Today marks the unexpected closing of the Newport Creamery (“stop at the sign of the Golden Cow”) here in our town. For those of you not from the area, think mediocre ice cream and burgers cooked on a giant griddle and served by high school students, like at a Friendly’s or Embers in the midwest (though Embers was always open way later than the Creamery, ideal for college students). There was virtually no warning, just a social media post by a family member on Friday who shared the news that Sunday was it for the local Creamery. It has been a go-to place for us since moving to this town. The waitresses all knew my daughter’s name, and the food was cheap and easy. We had fun, sitting out front. For me, working at a different Creamery was my first-ever real job. It was an…interesting, if brief, experience.

The worst job in the world is the one that makes you reconsider your entire relationship with food. That was Newport Creamery bus boy duty for me: a nightly descent into a land of greasy pans, ketchup hieroglyphics, and unidentifiable substances lurking under every plate. Somewhere in Rhode Island, people were enjoying cheerful “good mood food” in a “family-friendly atmosphere.” In the back of Newport Creamery on Wayland Square in Providence, sixteen-year old me was discovering that “back of house” is really just code for “abandon all hope, ye who enter with clean clothes.”​

The shift always started innocently enough. Tables looked manageable from a distance, just a few plates, some burger crumbs, maybe a napkin battlefield. But up close, it was carnage. Ketchup-coated plates stacked like sticky red bricks. Glasses fused to the table by maple syrup. Pans so greasy they violated several laws of physics, repelling both water and hope. My job description – clearing and cleaning tables, hauling soiled dishes, resetting for the next wave – sounded simple on paper. In reality, each booth was a crime scene, and I was the underpaid forensic team with a brown apron and green polyester shirt.​

Then there were the ice cream tubs. Newport Creamery makes its bones with its ice cream and milkshakes, which sound charming until someone points to an empty five-gallon tub and says, “Swap that out.” Five gallons of melted “Awful Awful” residue weigh approximately the same as your will to live. Lifting the empty bin was easy; the problem was the booby-trap layer of ice cream dregs that sloshed just enough to leap onto your shirt, arms, and, eventually, soul. Sticky at first, then slowly souring as the shift went on, it was like wearing a cologne called “Desperation.”​

The walk-in freezer and refrigerator runs were their own special adventure. The kitchen would bark an order, and off I’d go, pushing through the heavy door into a fluorescent-lit meat locker of frostbite and French fries. In seconds, I’d go from humid dish pit swamp to Arctic expedition, hauling trays of food like a slightly confused penguin on a double shift. The floor in there was always just slick enough to make every trip a low-budget stunt show. Emerging back into the kitchen, I would smell faintly of burger patties and industrial coleslaw. The only thing colder than the freezer was the look from the line cook if I brought the wrong box.

By the end of the night, my shoes had become biohazard crime scenes. The dining room floor was a patchwork of soda drips, spilled ice cream, and whatever had escaped from under the high chairs, despite the best of mopping efforts. Every step produced that horrible suction sound, as if the floor itself were trying to reclaim my footwear. I would drive home, windows wide open to avoid permanently affixing the odor of sour milk and grease to my mother’s car. The moment I got through the door at home, there was no pause, no snack, no TV, just a straight line to the shower. Clothes into the hamper, shoes abandoned at a safe distance, and then ten full minutes of trying to power-wash the smell of fryer oil and fermented milkshake off my skin.

And then, one glorious day two months into my greasy hell, I remembered: in the summer, I was a lifeguard and swim instructor. I already had the whistle, the bathing suit, and the smug sense of responsibility that comes from being in excellent condition and looking good with a tan. While other people were clocking in under fluorescent lights, I was literally being paid to sit by the water and scan for danger like a very responsible, SPF-coated meerkat. Suddenly, it hit me: if I could guard lives in June, July, and August, I could teach swimming during the school year. No more scraping dried cheese off plates. No more ketchup murals. No more eau de spoiled ice cream.​

The contrast was almost comical. In one job, I was digging half-eaten burgers off plates and hoping the dish machine didn’t revolt. In the other, I was in clean water, teaching kids to float and blow bubbles, racking up resume-worthy “leadership and communication skills” without ever touching a greasy pan. At the restaurant, my big accomplishment was surviving a Saturday night rush without losing a shoe. At the Jewish Community Center in Providence and the YMCA in Seekonk, it was helping a terrified kid swim their first full lap and not crash into the lane rope. Both were technically “service jobs,” but only one required me to go home smelling of decomposing hot fudge.​

Quitting the bus boy life felt less like leaving a job and more like escaping a sticky, mustard-scented parallel universe. Lifeguarding and swim instruction were not just better gigs; they were redemption arcs in shorts and flip-flops. The restaurant could keep its greasy pans, five-gallon tubs, and floors that gripped your shoes like emotional attachment issues. I had traded the walk-in freezer for the deep end, the dish pit for the guard chair, and the smell of fryer oil for the faint, chemically reassuring tang of chlorine. For the first time in a long time, going to work didn’t require a shower the moment I got home. Though, to be fair, after Newport Creamery bus boy duty, that habit became permanent.