My First night at Jimmy John’s

As I walked up to Jimmy John’s I saw Pac-man and Gollum from Lord of the Rings standing at the counter staring at me. I was excited but also kinda nervous to actually start working for Jimmy Johns that I showed up 30 minutes early to my shift as soon as I walked in the door I heard my boss Wocka say, “Tommy clock in and help us with these sandwiches.”

“I don’t know my clock in numbers to sign in can you tell me what they are please?”

“Yeah one second”

As he was walking over to help me I was looking around watching everyone work together and laughing then once they were done they turned around and stared at me. I didn’t know how to react or respond to what was happening then, all of the sudden I heard Wocka say, “Gus, this is Tommy and it’s his first day please make him feel welcome and help him out.”

I turned to Gus and say, “Hi how are you?”

Gus replied with, “I’m dead inside and welcome to Jimmy John’s”

When he was talking to me I looked at him and instantly thought he looks like Gollum and that he is kind of a weird dude, but I think I might fit in well here. Once Gus was done introducing me and I was punched in, Wocka and Gus showed me where the aprons were in the backroom and introduced me to everyone that was working. They told me who I was working with for the night and who everyone is. They told me I was working with Nels, Gus, Tabetha, Blake, and Conner.

Once that was done I heard, “Hey do you guys need anything else before I take off?” I looked over at the door and Wocka was leaving.

The first thing everyone did when Wocka left was to start making jokes. I sat there silently listening to try and get a sense of everyone’s humor, but while I was doing that I heard a giant BBBBBEEEEEEEEEEEPPPPPP! I saw Gus run over to the oven put the oven mits on.

As he opened the door he shouted, “ Hot door.”

As he opened the door I smelled the fresh baked bread. It smelled up the whole store and made me more hungry then I have been in a while. Nels pulled me aside and told me to stay near him and Conner and that they would teach me what to do. Nels, gave me a menu and said study this and he put it in the rail where I assumed the receipts went so we could see what the orders were.

All of the sudden I heard Conner yell out,” I need a Billy hold mayo, add hots and stink.”

I’m standing there like what is happening trying to look at the menu and I heard Nels say,”Tommy pull out one portion of roast beef then put dijon on it then ham and cheese.”

While I was doing that I saw what he was doing and he was putting hot peppers, onions, and everything else on it and it made sense to me that hots were hot peppers and onions were the stink.

Once we started to get less busy I started to get more training in. They taught me how to clean the oven, clean the tea and soda machine, make the dish sinks and much more. Once all of this was done I looked over and I saw Gus and Blake had started a game of Jenga with the freshly baked bread.

I was thinking to myself,” this is gonna go bad really fast once the bread falls and hits the ground.”

I later found out that they had a bag to catch the bread in so it wouldn’t hit the ground and become unusable, however, they did use it to put all of the day old bread in so we could throw it in the freezer and use it for the next day.

At the end of the night they had me doing dishes which was ok because it was an easy thing to be able to do. While I was doing dishes I looked to see what Nels was doing and he was cleaning the cold table where all of the food is being stored and making sure it was spotless. And Gus was just doing paper work in the back. Then it got to be around 11 0’clock and Gus told Nels and I that we did a good job and that we could go home. As we we were walking out the door Nel’s told me that I did a great job for my first day then disappeared into the darkness.