FloFab and the Inspector
If you are working at a mobile food vending cart and a health inspector shows up, you must drop everything you are doing until the inspection is over. Even if you have a line of ten people waiting for food, you cannot cook until the inspection is over. Even if Florence Fabricant from the New York Times comes by, in fact, which is what we found out the other day.
It was a slow period at the cart—mid-afternoon on a weekday. I was working with Jes, who had stepped away for a moment, and I was contemplating whether I should wipe crumbs off the spike machine or look into space thoughtfully when a tidy-looking man walked up to the cart with a distinct sense of purpose. He showed me his I.D. badge and license and told me he was a health inspector. I tried to hide my excitement—I’d just received my license in the mail and was eager to show it off to him—but he was not there to see me or my license. He wanted to see the permit for our icicle tricycle, the custom-built cooler-on-wheels that we serve gourmet sodas from.
Jes saw what was happening and scurried over to speak with the inspector; since he didn’t want to see my mobile food vending license, there was little I could do for him. They were going back and forth with calm civility about parks department regulations (the inspector was quite a nice fellow) when an older woman came up and introduced herself as Florence Fabricant from the New York Times (faithful readers may recognize her name from a snarky previous post about pigs in blankets). Wow! Florence Fabricant, the mouthpiece of all that’s shaking in the food world of New York, was right there at our spiffy little cart. But I was immobilized by the presence of the health inspector, and therefore unable to prepare a sausage for her.
It was incredibly awkward, mainly for me. I told Ms. Fabricant that the inspection would be over in just a few minutes, if she didn’t mind waiting, but she told me unfortunately she was in a hurry. We stood, she pressing buttons on her cell phone and me shoving my thumb further up my butt (that’s completely a figure of speech, by the way). I considered telling her that I was a food writer, but perhaps she would have asked me what my name was, and I’d tell her, and she’d say she didn’t recognize my name and ask me what kind of food writing I did, and I’d say, “Well, currently I write a little-read blog about working here at this gourmet sausage cart.”
It didn’t seem like a good idea. I thought about mentioning how I’d read her article about pigs in blankets, since it was sausage-related news, but I declined to do so. This is what separates those who get ahead from those who do not. Get-aheader: makes charming but idle chat with Florence Fabricant, tells her to read his or her fabulous sausage-cart blog, gets cushy gig at New York Times. Me: Just stands there.
The inspector left, and our Dogmatic cart received no violations. But Florence Fabricant departed before he did, saying she’d send someone on Friday. It was very eventful for an uneventful afternoon. Of course, I was not working on Friday, though I heard that someone from the Times did stop by the cart.
So keep an eye on the New York Times for Dogmatic. And we are in the latest Time Out New York, though to see the online edition you need to shell out some skrill.
It was a slow period at the cart—mid-afternoon on a weekday. I was working with Jes, who had stepped away for a moment, and I was contemplating whether I should wipe crumbs off the spike machine or look into space thoughtfully when a tidy-looking man walked up to the cart with a distinct sense of purpose. He showed me his I.D. badge and license and told me he was a health inspector. I tried to hide my excitement—I’d just received my license in the mail and was eager to show it off to him—but he was not there to see me or my license. He wanted to see the permit for our icicle tricycle, the custom-built cooler-on-wheels that we serve gourmet sodas from.
Jes saw what was happening and scurried over to speak with the inspector; since he didn’t want to see my mobile food vending license, there was little I could do for him. They were going back and forth with calm civility about parks department regulations (the inspector was quite a nice fellow) when an older woman came up and introduced herself as Florence Fabricant from the New York Times (faithful readers may recognize her name from a snarky previous post about pigs in blankets). Wow! Florence Fabricant, the mouthpiece of all that’s shaking in the food world of New York, was right there at our spiffy little cart. But I was immobilized by the presence of the health inspector, and therefore unable to prepare a sausage for her.
It was incredibly awkward, mainly for me. I told Ms. Fabricant that the inspection would be over in just a few minutes, if she didn’t mind waiting, but she told me unfortunately she was in a hurry. We stood, she pressing buttons on her cell phone and me shoving my thumb further up my butt (that’s completely a figure of speech, by the way). I considered telling her that I was a food writer, but perhaps she would have asked me what my name was, and I’d tell her, and she’d say she didn’t recognize my name and ask me what kind of food writing I did, and I’d say, “Well, currently I write a little-read blog about working here at this gourmet sausage cart.”
It didn’t seem like a good idea. I thought about mentioning how I’d read her article about pigs in blankets, since it was sausage-related news, but I declined to do so. This is what separates those who get ahead from those who do not. Get-aheader: makes charming but idle chat with Florence Fabricant, tells her to read his or her fabulous sausage-cart blog, gets cushy gig at New York Times. Me: Just stands there.
The inspector left, and our Dogmatic cart received no violations. But Florence Fabricant departed before he did, saying she’d send someone on Friday. It was very eventful for an uneventful afternoon. Of course, I was not working on Friday, though I heard that someone from the Times did stop by the cart.
So keep an eye on the New York Times for Dogmatic. And we are in the latest Time Out New York, though to see the online edition you need to shell out some skrill.
posted by Lefty at 9:39 AM
1 Comments:
you said skrill.
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