Eliyahu Gasson | opinions editor
I found myself in the unenviable position of having to leave my internship early this summer. I had an internship at a local newspaper which, due to personal finances, I was unable to keep for more than a week. In a fevered rush, I spent a day applying to whatever job I qualified for online.
The first to respond to me was Robert Wholey & Co., a fish market and grocery store in Pittsburgh’s Strip District that has been around for 112 years. Roughly a week after applying, they were kind enough to bring me on board as a poultry worker.
I was behind the poultry counter wearing my lab coat and non-slip shoes faster than you could say ‘Bob’s your uncle.’
I was excited for what was in store. Wholey’s had always been my favorite place to get groceries with my parents as a kid. I loved oohing and aahing at the toy train hanging from the ceiling. I loved ogling at the funny underwater creatures in the big fish tanks.
My initial impressions as an employee were moderately positive. The people working with me in my department were friendly and knew what they were doing. A lot of them had been there for 30-or-so years and that showed through the way they handled their work. They knew what they were about, and whether they’d admit it or not, they had an obvious passion for what they did.
I didn’t really get to know a lot of the other employees all that well, though I never had any issues with them. I convinced myself that I wouldn’t be there long, so there wasn’t a point in getting to know anyone all that well.
Some of the customers could be terribly frustrating – sometimes downright insufferable. Many questions could be answered by pointing to a sign above their head. Annoying men got kicks from showing the frozen rabbits to the women who they brought with them. And if I had a nickel for every time I had to ask a customer not to touch raw poultry in the store, I’d have at least enough money to afford half of a Wholey’s lobster roll.
Wholey’s is an old store that still does things the old-fashioned way. To keep a lot of the poultry cold, we would keep it on ice beds. To keep those tables full of ice, we would move ice from a large machine in the meat department which had a sign that boasted a daily production of 40,000 pounds of fresh ice. Every hour-or-so, I or one of my coworkers would fill a cart with ice and move our way through the section, ensuring that none of the meat would get warm.
For a while, this wasn’t an issue for me. One morning, however, the machine broke. The rest of the day involved us chipping away at what had slowly become a solid block of ice. The machine would break one or two more times while I worked in the store, climaxing on my last day when the machine seemed unrepairable. To deal with the issue, the company ordered bags of gourmet ice. The most fun I ever had working for Wholey’s was breaking chunks of bagged iced apart with a rubber mallet.
However, the occasionally broken ice machine was far from the most difficult aspect of my job.
The company would have to order meat in large quantities to get it to ship from the manufacturer. This meant we would typically get our orders in 2,000-or-so pound pallets at a time. We didn’t have a working pallet jack then, so, to move the pallets from the loading dock to the cooler, two or three employees at a time would have to work together to push the orders into the walk-in meat cooler.
The upside is that it was a great team-building exercise.
We had pests, too. Flies, mostly, which would do laps above my poultry counter, always looking for an opportunity to sneak in a quick meal. Sometimes I’d catch one on a piece of chicken or turkey. I’d shoo those guys off. Sometimes I’d catch one immobile on the ice. They all wound up in the trash.
The flies were annoying, sure, but the mice are what truly drove me crazy. I’d see the rascals out of the corner of my eye, scurrying from one hiding spot to another. What drove me crazy was that there was little I or my co-workers could do about it aside from complain to the management.
On my second to last day, the shop got a visit from the Allegheny County Health Department, who, according to their report from July 29, also noticed evidence of mice, including a corpse in a trap. I reached out to Jim Wholey, one of the owners and the president of the company. He declined to comment.
While they all cared about their work, my coworkers also seemed exhausted with their jobs. I could understand why. After a point, the charm that Wholey’s had had certainly been lost on me. Maybe it’s because I felt a little cheated — $12.50 per hour to carry 40-pound boxes and handle chicken organs felt unfair. Not being allowed to sit while on the floor felt unfair. Not being able to afford to shop at the place which I worked felt unfair.
I ended my summer on good terms with Wholey’s, and I harbor no ill will toward them – there are things beyond their control and, ultimately, I did accept the job offer from them. But there was a black cloud over the floor every shift. The air always felt kind of tense. My idea of Wholey’s before working there was of the magical shop that I remembered from my childhood and old documentaries. Perhaps I’m jaded from my experience as an employee, but it feels like the magic has gone.