The Butt in the Deli

When I stepped up to the deli/bakery counter this evening, no one appeared to be behind it. From where I stood I peered into the nooks and crannies of the kitchen, past cooling rolls and empty stainless steel counters. No one.

I walked to the end of the counter, to the employee entryway, and craned my neck around a corner. “Can I help you?” She practically jumped out at me at the same time as her cell phone detached from her ear.

I placed my order, “Cut thin, please,” and she put on her gloves and grabbed the lunk of meat. “Is it still raining outside?” she smiled. “How’s this?”

“That’s fine,” I said. “Yes, it’s still raining.” I had just come from an unnecessary yet highly productive teacher work day, and because the store-made cake and cookie that I’d eaten at 10:30 (we’d been told to expect early morning muffins, so thank goodness I forgot and ate plenty of granola at breakfast) had long since worn off, I wasn’t exactly feeling too chatty.

“This meat is hard to cut into nice slices,” she said. “It’s lumpy.”

“I wonder why that is?”

“I’ll show you,” she said. Just then her cell phone went off like a carnival slot machine. “That’s my grocery list.”

While she finished cutting up the meat, I decided that after getting the meat, I would politely just walk away from the counter, instead of pursuing greater understanding of the lumpy meat. Just because. If I could get away, that is.

“Have a nice day,” she told me as she handed over the package, and I started off to the salad dressing department. But no sooner than I thought myself free, she called after me, “Oh, did you want me to show you about this meat?”

“Oh yes,” I said, turning back.

She held up the mass of pink cow butt. “It happens when lots of different people cut it. It doesn’t stay even,” she said.

“Oh my,” I said. “Thank you.”