Hair nets

Picture this:

I am an early-twenties girl working at a Casey's gas station. I like the way the bell operates on the doors when customers come and go. Ding. Ding. Dingggg. I like the way Joe says, "Heyyya! How you doing there little lady?" I particularly like the way fountain orange soda tastes at 4 AM (workers get fountain pop for free). I even like my little elastic gloves I wear throughout my shift. They are nice, and they make the hot dish water not so hot.

I don't mind working alone for hours at a time, or the flour that speckles my true red Casey's apron. I don't mind sweeping after my shift or making pizza dough. I don't mind Joe harassing me if the doughnuts are not shelved by 5:30 AM. I don't even mind the visor.

BUT I DO NOT LIKE MY HAIRNET

It wasn't so bad at first. The first time I tried it on, I kind of liked it. It kept my hair all in one place, and not one customer has complained of hair in his pizza. Not one. So way to go, hairnet. The hairnet and I were doing well together until one day.

I was in the middle of making eighteen medium pizza crusts. It was about 6:30 AM. I know this because at that time I always make eighteen pizza crusts--eight for breakfast pizzas and ten for lunch pizzas. After they are baked they get placed in little "pizza boats" and set on a silver platter (not kidding). From there it sits rotating in the pizza warmer. I have a door on my side, and customers have a door on their side.

Once, a little kid and I (the kid was shoving a doughnut into his mouth) stood for a moment with both our doors open. He stared at me. I stared at the kid who had doughnut icing on the corner of his crooked smirk. It was a very surreal experience...the fact that you can stare at someone through a pizza oven.

Well anyway, this time I was making my pizzas, and in between a few pizzas made, I popped one in the oven and continued my process: cook, slice, label pizza boats, place pizza on pizza boats, place pizza boats on sliver platter, place silver platter on rotating pizza oven rack.

I didn't have a visor on that day, so my hairnet was especially visible. I shrugged it off. People won't see me anyway, I thought. And so I thought nothing of it.

Between the fountain pop machine and the sub sandwich fridge there is a little space where people who want to look in the kitchen while they are filling up their 32 oz Casey's cups can look (just in case the workers are yanking out their hair and placing it in the food). I must have been on breakfast pizza #4 or around there when I heard someone filling up a fountain drink. He was tall and had a very long tie on. So polished. So neat. So cute.

Not always, but sometimes I can be a flirt when I want, so while he was watching I took my pizza dough from pizza #4 and began stretching it out, spinning it, flipping it, and forming it true Italian style. You're doing good, I told myself. I stretched that pizza out and placed it in a baking tin. Another pizza was ready, so I pulled it from the oven, sliced it (with perfection, mind you--he was really cute), and placed the pizza on the pizza boats, and placed the pizza boats on the silver platter.

And in one dizzying moment, there this tie-guy was on the customer side of the pizza warmer, ready to take a bite of my pizza! And there I was on the kitchen side of the pizza warmer, ready and willing to give him a bite of my breakfast pizza. And he was so tall. He looked at me over the pizza warmer, and I don't think I could have seen a person with bluer eyes or a tie and white shirt ironed so well before. What is he going to say? Is he going to say, "These pizzas look really amazing...and so do y..."

"Nice hair net." He grabbed a piece of sausage breakfast pizza, ate a bite, and walked away.

After he left, I thought of all the things I wished he knew about me beyond what he had observed of me, that I work here in a gas station in the kitchen and I wear an apron and a hairnet. I thought of a few phrases I should have said, much like all the good comebacks you come up with after an argument. #1 "This is a summer job! I will not be here making pizzas for the rest of my life." #2 "I do have higher ambitions in life. I really do. Why, I will be teaching high school English in a couple months. Oh you don't believe me?" #3 "All the visors were dirty today. The hairnet is regulation." #4 "I can look nice!"

But it was all too late.

The hairnet won.