It has been about a week of working in a job I didn’t expect to get.

I kind of sent in an application on a whim, and then they called me back ten minutes later asking if I wanted an interview, and now – somehow – I am working in a fast-paced kitchen environment in the back of a grocery store ten minutes from my house.

I have still not gotten to make a sandwich yet but I have washed an awful lot of dishes.

I like the people the most.

Melinda is patient and down-to-earth and pedantic in a way that isn’t condescending. She tells me when it’s time for me to take a break, and is grateful in a puzzled way when I ask if I can mop the floor or clean out the rotisserie. We get along swimmingly.

Joan has a sweet smile and is a little worried all the time. I get the sense that she initially liked me very much, and then I did something that bothered her and she – didn’t, for a while, and then she forgave me because I was able to take her criticism halfway well. She spends about as much time being encouraging as she spends telling me what I’m doing wrong. It’s probably good for me.

Joy homeschools four children; she told me that she wanted twelve, because she’d grown up homeschooled on a big woodsy property with eleven brothers and sisters. She loves Terry Pratchett’s work, and is writing a fantasy anti-romance because she wants it to exist.

Anthony is something between a flirt and a smartass and is one semester away from an associates degree in chemistry that will hopefully someday become something to do with biochem. I find this out because we ended up walking each other out to the parking lot at the end of a shift. No one in my hometown had eyes like his, and I’d like to be friends.

Terry is a half-grey and somehow familiar and immediately sets off the frustratingly inaccurate gaydar that until a handful of semesters ago I didn’t know I had. We started this job the same day.

Patrick is an ageless giant who doesn’t like to be criticized and has just enough of this tired inclination towards laziness that some of the older and grumpier ladies tend to yell at him all the time. He seems pleased when I ask if I can watch him do things.

Jordan is the one who emptied out the pans of hot water in the Alto-Shaam at the end of my first night — (that’s the machine that sits in the corner and stays warm and nobody seems to know what it does) — and told everyone matter-of-factly that it was not the hottest thing he’d ever argued with. He also fills me in on where the cameras are in the kitchen – where to stand and which way to turn in order to get away with sneaking bites of food. He is the deli’s third newest employee and is enjoying a sense of seniority over Terry and me.

And I –

I’m realizing that I don’t need to learn how to do everything perfectly right away. It’s a process, and I’m new here, and it’s going to take time.

When I feel too nervous I can hide in the walk in refrigerator and try to breathe, or close my eyes and listen to what is inevitably either going to be John Waite’s “missing you” or Tina Turner’s “what’s love got to do with it” because there is only so much variety that a single grocery store playlist can provide.

My secret is how much I love washing dishes, which is the thing that secretly nobody else likes to do. This is kind of silly, but once I was volunteering at a music festival in exchange for a weekend pass and I’d been working on this pile of dirty pots and pans and empty milk jugs for a couple of hours one morning when some stranger in charge of organizing the volunteers came up to me and said “thank you for just standing here and washing dishes.”

There is just something about simple physical repetitiveness that works for me. It’s a peaceful space to think. I tried to communicate to Melinda about this, and I think she understands.

Joan knows that I’d rather wash four and a half hours of dishes than interact with customers and so she intentionally makes sure that I stop once in a while and talk to people, practice my “HihowcanIhelpyou,” learn how to recognize three different kinds of Swiss cheese or whatever it is and how to weigh out exactly half a pound and print the correct labels on a machine that’s probably older than I am.

Patrick and Anthony and Melinda all agree that it takes time to feel like you know what you’re doing. Jordan says it took him about a month. And I’ll get there.

Oh, and Terry has already made her first sandwich. I am only a tiny bit jealous about this.