Backstage at the Vinyl Cafe - Stephanie - Steph’s Statistics Exam & In the Weeds

Episode Date: June 7, 2024

“How bad could it be? Statistics. That’s how bad it could be.” This week, two stories about Dave and Morley’s daughter, Stephanie – Stephanie at school and at work. Jess talks about Stuart’s goals in writing those stories and what they show us about success … and failure. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From the Apostrophe Podcast Network. Hello, I'm Jess Melton and this is Backstage at the Vinyl Cafe. Welcome. Today's show is all about Stephanie. And I'm so happy to say that because I feel like we don't get to spend as much time with Steph as I'd like. I think Stuart struggled to write Stephanie. It makes sense. He was never a teenage girl and he never raised teenage girls. So it was hard for him to find his way in. And I guess I feel a bit responsible for that because, well, I think I was his way in. But it took me a while to get Steph too. Today, we're going to spend some time with Stephanie and we're going to start here. This is Stuart McLean with Steph's statistics exam. Dave's daughter Stephanie

spent the last three weeks hovering around her laptop, her heart fluttering, waiting for news. Came finally on a recent Monday morning and when it did, it didn't come on her computer. Came the way everything comes these days, a text message. Four short words from her friend Scott. O'Neill's grades are posted. Steph stared atill's grades are posted. Steph stared at the text and sighed. Shouldn't have been a big deal. She knew all her other marks. A's and B's all of them. And she had never not once failed a course. So how bad could it be?

Statistics. That's how bad it it be? Statistics. That's how bad it could be. What had she been thinking? Well she knew what she'd been thinking. She had been thinking if she wanted to do some sort of post grad thing a stats course would look good on her transcript. What didn't make sense was that she had opted for the advanced class, the section designed for engineers and science grads. What sort of misdirected ambition had led her there? She glanced at her phone. Her little spasm of grad school hubris had probably ruined her chances for grad school admission.

She had failed statistics. She's pretty certain of that. She stood up and walked across the kitchen, picked up the kettle and carried it to the sink. She should have dropped the course, of course. Should have dropped it after the first class. The warning signs had been there as plain as day. Twelve students in a lecture hall that seated 300. She told herself the class was empty because the material was famously complicated. Told herself that she was up to the challenge. She convinced herself that the challenge would be good for her.

She filled the kettle and carried it back to the stove. She opened the cupboard beside the sink and removed a blue and yellow cardboard box the size of a pound of butter. Herbal tea. Harmony, comfort, tension tamer. She slammed it down on the counter. In the initial blush of enthusiasm, she had found the class challenging and fun. Dispersions and tendencies, regressions and box plots. dispersions and tendencies regressions and box plots like everything else she studied there were rules all you had to do was apply the rules I like statistics she told her boyfriend Tommy and then and then a week later maybe two this

is impossible she said I hate statistics but before we talk about the course, I probably should mention Professor O'Neill. Turned out Professor O'Neill was loony, said Stephanie, certifiably bonkers. Actually, we should talk about the cat, a ridiculously overweight tabby that Professor O'Neill lugged around under his arm. Everywhere. Like a textbook. He wandered into class and dropped the cat on an empty desk near the front and it sat there twitching its tail like a metronome. Every day he dropped the cat on the desk and then began erasing the blackboard.

Well, they all do that, said Tommy. It's like a warm-up exercise. Think of it as academic calisthenics. Sure, except there was no blackboard to erase. Professor O'Neill used the blackboard that hovered just behind his lectern, unseen by anyone else. An imaginary blackboard, said Tommy, perking up. Yes, said Stephanie, waving her hand in the air as if she was hailing a cab. And after he cleans it, he writes on it. With imaginary chalk, said Tommy. Hopefully. Tommy was leaning forward. He was listening

intensely. He'd never shown this much interest in any of her courses. Sometimes, said Stephanie, after he writes something, he erases it and starts again. When he makes an imaginary mistake, said Tommy, earnestly. It was all so incredibly weird. The empty lecture hall, the cat, the imaginary blackboard, and of course the timetable. Monday mornings at 8, Fridays at 4. How did you get a schedule like that? You pick a fight with the registrar said Tommy. Bingo, said Stephanie. Professor O'Neill and the university registrar had famously been waging a feud that began in the 1970s. It began, according to legend, the September Professor O'Neill was accidentally mailed a sticker assigning him the registrar's

primo parking spot. Security was dispatched to Professor O'Neill's office to explain the error and that he shouldn't actually park in the registrar's spot. But Professor O'Neill continued to pull into the space every morning. He ignored the tickets and the notices that began accumulating on his windshield. In fact, he left them there, driving around campus with a flurry of indictments flapping in the wind. According to the story, the apoplectic registrar eventually took matters into his own hands. He arrived at school before dawn one morning and pulled into the space before Professor O'Neill.

When he arrived and saw what had happened, Professor O'Neill parked in a visitor spot, waited until the registrar left for the day, slid his car into the disputed spot, and took the bus home. a bus home. He left his car there and got to and from work by public transportation for seven and a half months until the dean of science retired and a sign with the registrar's name went up in the Dean's old spot. The registrar had conceded but he hadn't forgotten and that's why he scheduled O'Neill's statistics course for the worst possible times and why the agoraphobic O'Neill was assigned cavernous lecture halls for his handful of students. Professor O'Neill's classes were torture. After a month, Stephanie came to her senses and tried to switch out. But by then, the other stats course was full and she was hooped.

I understand you were trying to get out of my class, said Professor O'Neill. He caught her off guard. I'm allergic to cats, said Stephanie. She was petting the cat as she said it. It was the best she could do on the spur of the moment. It was the best she could do on the spur of the moment. As the weeks marched on, it became clear that statistics was an ordeal for everyone. One day, Scott fell asleep, and he dropped his pen.

He was sitting on the aisle, so the pen clattered down the stairs toward the lectern, step after echoey step. Professor O'Neill stopped talking and glared at the pen as it rolled toward him like a wind-up toy. When it finally stopped at his feet, he glared up at Scott, and at that exact moment, with everyone staring at him now, Scott's head snapped backwards, and he began snoring loudly. Somehow, Stephanie passed the midterm. Barely, but she passed. So as the second term began, she allowed herself to feel hope. Maybe she would get through statistics after all.

Then came April, and the oppression of final exams settled over Stephanie and indeed the entire campus like the Black Death. This wasn't Stephanie's first April at University. She knew the drill. She started rationing her money in February and her food. So when classes ended, she had money and food, not a lot of either, but more than most. Cheerios and peanut butter, tuna fish and crackers, unlike the April before when she had survived on Mr. Noodles and the occasional foray to Costco where she pushed an empty cart up and down the aisles, assembling meals from the free samples. And now it was April again. And though she wasn't broke, it felt like it. You could feel desperation everywhere. Student loans, summer cash, cafeteria cards, all used up, all spent. Couldn't help but dampen your mood.

And her steady diet of cold tuna and milk wasn't making her feel any better. It was through all this that she had to prepare for Professor O'Neill's final. Everyone said that 30% of those who took the course failed. He bell curbs for failure. Whatever he did, Stephanie needed to be sure that she wouldn't have to take it again. To make things worse, the statistics exam was, of course, scheduled by the registrar for the very last day. The weather turned warm, and everyone else was slowly finishing up. Stephanie kept getting texts, come to the beach, come to the bar, come play tennis. With seven days to go, she mapped out a plan that had her studying 10 hours a day.

After a few days, she had fallen a day and a half behind. The Saturday before the exam, she decided to pull an all-nighter and see if she could catch up. I'll do your laundry, said Becky. I'll bring supper, said Janice. Janice brought two Red Bulls with supper. I don't know, said Janice. Janice brought two red bulls with supper. I don't know, said Stephanie. She drank the first one at 10 p.m. I don't feel anything, she said. Janice handed her the other. Tommy came over at two in the morning. Stephanie had moved all the furniture to the center of the room. She was down on her hands and knees scrubbing the baseboards with a toothbrush.

On Monday, with four days before the exam, she felt like she was going stir crazy. She had to get out of her place, so she went to the library. There was one empty chair at a table with six other people. She sat down. The girl opposite her was chewing her hair. The boy to her right was biting his nails. The guy at the far end, the guy with the blue hoodie, was highlighting every single line in his textbook. Every single one. How could anyone concentrate with that going on? She lasted less than an hour. She wandered around the campus.

There had to be a quiet spot somewhere. She tried the calf, but it was full, too. She went to the fitness center and sat in the gym in the top row of the bleachers. That worked for an hour until three boys came in and started shooting baskets, and she gave up. On her way home, she wandered into the science building. She'd never been there before. She took the elevator up to the top floor and walked down a long corridor past a bunch of faculty offices and into a big room, some sort of research greenhouse. She found a desk by a bunch of weird plants and sat down.

She stayed at that little desk until after 10 and went back to it over the next three days. No one ever asked her who she was or what she was doing there. She had never studied for anything as hard as she was studying for this. As the days passed, she began to feel she might pass. She began to feel hopeful. On Thursday night, the night before the exam, she vowed she wouldn't drink anything to stay awake. She wanted to make sure she got a good night's sleep. When Tommy came over around midnight, she was still up. She was sitting at the kitchen table in her pajamas, her skin

pale, her eyes dark. She had papers and textbooks spread all around her. There was also a jar of instant coffee and a spoon. There were little flecks of coffee dust on her lips. I'm almost finished, she said. I can see that, said Tommy, looking at the almost empty jar. He leaned over and gave her a kiss on the top of her head. She went to bed at 4.20. When her alarm went off four hours later, she sat bolt up in bed, her heart pounding. This was it. Professor O'Neill proctored the exam himself. And he brought his cat, of course.

Stephanie sat down at the folding table in the cavernous exam room. She stared at the exam when the student helper placed it on her desk upside down, eight pages stapled. When Professor O'Neill said, you can begin, she took a deep breath and turned it over. The first thing she felt was a flush of panic. The numbers looked like a maze on the page. The formulas seemed only vaguely familiar, like half-forgotten nursery rhymes from long ago. Her heart started to pound. She made herself read the whole thing from start to finish.

She wrote her name and student number on the top of the exam booklet. And then she began on question one. She has no idea how long she was out, but Professor O'Neill was standing beside her desk, glaring down at her when she woke up. She sat up quickly. I was just thinking, she said. They both looked down at her exam book at the same time, at the big, wet drool mark. Professor O'Neill didn't say anything. He shook his head and walked away. She still had time to finish the exam, but she finished with a sense of gloom. Everyone else

had left when she finally stood up and walked to the front and handed her book in and when she did professor o'neill's cat hissed at her it felt like an omen and here she was all these weeks later sitting in her kitchen, staring at her computer. She took a sip of her tea, shrugged and typed in her password. She sat perfectly motionless, staring at the little wheel as it spun around and around. All those days and all those nights, all the work, all the angst had all come down to this. Her student page snapped up.

English rhetoric, public and community. A. Revolutionary aestheticsesthetics. A minus. The Sociology of Gender. B plus. Islam and the West. A. And there at the very bottom, introduction to statistics.

Advanced. There at the very bottom, introduction to statistics advanced. She felt like a marathoner staggering over the finish line. Introduction to statistics, C. She had passed. But with a completely undistinguished and forgettable grade. Neither a shame nor a triumph. Neither a short story nor a novel. A novella. She had written a novella.

What a waste, she said to herself as she flicked her computer off. Might as well not have taken it. What she doesn't know now, of course, and what she will come to know in the fullness of time, is that it did matter, does matter, and it matters a lot. These things come up all the time in life. Over and over we're faced with situations, sometimes of our own making, sometimes beyond our control.

Disasters and frustrations, little and big. The clerk on the phone who won't do our bidding. The car that comes out of nowhere. The slow motion sound of crumpling metal. And when they come like that, loud and out of nowhere, it is always our choice how we react, whether we choose to keep moving head down steadfast and do what has to be done one foot in front of the other or whether we choose to disassemble.

front of the other or whether we choose to disassemble. Soon enough, Stephanie will forget all the formulas she memorized. She's already forgotten most of them. And all the essays and all the seminars she sweated over. Soon they will be gone too. But one thing won't. will be gone too. But one thing won't. It is an hour later. It is noon. Her phone is ringing. It's Tommy. I got your text, he said.

I passed, said Stephanie. I knew you would, said Tommy. I'm proud of you. That was pretty good. Not that he could say it, but that she could. That night, her last night in that apartment, she had two things left in her pantry. I worked it down to the least common denominator, she told Tommy on the phone. A pack of Jell-O and a can of sardines.

What flavors the Jell-O, said Tommy. Berry blue, said Stephanie. Perfect, said Tommy. I'm coming over when Tommy appeared he pulled a jello mold out of his backpack who knows where he finds these things I'll make supper he said Stephanie said fine thanks whatever and she lugged a load of stuff off to the laundromat when she came home Tommy met her at the door he led her into the kitchen and pointed proudly at a blue mound of jello he said sardines and jello. My favorite, she said. It's perfect, said Tommy as he picked it up. The sardines look like they're swimming in water, especially when you jiggle it. Stephanie smiled and she took him by the elbows and spun him around and she looked right into his eyes and she said,

Did I tell you I passed statistics? Tommy said, Really? I knew you would. And then he reached into his backpack and pulled out a bottle. I asked the man at the store what would go well with this, he said. The man suggested aftershave. I chose this instead. He set the bottle of wine on the table and he reached into his backpack again

and he pulled out a takeout box and they sat down. The night was chilly but not cold, not yet summer but no longer spring. Tommy poured them each a glass of wine. He held his glass up between them. You made it, he said. You did it. Yes, said Stephanie. What are we toasting? You, said Tommy. She smiled and she took a sip and then she put her glass down. took a sip and then she put her glass down. So, she said, what's next? That was Steph's statistics exam. We recorded that story at the River Run Center in Guelph, Ontario, back in 2012. There are a lot of interesting layers in that story. I don't remember the full backstory or how it came to be, but I remember a lot of conversations with Stuart while he was writing that story.

lot of conversations with Stuart while he was writing that story. If you heard the podcast where I interviewed Meg Masters, Stuart's long-suffering story editor, you'll know that every story started with Meg and Stuart. Sometimes the stories would start with an idea, something Stuart thought of or an idea someone had. But as the show progressed and as we got to know the characters, it was often the characters who would present the ideas to us. and as we got to know the characters, it was often the characters who would present the ideas to us. We knew them so well. We'd talk about them like they were real because they were real to us.

We got to know them. We got to know the things they'd be doing or thinking about. And we wanted to know what was going to happen next. That story, the one you just heard, is one that started like that. Meg and Stuart had one of their phone conversations and Meg said something like, you know, Stephanie's at university and she's probably writing exams right now. What would that be like? And that got them thinking about Stephanie and

about what they knew about her. This is what they knew. Stephanie works hard. She's a bit of a perfectionist. She's responsible. And these are all things that serve her well. It's why she has succeeded in life. But they're also the things that canves, who cares so much, and works so hard, the emotional growth is more likely to come from failure than success. Maybe that's true of everyone. When Stephanie succeeds, as she so often does, But when Stephanie succeeds, as she so often does, she's just learning the same lesson she's always known, that hard work and perseverance pay off. And yes, they do. But she already knows that. What she needed to learn, and she learned it there in that story, is how to deal with failure.

And maybe more importantly, how to deal with mediocrity. This is what Stuart and I talked a lot about during the writing of that story. About Stephanie's acceptance of being okay instead of the best. Not so much her acceptance of failure, but her acceptance of surviving rather than thriving. At the end of that story, she's proud of herself for getting a C. I do not think she would have been proud of that at the beginning of this story, but she is by the end. I am so proud of her at the end of that story. And I'm not proud of her for passing. I'm proud of her for being proud of herself for passing, for just passing, for not beating herself up for that C, for celebrating it instead of asking herself why she didn't get an A. That is growth. That is

true success because she's learned something. She's grown. And hearing that story today makes me wish that I could have done things differently when I was her age. When I look back on my own academic career, such as it was, I realize I didn't really push myself. And if my dad or my brother or any of my friends are listening to this, they probably just spat out their coffee because I do push myself at everything. I always have. But I realize now that back then I pushed myself to succeed, not to grow. I didn't push my own boundaries, if that makes sense.

I didn't push myself to explore areas outside the things I was already good at. There are a few ways to look at this. Maybe if you want to look at it positively, maybe I knew what I wanted and I went after it. I knew what I wanted to do at a really early age. In grade nine, I had already decided I was going to go to journalism school. I was going to be an international correspondent. I was driven, I was focused, be an international correspondent. I was driven, I was focused, and I went after what I wanted. I wanted to be out in the world. I wanted to tell

stories, but I wanted to tell other people's stories. I didn't want to tell my own. I wanted to be a conduit. I wanted to listen and report and filter those stories out into the world. I wanted to listen and report and filter those stories out into the world. So that's what I did in school. And that's what I did for my job for many, many years. I took every single English class that my high school offered. I did well at school. I loved it.

I found what I loved and I did that. And that's what you're supposed to do, right? That's what everybody tells you. Find work that doesn't feel like work. Do that and you'll be happy. And I was. I am. But I didn't take statistics like Stephanie did or science or any math. I took theater. I took English. I took creative writing. And when I look back on it now, I can see that in two different ways. When I look at the positive side of the coin, this is what I see. I was lucky.

I knew myself. I knew what I was good at. I knew how I could contribute to the world, and I set off to hone those skills. I figured out what I loved, and I figured out how to do what I loved for a living. But as I've aged, I've started to see it differently. I've wondered if there's another side of that coin. Did I only want to do the things I knew I'd be good at? Am I afraid of failure? Or maybe even worse, am I afraid of being middle of the pack? Do I let my competitive spirit guide my choices? Was it self-awareness that led me to study and do what I love? Or was it self-preservation? I guess I'll never know. But here's what I learned today from listening to that story from Stephanie.

I will learn more from failing than I will from succeeding. And so I need to push my own boundaries. I need to seek out things I am not good at and stretch myself in ways that might be uncomfortable. But I'll tell you right now, I'm going to stop short of advanced statistics. That's just never, ever going to happen. we're going to take a short break now but we'll be back in a couple of minutes with another story about stephanie so stick around Welcome back. Time for our second story now. This is In the Weeds. Stephanie began working at the East River Grill just before Halloween. It was less than minimum wage, but she had heard you could clean up on tips. She thought about getting a real job, maybe doing research for a professor or working in an office.

But working in the restaurant meant that she'd have her days free for classes. And how hard could it be to be a waitress? Well, a lot harder than you'd imagine. She almost didn't make it through the first week. Her first night was a disaster. That was the night the kid dropped his retainer into his basket of fries. And no one noticed until Stephanie had cleared the table and they started freaking out and she had to dig through the garbage to find it. There she was, not two hours on the job, her arms up to the elbows into the greasy waste bucket by the kitchen door,

digging around in the remnants of other people's half-eaten meals, when she unexpectedly closed her hand around the slimy retainer, let out a whoop, and then, well, before I go any further, I should tell you a little about Chef. Well, before I go any further, I should tell you a little about Chef. Every Tuesday morning, Chef would arrive with a new creation, something he had dreamed up that was going to focus the spotlight onto him. Filet of venison in a licorice caramel reduction. Beet root sherbet.

It would go up on the specials board, and by the end of the night, when not one single order had come in, Chef would storm around the kitchen foaming and spitting and berating the servers for undermining him. A few days later, it'd be off the menu and no one would ever mention it again. That's Chef.

Now, where were we? We're Stephanie's first night. The night that Chef had prepared a crayfish turn gumball with okra and chilies and dewy sausages and a raspberry yogurt finish. Chef had worked on it all week. Mark had talked a reviewer from the standard into coming, and Chef was bouncing around the kitchen in anticipation. And as he lifted the gumbo off the stove, he was actually humming. He was carrying it across the kitchen to the warming station

while Stephanie was on her knees digging in the garbage for the retainer. And when she found it, she... Don't be getting ahead of me. When she found it, she jumped up, swinging her arms in the air over her head. She jumped up, something she wouldn't do today. But it was her first night. And she smashed into Chef, of course. And the gumbo went flying.

And if she had known then what she knew now, she would have just gone home. And if she had known then what she knew now, she would have just gone home. Stephanie hadn't had the nerve to say one word to Chef before that moment, not one word. But she was talking now. Sorry, sorry, Stephanie said as Chef let out a wail. Sorry, sorry, sorry, she said as Chef picked up the pot and threw it down again. Chef was picking up the pot and throwing it down and Stephanie was down on her knees picking up the crayfish. When Chef stopped throwing the pot and said, let me help you.

And he took a handful of crayfish from her and he began hurling them around the kitchen. Stephanie didn't know what she should do, and suddenly Chef went still, and he squatted down on the floor, and he lowered his hand sadly into a pool of the gumbo, and squatting there, he began to cry, which was far worse than when he was yelling. Any other night she might have been fired on the spot, but they needed her that night, so they couldn't fire her. And so she got another shift, and she came back, and thinking back on it, she couldn't believe it when she thought about it now. That second night, the night she came back determined to make amends, determined to do something nice for the chef. She walked

right behind the serving line, which is the stainless steel counter with the heat lamps that divides the servers from the cooking staff. She actually went behind the line and handed chef an envelope. And she said, I thought you might like one of my favorite recipes. you might like one of my favorite recipes. Everyone says it's one of the best tomato sauces they've ever tasted, and I don't think there's enough basil in yours. She was trying to reach out. Chef stared at her for a long time and then he turned around she was staring at his back when he said get out of my kitchen and that would have been it for stephanie except robin took her under her wing robin says she's okay i'll train her. Robin taught her everything. Turned out

Stephanie wasn't supposed to even talk to Chef. Stephanie wasn't supposed to talk to any of the cooks behind the line, and she certainly wasn't supposed to go behind the line. Are you kidding, said Robin? Never, never go behind the line, unless you have a death wish. When things were hopping in there, there could be five servers working out front, all of them with five or six tables each. At an average of four people per table, that's a possible 120 meals with problems. All of them have to be solved in the right sequence. And that's the pivot's job.

You took your orders to the pivot. The pivot called them out. Pivot was like an air traffic controller. Stephanie teamed up with Robin in Section 1 for a week, which is what should have happened at the very beginning. Robin has worked in the industry for years. She's a lifer. It's one of the toughest jobs in the world, said Robin at the end of Stephanie's first week. The grill was closed. There were no customers left. They were sitting

in Robin's section, table two, right in front of the fireplace, best table in the house. They were polishing off a 65 bottle of Californian Zinfandel that Table 5 hadn't finished. Robin topped off their glasses. It was Robin who showed Stephanie the ropes. It was Robin who sat beside her at the staff table and taught her to roll cutlery. The two of them sitting there beside Chef's office with a big pile of napkins in front of them. Knife, fork, fold, roll. Knife, fork, fold, roll. Stephanie learned everything from Robin, even the Sullivan nod, a subliminal technique developed by

a restaurant consultant named Tom Sullivan. He came up with it as a method to increase appetizer sales. Does it really work, asked Stephanie. Not all the time, said Robin, but a lot of the time. It's been proven. You use it to upsell. You use it to increase the bill. If they choose apple pie for dessert, said Robin, you say, would you like ice cream or cheese with that?

Robin nodded her head as she said cheese, because cheese costs more. Then she did it again. Would you like ice cream or cheese? Her head bobbing up and down, almost imperceptibly. Just a little nod, she said. Sometimes they nod right along with you. Don't you feel guilty, said Stephanie? Honey, said Robin, peering at the empty bottle of Zinfandel

and shaking her head sadly. We get paid $5.95 an hour. Bigger bill means a bigger tip. Besides, they want the cheese. They just don't want it to be their fault. They just don't want it to be their fault. Robin got Stephanie over the hump, and slowly Stephanie was accepted, or more to the point, neglected. By Christmas, she was doing three shifts a week, and unlike the other temps, she never missed a shift.

She showed up, and she kept her head down. The job got into her bones. At Christmas dinner back home, she found herself saying, can I get you anything else? She would dream about it. Chef slamming the bell, pivot calling out orders, everyone running about. Once she woke up in the middle of the night and she was standing beside the kitchen table in her apartment holding a pitcher of water. And now today was her last day. Exams were over. She was going home on Monday. Home where she would have to decide about a job for the summer. Maybe she'd go tree planting again. Maybe she'd go with Becky to Banff.

She had to decide and she was tired of being asked about what she was going to do. She was tired of not having an answer. Breakfast that day was slow, but lunch was frantic Steffi got a family with four small children she was headed for the kitchen as the children and their parents plumped through the front door by the time she got to their table two of the children were already tearing apart sugar packets and the baby in the high chair had launched her sippy cup across the room. Her name was Harmony. And she was two years old.

And the great pleasure in her life was dropping things from her high chair onto the floor. Cutlery, her napkin, the salt shaker. She had plenty of things to drop. Her mother kept handing them to her. When Harmony got her meal, spaghetti and meat sauce. Exactly. She started flinging handfuls of spaghetti. And the lady at table 28 was snapping her fingers at Stephanie. When Stephanie got to her, the lady was staring at her plate. Stephanie stood beside her and stared too. She let a beat pass, and then another, the two of them staring at the plate mutely. She would have waited her out, but over at 26,

one of the boys had crawled under the high chair and Stephanie could see him unscrewing the lid from the ketchup bottle. Yes, said Stephanie. This, said the lady, isn't a chicken breast. Stephanie blinked at the chicken breast. Chicken breasts, said the woman, have bones. There are no bones. It's boneless, said Stephanie. Exactly, said the woman. Stephanie cleared her throat and tried again. She said, it's supposed to be boneless.

She threw in a Sullivan nod for good measure. The lady's lip curled. The lady started to raise her voice. What do you take me for? Do you take me for an idiot? There's no such thing as a boneless chicken. Stephanie picked up the plate and said, I'll tell chef. Stephanie picked up the plate and said, I'll tell chef. Andy was the pivot that Saturday afternoon. Andy was standing in front of the line opposite the fry man and the grill man. Andy said, up on 14, up on 12.

And then he looked at Stephanie and said, you're kidding, right? Stephanie shook her head. Andy said, I need two fries to the fry man. And then he turned to Stephanie. She wants bones? Stephanie nodded. Chef walked over and said, what's the matter? Chef had spent the afternoon deboning and butterflying all the chicken. all the chicken. You don't need to know this, said Andy. Shaft frowned. Andy shrugged and held the plate out.

She wants bones, he said. Shaft glared at Stephanie. Stephanie said, not me, the lady. Shaft didn't say a word, but his face began to change color. She wants bones, he whispered. Stephanie wished he would just yell. Instead, he grabbed his hair and he began to hop around in a circle, pulling at his hair.

And now everyone in the kitchen was staring at Stephanie as if she had done something wrong. She was about to explain, but then she remembered the family at table 26, and she bolted. The father was waving the bill impatiently in the air when she went through the kitchen doors. And Harmony? Harmony was holding her spaghetti-smeared doll over the edge of her chair, and she was grinning evilly. As soon as she saw Stephanie, she let the doll go, and she started to cry, and something inside Stephanie snapped. She walked over to the table, pretending she hadn't seen the doll fall, and she ground her foot into the doll's face.

Harmony gasped. Oh my goodness, said Stephanie, lifting her foot. I am so sorry. Ten minutes later, as Harmony was being carried out, Stephanie and the little girl locked eyes over her father's shoulder. Harmony glared at her. Stephanie stuck out her tongue. And that was only lunch. At supper, the touchpad on the screen in Peter's station misaligned. Mysteriously, the touch function shifted one item to the left, which meant every time Peter touched hamburger on his display, it came out as salmon steak on the pivots printer. Of course, no

one noticed this right away. Took about an hour to figure it out, and by then, Chef was moving from his chopping block to the stove, weeping noisily. Pamu, the dishwasher, was sitting glumly on the edge of the sink eating fries. And even Andy, unflappable Andy, the pivot, was leaning against the heat lamps with his head buried in his hands, refusing to talk to anybody. The kitchen had ground to a halt. Peter was beside himself. The people in Peter's section were beside themselves. We're in the weeds now, said Robin as she and Stephanie waited in front of the line. It was Andy who pulled it all together. Andy began to yank orders from the cooking station, put everyone's orders on hold as the cooks scrambled to catch up in Peter's section.

It was a logical move, but it meant that pretty soon all the other servers were on edge too. And of course, it was one of the busiest Saturday nights and weeks. Before long, everyone was shouting. Servers were screaming at Andy. Andy was screaming at Chef, and Chef was screaming at everyone. Orders were appearing so fast, there was no room for them under the heat lamps. Andy was yelling, Pick up 13, pick up 12, pick up 21, come on, pick up, pick up, pick up. There's no way of describing what it's like in a kitchen

when you're in the weeds. There was smoke hovering in the air from the grill, and tempers, and sweat, and grease, grease and the smell of fear and all of it, everything mixed up with a fine spray coming out of Pamu's dish pit. And that meant the tiles were getting slippery and you couldn't walk safely. Only way to get from the dining room to the line to pick up your orders was to skate across. way to get from the dining room to the line to pick up your orders was to skate across. By the end of the night, people were balancing their plates in one hand and using the other to grab onto racks and trolleys to keep themselves upright. You would skate into the kitchen,

into all that screaming, and start screaming yourself, and then you'd walk out carrying an order as if everything back there was calm and beautiful. and orders if everything back there was calm and beautiful. Stephanie flew wordlessly from table to table, from bar to kitchen, as if she were some kind of manic wind-up doll. She picked up orders and she set down drinks in a blur. She scraped spaghetti out of high chairs and plucked soggy napkins off the floor and she wiped melted ice cream off the tables. She smiled when she didn't feel like smiling and she said, enjoy your

meal, when she really meant, why can't you people eat at home? On the way past the bar, she scooped up ice cubes and dropped them down the back of her blouse to stay cool like Robin had shown her. I hate fresh ground pepper, said Robin as she swept past Stephanie. She was juggling three enormous plates in one hand and a pepper grinder the size of a baseball bat in the other. By midnight, Stephanie was sitting in the kitchen at the staff table, her eyes glazed and her jaw slack. She was exhausted, but she was unable to stop moving. Her section had emptied first, and now she was folding napkins,

doing roll-ups for the last time ever. She had no idea what she'd be doing next month, let alone next week. She was sitting there, her feet aching, but she didn't dare take off her shoes because she knew she wouldn't be able to get them back on. Her calves hurt and her knees hurt. She looked up. Robin was standing there. Stephanie realized she had stopped folding. She hadn't folded anything for a good five minutes. She'd been sitting there staring at, who knows, completely lost in thought. Robin sat down. Your last night, she said.

How does it feel? I don't know, said Stephanie. It was the truth. Chef appeared at the table. Here, he said, plucking a plate of ravioli in front of each of them. And then he headed back behind the line. Robin raised an eyebrow at Stephanie. I think that means you're welcome back in September, she said. Stephanie nodded.

What are you doing when you get home, asked Robin, reaching for a roll-up. I don't know, said Stephanie. I wish people would quit asking. Maybe tree planting, maybe Banff. Robin nodded. What about next year? I don't know, Stephanie snapped. Then she looked up across the table ruefully.

Sorry, she said. It's just, you know know I always thought I always thought I was going into law and now I don't know anymore when are you supposed to know what's right for you anyway I don't know what's right anymore Robin smiled but you do know you don't want to work in a restaurant Stephanie Stephanie shook her head. I never thought I did. Me neither, said Robin. But it turns out I'm good at it, and I happen to like it.

You're super good, said Stephanie. But how do you figure that out? You don't, said Robin. It just happens. Stephanie got up and got a pitcher from the counter and brought it back to the table. She poured them both a glass of water. But everyone keeps asking me like I'm at some kind of crossroad, she said. I feel so pressured.

Listen, said Robin, leaning forward. Here's a secret. There are no crossroads. There's not even a road. It's a carnival. And there's a lot of booths. And you can come and you can go and you can try out as many as you want. And one day you're going to notice you've been hanging around one of the booths because you like it there. Stephanie was nodding. But Robin wasn't finished. So you can come back in September or not. And you can go to Banff or not. The only thing you have to do is stop fretting. Stop trying to figure it out.

You can't figure it out. No one can figure it out. And if they tell you any different, they're lying. Trust your heart. Follow your feet. And you'll know when you get there. They stared at each other over that half finished ravioli and neither of them said anything until Stephanie nodded and said thank you. And they stared a little longer, and Stephanie added, I'm going to miss you. Well, Robin said, pointing at her plate, you can come here for dinner any time you feel like it.

On one condition, of course. What's that, said Stephanie. Robin stood up and smiled. You have to leave me a good tip. That was In the Weeds. We recorded that story at the Arts and Culture Center in St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador back in 2007. Alright, that's it, but we'll be back here next week with another Dave and Morley story. This one about Sam's first job. Every day from that day on, Mr. Harmon took Sam into the kitchen at the back,

and Sam would watch Mr. Harmon cook. Well, listen more than watch, because while he cooked, Mr. Harmon talked. On this day, Mr. Harmon was standing there holding a black knife over a ripe tomato. When you cut a tomato, he was saying, you must always use a sharp knife. A dull knife might crush the flesh. That's next week on the podcast. I hope you'll join us.

Backstage at the Vinyl Cafe is part of the Apostrophe Podcast Network. The recording engineer is someone who often throws a sippy cup backstage at the Vinyl Cafe as part of the Apostrophe Podcast Network. The recording engineer is someone who often throws a sippy cup right across the studio, Greg DeCloot. Theme music is by Danny Michelle, and the show is produced by Louise Curtis, Greg DeCloot, and me, Jess Milton. Let's meet again next week. Until then, so long for now.