“If I couldn’t secure a job flipping eggs, what could I do?” A work of fiction where an unremarkable opportunity holds the promise of a better tomorrow…
by: T.E. Cowell
I applied to work at a resort an easy walk from my parents’ place. Via the website, I was told to pick three jobs out of a dozen that I’d like to be considered for. One of the jobs I picked was pool attendant, thinking there’d be a number of bikini-clad women to look at and possibly even meet. Another job I went for was groundskeeper’s assistant, thinking being outside was better than being stuck inside. The third job I picked was egg flipper. It was either that or being a full-fledged cook, and if there was one thing I knew I didn’t want to be it was a full-fledged cook. I worked in a restaurant one summer as a dishwasher. The job sucked, but I felt sorrier for the cooks than I did for myself. The cooks, older than me by a decade or two, were working hard to get peoples’ orders prepared. The kitchen was hot and stuffy. Flames leapt from pans. The sound of sizzling meat was constant when the dishwashing machine didn’t drown it out. The cooks shouted at servers, cursed under their breath. They rarely smiled, and when they did it was to some inside joke I wasn’t privy to. They made more money than me, but I was glad I wasn’t in their shoes. They would’ve given me hell in a matter of minutes had I been training under them and I likely would’ve said screw this and quit on the spot.
Egg flipper though, I thought I could do and do without the risk of being verbally abused. I made eggs almost every morning and nine times out of ten only broke the yolk on purpose. It was the last of the three jobs I picked that I wanted, but when someone from the resort called and said there was an opening for an egg flipper, was I still interested, I said yes.
“Great! Meet me tomorrow morning ten minutes before seven outside the restaurant and we’ll take it from there.”
“Okay…”
The guy hung up, and I stood up and took a beer from the garage fridge, the garage being where I typically spent the bulk of the day after getting laid off from my job as a delivery driver four months earlier. Two months after losing my job I ended the lease on my apartment and moved back in with my parents, lacking the necessary moolah to continue living on my own. The garage was nice, because I could more or less be alone there with my adult worries while my parents could be alone in the house with theirs. They were getting up there in age — what grace they’d had in their younger days was now virtually absent. My dad’s long-legged easy gait was now a slug-slow inch-by-inch shuffle. My mom couldn’t refrain from telling me what she planned to make for dinner before I’d finished breakfast. They said things out loud that didn’t need to be said out loud, worried about small matters as if they were big matters. But if they were starting to go bonkers in their golden years, they continued to treat me like their son as I attempted to navigate life.
I made it to the resort the following morning, sleepy-eyed but otherwise on time. A guy sat at an outside table, staring at his phone, but upon seeing me he stood up.
“Josh?”
“That’s me,” I said.
“Ron,” he said and stuck out his hand. He was tan, the kind of tan that looks unnatural, because he didn’t look that old and his skin lacked the wrinkly quality loads of time spent under the sun typically cause. A spray tan guy, then, I thought as I shook his hand and looked into his eyes. His grip was strong, and he grinned, still with my hand locked in his. His teeth, like his tan, looked unnatural — unnaturally white, that is.
He was wearing a baby-blue polo shirt and heather-gray shorts, pristine white tennis shoes. Black Ray-Bans sat atop his thinning blond hair. He looked like a joke, like a caricature of a golfer, a playboy past his prime. I hated him without knowing anything about him.
“Ready to flip some eggs?” he asked, letting go of my hand. Before I could answer he let out a quick laugh. “That was rhetorical. Of course you’re ready. You didn’t make it here on time for nothing.”
I followed him through a door that led right into the kitchen. The kitchen was cramped. I knew in advance it was cramped, because with the resort being close to my parents’ place I sometimes walked to it for lack of anything better to do and glanced through the upper screen part of the door to see the cooks inside. Two cooks stood side-by-side, chopping potatoes and onions, tomatoes, peppers, cheese, dressed in white aprons with those funny white hats on their heads. Uncooked bacon filled one pan, sausage links another. And beside another pan were something like a dozen dozen-egg cartons. The pan was large, three times the size of the one I cooked my eggs on most mornings at my leisure.
“Gentlemen,” Ron said. “Meet Josh, your new egg flipper extraordinaire.”
The cooks glanced my way and mumbled soulless greetings.
“What happened to the last egg flipper?” I asked.
“Nervous breakdown,” Ron said flatly. He clapped his hands as if to change the subject. “The restaurant opens in ten. Let’s crack an egg and see how you do. Fire up that burner to medium. There you go. See that spatula? It’s got your name on it.”
I took an egg from a carton and cracked the shell against the side of the pan. The egg slid into the pan, but the yolk didn’t hold.
“Two mistakes there,” Ron said. “One, you didn’t drop any canola oil in the pan from that carton by the spatula, and two, you broke the yolk. Let’s try that again. Dump that disaster into the trash near your feet.”
I did as I was told, feeling dizzy all of a sudden, unsure of myself. If I couldn’t secure a job flipping eggs, what could I do? How would I ever make it in the world? I was having a flashback of that summer I washed dishes. Back then I’d been a teenager, but now I was pushing forty. The pressure to secure a job, any job, was at an all-time high.
I dumped in some canola oil, blaming my nerves for the rookie mistake, then took another egg from the carton and cracked the shell against the side of the pan, this time careful to use less force. The egg slid in, yolk still intact. Yes, I thought. I can do this.
“Eggcelent,” Ron said. “Now for the final test. Can Josh flip the egg at the right moment without breaking the yolk? It all comes down to this, folks.”
He was staring over my shoulder, watching, waiting. I could hardly concentrate. I now believed him when he said the last egg flipper had had a nervous breakdown. I waited, watching the white of the egg harden enough to be able to flip it without risking another disaster. And that’s what I did, and somehow it worked. The yolk didn’t break.
“He flips, he scores!” Ron said. He clapped a hand to my shoulder. “Now for the final test. Can Josh slide the egg from the pan onto a plate at the pristine moment? If so, he’s got the job ladies and gentlemen. It all comes down to this.”
Goddamn robots and drones, I thought. If it weren’t for you I wouldn’t be subject to this crap. The irony was that flipping eggs was much, much simpler a task than that of delivery driver, and yet robots had yet to replace egg flippers. It was only a matter of time, though. At some coffee shops robots made lattes, at some bars they poured beer into glasses without spilling a drop.
I found stacks of plates under the counter, grabbed one and set it on the counter. The egg was coming along nicely, but was it ready yet? Did I dare flip it again to try and discern from the state of the yolk whether it was time to slide it onto the plate? I did, and the yolk looked done without being too done, runny without being too runny.
I slid the egg slowly, ever so slowly, onto the plate, and the yolk remained intact. Ron clapped his hands a few times, obnoxiously loudly, then picked the plate up, and with fork in hand, cut into the egg. He took a bite. Chewed, swallowed. Nodded his head as yolk pooled onto the plate.
“Yum,” he said. “Now that’s how you cook an egg. Not overdone, not underdone. Perfection.” He took another bite, then scraped the remainder into the trash. “You have the gift, sir. You’re hired.”
With that, Ron left the kitchen, left me with the cooks, and a few minutes later the restaurant opened for business. I flipped eggs like I’d never flipped them before, and the cooks left me alone, and two years later I’m still flipping eggs. I don’t make enough money as an egg flipper to rent my own place, but at least I’m bringing in something. One of these days I’ll be replaced by a robot, but in the meantime I’ll continue flipping eggs, because a job’s a job, especially in this day and age.
