2022_영미문학읽기

ecstatic a crop of 5 10 15 One slow midweek night, when I managed to catch up on dishes and clean out the sinks early, I asked Jeff when I could do something different. “Do you know why you’re still doing dishes?” he asked. “Because you keep complaining about it. Nobody likes to work with a complainer,” he said. But, he promised, if I continued to leave a clean station and not complain, next week he would put me on the “make table,” where pizzas were assembled before being put into the oven. A few days later, when I reported for my after-school shift, I saw my name penciled not in the “dishes” box but in the “make table” box. I was ecstatic. Jeff had a special way of running his restaurant. From a crop of teenagers, he assembled a team of employees who cared about their work – and one another. Most of my best friends from high school also worked at Pizza House, and some of my best memories were made under that red roof. Pizza House became not only my escape from home but also, in many ways, an alternate home. In my real home, I felt unstable and out of control. At work, the path seemed clear: Work hard and do things right, and you will succeed. This model had not seemed possible before. 109