Not since the first time I had to tackle cutting from a 60-pound wheel of gouda during a customer rush had I experienced such an out-of-body feeling as I did last week. There was only one other customer in the store. A second walks in the door and immediately makes eye-contact with me. She eagerly begins to ask her question in an unidentifiable European accent before she even reaches the counter. "My friend. My friend, she is from Germany. She wants me to find a cheese for her. I don't know. It is in a can? A tall metal can."Wait? What? Is this really happening? Is this a joke? You don't look like a punk ass Williamsburg kid trying to mess with me.
After expressing my initial and perhaps awkwardly loud disbelief at the question, she sheepishly responds with, "You go shshwwooosh with it. On a cracker." Shoulder shrug as she ends her query, straight-faced and completely earnest, making the very familiar aerosol sound effect and pantomiming the shshwoooshhh can-squirt gesture.
You're being serious? You are so adorably intrigued and unaware that you came into a high-end big-city cheese shop to ask for Easy Cheese to send back to your German friend? Can I get the security camera footage of this?
I'm not ashamed to say I sent her to the grocery store around the corner and directly to the "aisle with the crackers...usually on the top shelf...you can ask someone; they'll know there."
I didn't laugh her out of the store or make fun of her food quest after she left. Rather, I made fun of myself for my intimate knowledge of the exact aisle where one can find said shshwooosh cheese in a can. There are a lot of retail pet peeves I have after a year behind the counter, some arbitrary some rational. That story, though, just makes me happy.
In fact, my biggest annoyance follows from customers with the exact opposite attitude. The ones who come in, usually from out of town, and put on airs about their love of cheese and how horrible it is where they live. Why can't they just live in a magical place like this with access to the finer things in life, they bemoan dramatically.
Before any of you from Peoria, Albuquerque, Rapid City, Jackson, San Antonio, Pensacola or any other non-descript mini metropolis decide to come into a store and trash talk your city, think about how that reflects upon you and all of your friends back home. That is if you have any friends after the way you just dumped on their motherland.
For one, you've made at least a handful of eavesdropping urbanites more firmly convinced of the hillbilly nature of anything outside of the northern I-95 corridor; and that affects how they treat you no matter how hard you try to act like you're the refined one in your circle. Secondly, that affects how they view your home -- where you come from. Even if you've only lived in Peoria for 5 months, it's your hood now. And that's no way to rep your hood, fool.
Also, you don't look any more cosmopolitan or more like one of the hipster big city kids by talking about how it's impossible to educate yourself about good food where you're from. That's a damn dirty lie, in fact. You just sound like a lazy idiot. You can educate yourself no matter where you are. The first big step is called a book, or the internet. Mail-order either direct from producers or from food-of-the-month clubs can fill your belly and education tank right in your own home. You can cook for yourself and grow your own ingredients. And yes, occasionally travel, is needed to gain knowledge about the food you love. But often even traveling short distances to explore neighboring towns works too. If you go far, be a good sport about it and graciously accept the opportunity as a learning experience that you can take back to your community and neighbors.And lastly, if it sucks so hard where you're from, who's fault is that? Why don't you do something about it instead of complaining to a cheesemonger 1000 miles away from home? Start a farmers market. Work with artisans, farmers and producers in your community. (Surprise, there probably are some if you took the time to find them.). Raise awareness and build a market for such products. Start a food discussion group. Network with others in nearby small towns. It will likely never be as glutted of a food market as New York, but that doesn't mean it has to stay a wasteland. You can explore new things with friends, neighbors, or on your own if you make the effort.
I respect out-of-town customers who come in with wonderment, curiosity, and excitement for something new that, indeed, is often hard to find outside of this city. They bring a love of their hood with them and take back a love of something new to the place they proudly call home. Even if that something is Easy Cheese.
