I plan on making gender stereotypes and advocating for our women to join the food service industry

The Experiment

Like any other person, I shop for food. Wish I had a garden, but that’s for another day.

I check the sales, make my lists, and walk through the supermarket picking up perfectly packaged products in plastic. I don’t think much of it, although I'm a total sucker for pretty packaging.

But there are those products that while wrapped nice and fine, still retain elements of the wild they come from. Styrofoam trays and cling wrap don’t detract from the rawness of it all. Of course, I’m referring to the fish and meat department. Our beloved and loathed proteins.

In their delectable, fully-cooked form, they fill a significant section of this magazine, yet to experience them before they’re all wrapped and lined up in refrigerated rows is something we may be curious about — in a distant, vicarious way of course.

You want to know, but not too much. Enough to make good decisions about your food sources, but not enough to gross you out and convince yourself that vegan is the only way to go.

So today’s lab is to service the community with a hands-on view of my local meat and fish department. Heads up, I plan on making gender stereotypes and advocating for our women to join the food service industry.

How It Went Down

I’m wearing the wrong shoes, and I may have to throw them out by the end of the day, is my first thought. Rubber boots would have been wise, but no one forwarded the memo.

I thought I’d made good choices when I’d gotten dressed — actually redressed — in the morning. I’d started out with the usual nice sweater, nice skirt, tights, and nice shoes. But on second thought, realizing I’d be spending my day among scales and guts, I’d changed out of my nice everything and put on an old purple turtleneck, denim skirt, kept the tights, and put on my Lands’ End furry moccasins that I wear as my catch all shoe/slipper.

I was going to be on my feet all day, gotta be comfortable, right?  What I really needed was  something I could easily spray down when the fish scales and/or chicken guts landed on it, or when Julio of the fish department did one of his frequent hosing downs of the entire area. He used a powered nozzle spray that would delight my kids, but shrank the suede of my shoe, not to mention the soggy fur.

“There are shirts in the back,” Tal, the manager of Seasons and Raskin’s of Clifton offered. Oh, so I get to be a fashionista today. Fun! I started flipping through a rack of blue and brown striped Seasons and Raskin’s shirts to find a size small, but Julio, Tal’s right hand man, held up a hand, then fished around a back shelf and offered me a purple Seasons and Raskin’s sweatshirt. I took that, because the department is cold.

“What can I do?” I asked Tal as soon as I was ready, I looked at Julio who was deftly skinning a salmon. Maybe I’d get my hands on such a beauty? Tal redirected me, “You can label these.”

Before I came, he’d sliced and packaged some salmon. I had the glorious job of putting the package on the scale and affixing the printed label that emerged. Which seemed cool the first two times the sticker popped out, but quickly lost its luster. I wanted to be more useful.

I looked to my left. Julio was now filleting the salmon, removing the tiny bones with swift, short movements, and I realized Tal wasn’t going to let me near the actual fish. Fish needs to be treated right.It needs clean movement, and sure hands, not eager beaver, chop-heavy, look-at-me-Ma slices. Shucks.

“What’s next?” I asked.

“To the display,” Tal said, and led me to the front to put the fish in the showcase.

“We try to do it first in, first out,” Tal said, as he put all the new packages behind the ones that were already there. Then he took a newer one and put it in front. “People don’t want to take the first one, so they skip it, so I put a new one here that they’ll skip anyway and take the one I want them to.”

Hysterical. We’re all playing mind games with each other. Like most shoppers, I also skip the first one. I don’t know why it never occurred to me that the managers know this too knowledge. I thought I was being smart, meanwhile I was being manipulated. It’s like the research that says the cleanest stall in a public restroom is the first one, because people always skip it because they assume it’s the dirtiest.

“Now what?” I asked.

Tal looked around, then pulled a box out of the back freezer.

“Mock-crab cakes are on sale this week. We’re gonna package them in packs of six.”

I nodded, then watched as Tal got a stack of Styrofoam trays and moisture-absorbing padding.

“We call them pampers,” he said of the padding. Yup — sounds right. I put together an assembly line of Styrofoam trays, then pampers, line up six cakes, and I’m done.

“Think you can wrap them?” Tal asked.

“Teach me,” I said. And he did. And I’m here to tell you that your cling wrap will never look like the stores’. I know you’ve bought the clingiest one, and you’ve pulled it tight, but you don’t have the mechanisms that commercial entities do.

In a word — heat. There are heating mechanisms built into the machine in two separate places to cling wrap like no one’s business — so unless you’re taking out the blow-dryer, or setting the Crock-Pot plate to warm — give up trying.

Interestingly, it’s one of those things that when you watch it being done, looks super easy, but when you try it, realize you need a fluidity of motion, a muscle memory, for it to come out right. After a few attempts Tal told me I’m better than the guy who worked for him for a few months.

“He is Loco (crazy)!” Julio piped up. I’ll take the compliment even if I’m just better than the crazy guy.

After the mock-crab cakes, I moved on to fish sticks that were on sale that week as well. While I worked, a woman with a bucket hat approached me.

“Hello!” She was very enthusiastic. I smiled and noticed the Seasons and Raskin’s logo in the corner of her top. “I’m so happy to see you, don’t usually see women working here. I’m Dena Tocker.”

She was so nice and welcoming and friendly. I disappointed her when I told her I was just here on assignment, but she stuck around to talk to me anyway — about why there aren’t any frum women working in the store and why there should be.

“I’m a people person, I’ve always worked in direct sales.” She’d worked in Toys “R” Us, Times Square, for 14 years — I thought that was cool and unconventional. Regarding working in food and sales, she said, “It’s kid friendly, with flexible hours, you’ll never starve in the food business, you’ll always have a job, people are always hiring, you can take the skill with you wherever you go, I can retire to Florida and find a job right away.”

Dena also admitted that it’s unconventional and kind of looked down upon.

“When I first started working here, people raised their eyebrows and thought I must have some nebach situation, but I’m making money, and there’s so much you can do in this field.”

I shirked my fish stick duties a bit to ask Dena more questions. She intrigued me so much, I even called her later to ask her more. It was a day before her daughter’s wedding, but she had all the time in the world.

“I’ve learned that good is good enough. Nothing will be perfect, there will always be drama, so good is good enough.”

I need to etch that in my brain, with twice daily reminders.

With her strong New York accent and attitude, Dena shared a bit of her origin stories (Superheros aren’t the only ones with those.)

“My father told me, ‘Dena, people who go to college make more money than those who don’t. And those who don’t work a lot harder.’ I was never a good student, and I’m not afraid of hard work.”

I, on the other hand, went to college and became a teacher, so I have student loans and regularly cry over the number of papers I need to grade. I think that just makes me a fool.

Dena also never felt the pressure to conform, was always free to live honestly. So the food industry is just fine for her, and she’s currently working as the assistant manager of Seasons and Raskin’s Deli. She’d done food demos for a while, but realized she liked working in the same place, not traveling around.

I’d like to think I don’t feel the pressure but I totally do — just look at me, I’m a teacher for crying out loud, and my kids wear Natives in the summer, and my baby has too many ribbed sets and Lil Legs leggings. I think Dena is my Superhero.

Regarding food demos and the like, Dena is willing to train. “Just contact me,” she says, and she’s serious, call her. Or call Mishpacha who will email me to email you, and I’ll give you her number. Or just ignore me, Google Seasons and Raskin’s of Clifton, and ask for Dena.

Dena had a lot more to say, but I have a word count. One gem I’ll share with you was, “Only work for someone who deserves you.” I wish someone would have told me that when I was younger. If any just-out-of-seminary girls are reading this, listen to this sage advice while the rest of us cry over lost years.

Back to the fish department. I finished packaging the fish sticks, then helped Tal go to the back freezer and get gefilte fish. There was something anonymous about wheeling the cart through the store dressed in purple corporate colors — nobody gave me a second glance. I put the gefilte fish in the display case. While arranging it neatly in rows, I looked up for a moment and met my next-door-neighbor’s eyes.

“I didn’t know you worked here,” she said. It was a weird moment, as part of me thought, “Whatever, it’s fine if she thinks I work here,” and the other went, “N-n-n-n-no.” I betrayed Dena in that moment. She’s a better person than me. I told my neighbor it was for a writing assignment. “So cute,” she replied. No clue what she was really thinking.

After that encounter, I swapped my Seasons and Raskin’s shirt for a black Meat Maven apron, and stepped into the butcher’s back room.

I don’t see women working in the fish department as a problem. Women in the meat department is another story. First, it’s freezing. Second, there are scary machines in there, third, meat is HEAVY, and fourth, there’s the gore factor. There’s something sterile and neat about fish, a few scales here and there, nu nu. With meat and chicken, there’s skin, and guts, and bones, and blood.

The fish department was staid and polite with two people working there, an Israeli radio station playing in the background. The meat department had five Hispanic men working intently and quickly. They welcomed me and put me to work. First challenge was the size XL gloves I was given. Nothing smaller in this department.

I got to work, first with the easy stuff. There was a mountain of chicken bottoms on one metal table. I had to put eight chicken bottoms on a tray. They were on sale this week. The meat department uses pampers too, except they call them diapers. Same laugh for me.

I noticed the guy next to me was cutting off part of the bone of the thigh, and after he had a pile, removed the chicken from the rest of the bone... oooh, it was pargiyot, I realized. This is how it’s done. He just flicked and twisted and there it was.

“Teach me,” I said. He handed me a smaller knife and showed me, slowing his pace just a little. I copied him. It was easy only because those knives are crazy sharp. They slice through bone with the lightest pressure.

Together we worked through a pile of bottoms. There was another guy near us, taking our handiwork, rolling it neatly and placing it on trays. I should’ve taken one home, I was so proud of my handiwork.Passaic/Clifton people, I prepared your pargiyot, aren’t they pretty? I feel empowered, like I know a kernel of the secrets of the universe.

The guy then swiftly sharpened his already sharp knife,

“Wait, show me how,” I told him. I have a knife sharpener at home, and I’ve read instructions and even watched videos on how to do it, but I’ve always been apprehensive — I have expensive knives and I don’t want to ruin them — so instead I let them go blunt (brilliant, I know).

I’m a visual/tactile learner, so I wasn’t missing this opportunity. He showed me how to brush the length of the blade vertically along the sharpener. I couldn’t wait to get home and try out my new tricks.

After that, another guy showed me how to make sliders. All I had to do, really, was catch the sliders as they came off a small conveyor belt below the machine. I wasn’t eating raw meat, but I was looking around frantically for a new tray, my hand urgently returning to the belt to catch the next slider. I didn’t do that for long — it raised my stress levels too much.

Next, I put roasts into those netted bags and then chicken bones into mesh bags that looked like the trying-on tights they have in shoe stores.

“Mucho bueno (very good),” the burly guy next to me said. I smiled and said, “Gracias!” That much Spanish I knew with my earlier Duolingo LifeLab. I stood back and watched a little as one of the guys cut the chicken into quarters. Now I knew why mine weren’t so pretty when I tried to do it myself a la 1963 LifeLab. He cut it with a vertical circular saw.

“Want to try?” he offered. I knew I should say yes, for the sake of this column, but apparently I don’t love you all that much or maybe I just love my fingers more, but I said no, and watched in childlike fascination as he ripped through a dozen more chickens like this.

Last, I got a chance to work the meat department’s packaging machine. I was impressed with the fish department’s, but the meat department’s is the next level. Everything is automated, no pulling shrink wrap, no heat, no affixing stickers. All I had to do was put the tray down, and the machine sucked it and deposited it a moment later all wrapped and labeled. I just had to catch it — another conveyer belt. More anxiety.

The Conclusion

At the end of the day, I was tired, but oddly content. There is something satisfying about working with your hands and leaving your mind free to wander.

“Come back any time,” Aaron, the manager of Meat Maven said.

“Sure, free slave labor,” I joked. But really, I’d enjoyed myself. Maybe because it was only one day. Maybe because it’s not really my job, or maybe it’s something that suits me. Maybe I should listen to Dena who says there’s always employment available in the field, while I’ve heard reports that teaching will be obsolete in the near future, and writing will just be the algorithms of words. Exciting prospects, I know.

I returned to my domicile, and my seven-year-old kindly told me as I walked through the door, “Eww, Mommy, fish for supper? I hate fish!”

On second thought, maybe I won’t enter this particular part of the field. Maybe I’ll just work in the deli department. You think my boys will like me more if I smell like pastrami? Hey Dena, looking for new workers?

Is there something you’ve always been curious about but never had the uts to try? Esther just might do it!

Send your suggestions to Life Lab at familyfirst@mishpacha.com

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 671)