, I’d never made that much money at once in my life. As with most jobs, the money makes it all worth it. Until it doesn’t. 

Still, I beamed because my mother beamed.

“I bet you’re glad we went to the Castle now?”

Rites and Rituals 

I was so nervous before my first day, when we were in the car on the way I made my mum practice hypothetical transactions. I was jittering because, although I’d memorised my own script, I hadn’t yet memorised the menu. I would though. 

When I arrived at the cafe I was taught the 4 commandments:

“Use your initiative,” June begged waving a pair of tongs in the air above her head. Those were her good tongs, and she swiftly informed me that if I should ever see her one-hand clapping in my direction it was because she’d put them down somewhere not in her immediate vicinity and couldn’t find them. 

“We close when the last customer leaves, and then you can go home.” This was painfully true, although she did break this rule once. A man came in with two children at 5.30, blithely ignorant to our watching him and watching the clock. At 6.30, with my parents waiting in the car outside, June finally relented. I was allowed to leave. 

“Always serve the lady first.” This is a divine rule that I probably shouldn’t have learned in a greasy spoon. To any server, this is probably the only tip I would feel comfortable giving, given how little real waitressing I learned in my time there. June was like that though, traditional, probably conservative. She knew the important stuff and she was eager to tell me so I’d shut up and do my job well. 

“You get 3 strikes, and you’re out.” This was the rule that had seen my predecessor exiled. Apart from the fact that he didn’t turn up one day, he took smoke breaks incredibly regularly, which resulted in June’s hanging up a novelty sign banning them. I had no idea how many people were felled by this rule, but it never got me. 

The remainder of the day encompassed the basics. We were standing in front of the dishwasher when she imparted to me the commandments, so that was the first thing I learned. The kitchen was a windowless box, every corner crammed with storage crates and boxes and countertops and sinks that were always full. 

“If the dishwasher’s full, by God, put it on.” 

Easy, I could do that. Next up was stock management. Newer deliveries (we never got real deliveries, June just went to Cost-Cutter and brought all the new stuff in her van every morning) had to go at the back of the shelf, so we’d use up the older stuff first. Very simple, a principal skill in any food-retail job. My CV was growing by the second. Teas and coffees was my area, meaning I had full control of the hot water tap behind the counter and the milk frother. This thing screamed when you put it under the surface of a full jug of milk, but I knew exactly when it was hot enough just by the pitch it’d reached. 

“You will burn yourself, but you’ll only do it once,” June foretold that first morning.

I would burn myself many times, actually. On one occasion after I’d turned the milk molten, it splashed over the rim of the cup and onto the top of my foot, which was just absolutely fabulous and did not hurt for the rest of the weekend. 

There were three bins in the kitchen, all for something different, and a little plastic bag where we’d throw the rings from cans. I never knew why, I just did it. I was also put in charge of the phone because I had good customer service voice, and I actually knew how to use the handset, something that was still amiss to June. The till was ancient, but it worked. The card machine took 20 minutes to process a single transaction, but it worked. 

As time went on and she trusted me more, June would let me take charge of entire orders while she took breaks. Suddenly the novelty signs on her walls chastising any time spent not working seemed not passive aggressive decorations but reminders to her forgetful self. She wasn’t inadequate in any sense – if anyone else had been running that cafe it would’ve gone into the ground years ago. She knew everything, it simply took her a little while to recall it, that’s all. Customers would enter who’d eaten there once three years ago and she’d remember exactly what they liked and the way they liked it. 

The Banquet 

And then, the most important part of a cafe, the food. Every single meal on the menu at Castle Cafe had a process that, through years of trial and error, had been made incredibly specific. And it worked. The dishes came out ‘perfect’ every time. There was a butter knife that glazed the thick bread right to the edges, a host of pans that got hot instantly, two microwaves that made the best scrambled eggs I’ve ever had in the space of six seconds, a gaggle of oil cauldrons stored under the table that fried everything to perfection. 

My personal lunch would be considered a secret-menu item. Three slices of bread, two sausages, two bacon, two hash browns layered as follows; bread, sausages, hash brown, bread, bacon, hash brown, bread. Bonus points if the layer of bread in the middle is fried. It was heavenly, and like most heavenly things, definitely prevented me from burning any calories despite being on my feet for 9 hours everyday. Any customer could have requested what I ate, though, since June would make literally any substitution or modification you wanted so long as it made you happy enough to come back. 

Despite this, the regular menu was pretty all-encompassing. There were breakfasts, cooked breakfasts, veggie breakfasts, cold breakfasts, jam and bread, egg on toast, boiled egg, poached egg, omelettes, mushrooms and egg. Breakfast sandwiches, normal sandwiches, toasties. Faggots and peas, fish and chips, chicken nuggets and chips, ploughman’s lunch. Oh, the ploughman’s lunch. 

Around two weeks into my posting, I took a woman’s order who was delighted to see ploughman’s lunch on the menu. People rarely strayed from the first column, where all the breakfasts were displayed, but every now and again someone would break tradition. 

“And a ploughman’s lunch,” I read the order to June innocently. 

“Ploughman’s-” she spluttered. “Who’s ordered that?!” 

She didn’t really care, she just wanted to know so that next time that person walked in the door she’d be slightly more prepared. 

“Well, we better get to it then.”

It took a little while, around 20 minutes more than the meals for the rest of her party, but after sending me to the bottom of a 14 year old chest freezer, June and I finally found a single tin of paté. The lunch was complete and the lady left happy. Thankfully, she never came in again, and in my entire 10 months at the Castle not a single other soul ordered a ploughman’s lunch.  

The Day of Rest 

I both loved and hated Sundays in the cafe. They were far more rigid than Saturdays, since most customers just took a Sunday lunch. Of course, Sunday lunch at June’s had a process that took over 24 hours to fulfil. But it meant I knew exactly what I was doing at all times and could just get on with it. While Saturdays were manic, Sundays were…y’know what, they were equally as mental, but I knew my place in the chaos. However, Sundays also meant added pressure, because if you disappointed one of June’s regulars then the next week you’d have to deal with her worrying about why they hadn’t turned up. 

Before I worked there, June used to brag to my parents about how her roast dinners included fourteen vegetables. Let me try and remember them here because Lord knows she couldn’t. Peas, butternut squash, potato (mashed and roasted), green beans, sprouts, parsnips, carrots, cauliflower, broccoli, swede, turnip, cabbage, red cabbage, and kale. You also got Yorkshires, of course, and stuffing balls, a waterfall of gravy and a choice of pork, beef, or chicken. For £4.50. £4.50!!! Make any assumptions you want about the quality of the food but be assured, no one left Castle Cafe wanting for anything except a lie down. 

I didn’t believe her when she first told me, but sure enough, there I stood every Saturday preparing fourteen different veg in serving quantities. Of course, each vegetable had a very specific process; the way it was cut, the way it was cooked, the way it was served all had to be adhered to. She handled the swede and the turnip, because those things evaded my 15 year old self’s cutting skills. I took the parsnips because June hated those. At any spare minute in the kitchen we’d turn our attention to readying the brigade of boxes, filled with prepped veg ready for Sunday’s hoards. And you best believe we got it done on Saturday, because there simply would not be enough time to finish preparations on Sunday morning. That’s when the meat was cooked. 

When the so-called day of rest rolled around, we’d take the boxes of veg out of the fridge and line them up on a counter in the far corner of the kitchen. When someone ordered a roast dinner, we’d slap the cold veg onto one of the special Sunday lunch plates (twice as big as any of the others) and stick it in the microwave. How long? £4.50 so 4 minutes 50 seconds. It was then that I realised why she had two microwaves. We barely had the space to fulfil all the orders as they came in, so both microwaves were pinging constantly. I liked cooking the meat, though. June taught me how to make crackling and crumble, and if ever I felt I was flagging I’d tear a strip of pork off the fresh and hulking great mass on the counter. It always tasted good. Always.   

The only vegetable we ever forgot was peas, which used to piss June off to no end. Since they had to be cooked on a Sunday morning, she forgot they were in the pan and would run out to the seating area with strainer in hand, ready to dump a surprise heaping of peas onto your plate in front of all the other customers. 

The Queen  

June was short, fat, and greasy. She had greying blonde hair severed above her shoulders, through which she constantly rubbed her oily hands. It was impossible not to be greasy in that place. Every single day I went home smelling of chips, and if I didn’t shower as soon as I got home I’d have zits galore the next day. Steam and sweat and oil would run down the walls and coat the floors. A good pair of shoes was highly necessary, otherwise you’d be on your arse before you knew what was happening. On the worst of days a few customers went over, too. I wore my ballet flats, to which June scoffed, as she wore huge steel-toed boots. On the one day I wore my hiking boots, I skated about 3 metres and only managed to save myself by clinging onto the sink. 

“I think you’d better wear your stupid shoes tomorrow,” June observed, sipping nonchalantly on her mint tea. 

She often set things on fire, burned herself on oil constantly, and on one occasion locked herself out the back by the bins and had to break back into the cafe using the tasting spoon she kept in her breast pocket.

“Did you not hear me shouting?” She asked after I’d been running the café solo for an hour. I genuinely hadn’t, but she thought I’d left her out there just to get some peace.  

I often wondered how she turned enough profit from that cafe to live, but I quickly found out she’d already made her money in bookmaking. As the unfortunate child of a tory household, I thought bookmaking was literally binding books, and I had no idea there was so much money in the industry. As I grew up, I realised it was betting that allowed her to amass the fortune needed to buy and run a dying cafe. She was also a landlord, and while I hear and appreciate your moans and groans of discontent, can we just let it slide for June? She never pushed it. On one occasion I can remember her worrying about having to evict a man who hadn’t paid his rent in three months. When that man came into the cafe to ask June if she could lend him some money, only a few pounds to get breakfast, she gave him a £20 note and told him she had no change. I pointed silently to the draws in the till, filled with one and two pound coins. 

“But for the grace of God…” she said, and went back into the kitchen.  

She never married. She was married to the cafe, rain or shine, sickness and health. She lived alone and was happy being alone. Describing herself as a ‘functioning alcoholic’, she’d resigned herself to a life of solitude and lobster for Christmas dinner. That’s not to say she didn’t have friends, though. Having lived in the town for a majority of her life, the daughter of a well known lad, she had quite the group of other functioning alcoholics to gallivant with each night. On Saturdays was bingo, the fruits and losses of which she’d regale to me on a Sunday morning. On every other day it was across the road to the pub. They all bought her a magnet every time they went on holiday, so the cafe’s huge metal door was almost completely covered with novelty beer glasses and outlines of Spanish islands. Sometimes I wonder whether the regulars came for the food, or for her. I’ve never been to a cafe since where it was as people orientated as that one. You could have whatever you wanted however you wanted it, and it was only a walk away.

Apart from beer, she drank solely mint tea. I have no idea how much caffeine was in those aromatic bundles, but I swear she must’ve consumed around ten cups a day, and all from around three bags. She’d walk to the hot tap behind the counter, fill up her cup, and half an hour later do it all again. She was also partial to the freezing cold cabbage water we saved and used to make the gravy on Sundays. I hated the stuff, having to stop myself from gagging when I carried the 8 litre pot to the fridge. She delighted in my disgust whenever she’d dunk her cup in there, reminding me just how beneficial it was for the health. 

June was a country music fan. After her birthday, she produced two albums and a CD player to keep us company. Garth Brooks and Bette Midler. We tried Garth first, he being her all-time favourite. It was a very dreary affair. 

“I don’t like this much,” she confessed, disappointed. 

Bette Midler it was, and let me tell you how much strength I took from ‘Be My Baby’ blasting every time I went into the kitchen. June knew I liked it because I’d sing along, at the top of my voice granted the caf was empty. If ever anyone official came in, we’d turn the music off because if you think June had a license, you haven’t been paying enough attention. She constantly hounded me that we’d have to get one, and I’d have to do my food safety certificate because the dreaded food hygiene investigators could turn up at any time. Due to this looming audit, I was told to keep everything spick and span. I came in one weekend to find out we’d been awarded 2 out of a possible 5 for our next year’s hygiene score. June was pissed off, of course, getting down on her knees with me to supervise my scrubbing the inside of the cabbage water fridge.

“I know a Chinese take-away that has a 0 or something, and they’re still running,” I reassured her. 

“Well, maybe you can get us there next year.” 

June knew when something was bothering me. I’d panic about my exams but she never reassured me. When I’d come in with the results, there she was saying I told you so, I knew you’d do well. I told her I wanted to be a writer, that I remembered every conversation I’d had with every customer because I knew this was a great story for a book. 

“I better be on my best behaviour, then,” she joked. 

She showed her love in very strange ways, but I, who also struggled to convey emotion but felt it very deeply, knew exactly her intention and appreciated her effort to no end. To have someone take you on like that, teach you without you even asking, it was something I never got from my parents. After every recipe she imparted to me she’d say wouldn’t learn that in McDonalds, would you? She said it with some conviction because one of her dearest friends had done a stint in a McDonald’s kitchen. June had the stolen apron to prove it, and that was usually the one I wore. The crate at the end of the kitchen was filled with aprons, and when mine got particularly disgusting she’d take it home and wash it for me. She bought me a tip jar after a few months, and at Christmas, she presented me with a full-size Yankee candle. I was shocked – at that point I still didn’t think she was capable of giving gifts. 

Christmas was an odd time for her. She hated it and hated talking about it, but what else do people talk about at Christmas if not Christmas? She indulged people, coming back in the kitchen with a shake of her head. 

On the last day before we left for the holiday, she began to sing Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat. Knowing the saying from my nan, I finished the line. Please put a penny in the old man’s hat. What I did not know, however, were the last two lines, which she promptly taught me. 

If you haven’t got a penny, a ha’penny will do. If you haven’t got ha’penny then God bless you.

The woman’s heart was made from gold. But she was hard, as she had to be, and it was her telling me off that eventually made my depressed, 16 year-old self give up.

The Lords and Ladies of Court 

Without a doubt, our most regular customer was Chloe the dog. A tiny Staffordshire bullterrier, silver around the muzzle, who sat in front of the drinks fridge before being herded into her cage once we opened. It was very bad practice, June said, to keep a dog in a food-retail establishment. Who was I going to tell? I have a particular soft spot for staffys and absolutely adored this one. She, like many of the other regulars, adored June and afforded only her the honour of scratching her head. The rest of us had to settle for a wiggling behind which very much enjoyed a scratch nonetheless. She died just after I left, so June got another dog. Guess what she called her? Chloe 2.

I have no idea what to call some of the regulars because June never referred to them by their real names. For example, Tea and Toast because they would order only tea and toast at 10am on a Saturday. Others’ names have been lost to my memory, like June’s little friend who wore solely red t-shirts with square necklines. She bounded in one day and told June with so much delight that she had visited the new deli in town. ‘Awful nice,’ were the butcher and cheesemonger, who were going to make her a delicious French dinner. ‘A sha-coory board, June. That’s how you say it, he taught me; a sha-coory board.’ Others’ names I never learnt at all, despite how much I enjoyed their company. Every time the small, sheer cut grandma, always in beige, walked by I would smile, for she would help June and I peel the 5kg bag of potatoes needed for Sunday’s mash. ‘Shit,’ June exclaimed one day upon her entrance. ‘Her husband’s with her.’ Turns out, this angel woman had been cursed with arthritis and her husband didn’t like her peeling the potatoes because it made her worse. Still, she always helped.

Most mornings my first customer would be a cyclist, which may as well have been the same regular – it’s quite hard to differentiate them in their spanks and silly sunglasses. I rejoiced at this too, since they never ordered food and always wanted their drinks to go. God bless. Every now and again a random person would just saunter into the kitchen through the ‘no entry’ cutout. I’d simply have to stand there in bewilderment while June stared at them, trying to work out who the fuck they were. Since I only worked there for ten months, I saw this next ‘regular’ only once, and I fell in love. A 6ft woman who worked as June’s accountant, and sat the whole day on the tiny table from which I’d been hired all those moons ago. Every time I dashed past she’d roll her eyes sarcastically at me, or share a warm observation about a patron who’d just left without looking up from her graphs and tables and whatever else accountants look at all day. This is why I was so scorned when it was her who became the next victim of the kitchen’s floor. The only other ‘regular’ who never became a regular, was a little old man wearing dilapidated fishing gear. When I handed him his tea, he pulled me by the wrist and launched into a completely unrelated story about his childhood in Zimbabwe. On one occasion, the men had taken him into a diamond mine and switched off the lights. Lighting only a single torch, he had seen the diamond dust in the air, dancing around his fingers. When I returned to the kitchen, June informed me that he was not strictly speaking…stable, and never to believe anything he said. I wanted to believe his story, though, simply on the sheer merit of his storytelling. To have a mind capable of creating such beautiful detail? He can lie to me all he wants. I never saw him again. 

Sundays were even more regular than the others, if you can imagine. The Lunch Club, so called because all members were gentlemen (in the sense of the word that they were men) and all dined together over June’s infamous Sunday dinner. The Lunch Club was held rain or shine. They each wanted their food in an incredibly specific way that June obviously had committed to her vast memory stores some years ago. They sat at the same tables every time, and though they had very different schedules, sometimes they shared a serendipitous conversation across the entire cafe. These were, unsurprisingly, the times June decided to take a particularly long break. 

Finally, the one and the only, Malcolm, whose name I shall always remember. Appearing as and when, we knew of his arrival only by the ever-failing and yet never-failing chug of his decades old Clio. June and I shared many a smile at the sound. He rarely ordered food, and seemed to come by more for the company. Small, slender, and dressed in a green suede jacket that had at one point been brown, he was hilarious, cheeky, loyal, a bonafide sweetheart. Always helpful, he often drove to CostCutter for us if June hadn’t been able to get anything in the morning. On these occasions, I’d ask him to buy me something sweet. He would come back with the biggest chocolate bar he could find. I hated it if the cafe was busy when he came by, because on those occasions he never stayed for long. He liked to sit outside and smoke the wacky-backy, you see. 

The End 

There were bad times, too. Who am I kidding? I never really enjoyed it, but there is one slightly traumatic memory that I harbour in particular. One family who came in, a mother and around 8 children of varying ages, ordered enough to dedicate the kitchen solely to them. Only every single table in the cafe was full. I noted down, cooked and delivered their order with a diligence since lost to me. Every single thing I took out to them was sent back because it was wrong in a new and more outlandish way. 

“I told you I wanted the peas in a separate bowl, not on the plate. These peas here are meant to be on the plate and you’ve put them in a bowl.”

After they’d gone, I went into the toilet and cried. June noticed immediately no matter how much I attempted to smile through it. 

“Over them? Don’t cry over them,” she told me. Then she told me they were inbred, which must have true, right? It’s an odd thing to say solely to comfort someone, but it made me laugh. 

I never saw them in the cafe again, which I attributed to my incredibly poor service. Fat chance. It’s because June told everyone else who came in the cafe that day what had happened. I found this traitorous at the time, against the girl code and such. It wasn’t until recently I realised it’s because she knew it would get back to them. She served everyone who came through those doors, no matter what time of day or night. But she very distinctly, in her own way, told those people they would never be welcome again. 

I wasn’t crying over them really. I was also having a shit time at home, and having my weekends stolen away wasn’t particularly great even if I was making a shit ton of cash (for a 15 year old from a deprived area). But June didn’t comfort me. Instead, she made me feel like I could comfort myself. She gave me a lot of strength, and other times she made me feel very stupid.

It ended, like most endings I’ve been put through and put myself through, incredibly sadly and when it probably shouldn’t have. It was 5.30, I wanted to go home, and when a man rang up asking for takeaway dinners I said we had none left. When June asked who had called I didn’t lie to her, as I was wont to do back then. I just told her. She got passive aggressive, and when she was done bitching about me to customers, I told her that tomorrow would be my last day. She said okay, just okay, and our stubborn selves went our separate ways. It was only my second strike, but even then I don’t think I could bare the thought of our relationship going sour. She really liked me, and I’m still so grateful for what she gave me, but June is a determined woman. In the end, it was all business to her, and I, unjustifiably, felt betrayed. 

Epilogue

Afterward, I went in with my step-dad, and June handed me a birthday card that my step-mother had come into the cafe to give to me the week before I quit. On the front, was a giant 16. 

“She knows you weren’t 16 then?” 

“She knew.” 

Sometimes, very rarely, I go into the cafe with my boyfriend, and watch if whoever June has enlisted next serves the women first. When I returned recently to the Castle, the new teenager (she clearly learned the efficiency of a child labourer’s desire to impress) did not heed that rule. That made me just a little bit proud. She knew my order by heart, the secret-menu sandwich, and probably still remembers it. 

I take pride in how good I was at that job. We were a good team, although I’m sure she had lots to say about me to the chubby-cheeked boy who replaced me. She taught me so much, not just about food and cafes and shit, but about having fun in little ways, about being happy with what you’ve got, and working your ass off for it every single day. About succeeding. I loved June. I’m glad she was a part of my life, and I’m glad I got to be a part of hers. I can only hope that she thinks half as highly of me, as I think of her. 

Every time I look at the clock and wish the day away, I hear her voice appearing from the kitchen. 

‘Stop clock watching!’