There were twenty minutes left on my Saturday morning shift and the girl started sobbing in the bathroom. Her friends rushed in after her, but the door was locked–she wanted to be alone. I must’ve looked confused because the two middle-school girls immediately began talking:
They were walking around the shopping center when they ran into Ava and her posse. She approached them and started yelling at their friend, the girl now crying in the bathroom.
A 30-something-year-old woman walked in, looking perplexed. She had witnessed the encounter.
“Are you girls ok?”
A 40-something-year-old man came in moments later having caught the tail-end of the drama.
“I was crossing the street when I heard this girl yelling” the woman continued, walking toward the self-serve froyo machine, “horrible things. So, I went up to her and said she shouldn’t say that. Then she told me to fuck off…it was totally inappropriate. How old was she even, like 12?”
This last part was directed at me and the older man, but the girls were still chiming in with details.
The man now added his bit to the conversation. Startled by the girl’s rudeness, he apparently walked up to them and said:
“Everyone needs to calm down.”
The tweenage e-biker bullies rode off after that.
Now, the lady was at the register and I was punching in the price. The man was behind me swirling his cup with yogurt, and the two girls, still frazzled, remained near the counter.
Standing stupidly in my Menchie’s uniform and visor, I felt like a weird facilitator of this conversation despite adding little to it. I simply nodded and tried to look sympathetic behind my KN95 mask. A large circular counter enclosed me at the center of the store forcing me to spin as the information moved around me. I felt both hopeless about and a certain responsibility for the distress caused outside the store.
The woman left, the man soon after. The girls remained, now sitting at a table more relaxed. One second the store was a deserted shop, and the next it had transformed into a third-space. A space filled with gossip, drama, tears, and comfort–an unexpected conversation between strangers. Then, just as quickly as the rush of the debrief took place, it disappeared. I was alone behind the register once again.
Third spaces are neither work nor home, but something in between. Characterized by lively conversation, this space is supposedly maintained by customers, however, owners often play a part. At this Menchie’s Frozen Yogurt shop, corporate owners were absent entities, my boss was rarely present, and I, a minimum-wage employee, felt no responsibility “curateing community.” As a franchise, our goal was consistency. We had consistent uniforms, color-schemes, and toppings. I greeted everyone with the same phrase and sent them off with the same goodbye. The cadence in which I spoke even held a consistent tone. On the one hand, this is monotonous and somewhat distanced, on the other, it is something reliable and comforting. Perhaps it, in part, was this reliability that allowed the store to transform into a third space that day, and perhaps it was also the manner in which this consistency moved people through the store and out the door that made it vanish. Either way, the store lent itself to the customers–safe enough to cry in and welcoming to decompressing gossip. Neither home nor work, the store was a space that accepted these feelings.
The bathroom door unlocked, and the girl came out. I handed each of them a cup–free froyo, the only cure I could offer for middle school drama.
Brooke Levan is a second year student at Oberlin College studying as an Environmental Studies Major with a Food Studies Concentration and Studio Art minor. She enjoys all things food related–cooking for her student-run dining cooperative, growing foods in her backyard in San Diego, and finding fun eateries when she travels.
