Confessions of a Guac Boy

            I have made over a thousand batches of guacamole in my lifetime. This may be hard to believe, and it may seem like hyperbole. After all, who on Earth could ever be possessed to make that much guacamole? But, I assure you, it is completely true. I have made enough guacamole to fill an entire swimming pool (which would undoubtedly be highly unsafe but would also present swimmers with an opportunity to die the most delicious death imaginable).

            This information probably raises many questions and possibly a few alarm bells. Why did I make so much guacamole? Am I some kind of sick freak who gets his jollies from mashing avocados? Am I one of those fanatics destined to appear as a curiosity on some TLC show alongside people who are sexually attracted to bridges?

            The truth is nothing as pedestrian as that. From the summer after high school to the spring of my freshman year of college, I worked as a guacamole boy (often shortened to “guac boy”) at an overpriced tapas restaurant called Casa Bolero. This was my 100% real, honest-to-goodness job title. I had to put it on my tax form. Note: if you ever find yourself writing the name of a fruit or vegetable on the line marked “job title,” that is a sign that something has gone horribly wrong somewhere.

            For the uninitiated, tapas restaurants are vaguely Mediterranean/Mexican places that charge exorbitantly high prices for extremely small quantities of food. They cover up the smallness of the portions by serving them on large plates, a psychological tactic that tricks the customers’ brains into thinking that they are full despite having only consumed roughly two bites of food (I am giving away zealously-guarded trade secrets here. If I die under questionable circumstances, that probably means that the Tapas Mob has silenced me. Please tell my family that I love them). The smallness of the plates also encourages customers to buy multiple entrees and share them, meaning that everyone leaves hungry and unsatisfied with thoughts of a second mortgage dancing in their head.

            This is where I come in. At Casa Bolero, enough idiots were willing to pay $8.95 for table-side guacamole that the waitresses couldn’t keep up with demand and the management had to hire four college-aged guys for the express purpose of guacamole production. I was lucky enough to be initiated into this elite fraternity, mainly because two of my friends already worked there. I quickly discovered that guacamole-making is not a career pathway to be undertaken taken lightly; in fact, it is more of a lifestyle than a job. It requires hours of intense preparation, immense focus, and a single-minded dedication to craft.

            Ha ha! Just kidding. Guacamole-making is such an idiot-proof task that even a complete fucking moron can do it well, meaning that I was (just barely) qualified.  

            Basically, it works like this: the ticket comes out of the printer, and you load a tray with one and a half avocados, a basket of chips, and seven black bowls with chopped tomatoes, onions, cilantro, jalapeños, garlic, salt, and lime. These are all strategically lined around a large stone bowl with squat, stubby legs called a molcajete, which weighs roughly nine hundred pounds and is supposedly a replica of a traditional Aztec serving dish. If this is true, I believe the molcajete was probably responsible for the downfall of the Aztec civilization, as it is nearly impossible to fight off conquistadors when your wrists are cramped.

            This tray is then carried through the dining room to a table (not always the correct table, in my case). Then, you greet the customer, ask them what they want, and get to guacin.’

            Making the guacamole is the easy part. It’s really hard to fuck up guacamole, but customers consistently told me that I was better than the other Guacafellas, so I must have been pretty good at it. As far as I can tell, there are three rules to being a Guac Star: 1. Use all the ingredients listed above (or it will be super bland). 2. Put lots of salt in it (avocadoes are a very watery vegetable, and salt will soak up the water and make for a less-soupy final product). 3. Don’t fucking mash it into a paste (it’s always better when chunky).

            As you can see, I am a certified Guacamole Expert. But despite my ability to make bad-ass motherfucking guacamole, my job proved to be quite difficult, mainly because I had to make it at tableside. You see, making a good batch requires three to five minutes, and the potential for awkwardness contained within this short window of time is infinite. I suffer from a great deal of social anxiety, and, over the years, I have developed a bunch of coping mechanisms that allow me to appear (and even feel) like a normal person. But that anxiety is always bubbling below, waiting for a vent in the surface so it can come rushing forth.

            These avocado-filled minutes contained numerous such vents. As with many socially anxious people, I fear silence. Unfortunately for me, many customers were devoid of either politeness or social skills and were therefore either unable or unwilling to talk to me, leaving me floundering and sweating as I mashed avocados in silence. This wasn’t so bad when the people at the table would continue their conversation, but some people would shut down all of my go-to questions (“How are you doing? Some weather, huh? How ‘bout that one sports team? I like sports! Do you like guacamole?”). They would then either avoid my gaze and look around the room until I finished, or stare at me intently as if I was solving a differential equation.

            After a few weeks of this, I couldn’t take it anymore and decided to develop a shtick to use on unresponsive customers. I looked up a bunch of Fun Facts about guacamole and avocados on the internet and rattle them off for customers. I decided that this was pretty funny, and began to adopt the persona of crazed tour-guide, enthusiastically educating my customers about the health benefits of avocados (high in B, E, and K vitamins) while professing my undying love for the food I made. Usually, the customers were so taken aback by my seemingly coked-up zeal that they actually interacted with me, albeit at arm’s length because I seemed dangerously unhinged. 

            As hilarious as people’s reactions were, it became exhausting to wear that particular persona. So, as I gave progressively fewer and fewer shits about my job, I developed a new, cartoonishly douchey and arrogant character. After ascertaining what the customers desired, I would say things like “Not to brag or anything, but I’m basically the Michael Jordan of guacamole making, if Michael Jordan was five times better at basketball and ten times as good-looking.” From there I would continue to up the ante, bragging about everything from my ability to eat jalapenos to my own humbleness. I would close with lines like “I hope this guacamole is as good-tasting as I am good-looking,” then throw out a guacamole-related pun over my shoulder I picked up my tray to leave. My favorite was “Have a good night, and rock out with your guac out.”

            I also referred to myself in the third person as Christopher Guacken.

            To my surprise, most customers thought this was hilarious, and I received far more money in tips than ever before. Valuable life lesson learned: act like a huge douchebag and people will reward you with money.

            So, I was able to triumph over anxiety with silent customers. But I never really figured out how to deal with those who sat at the opposite pole, the ones who talked too much. Because my job was so fucking weird, I think some people interpreted my avocado-crushing as an open invitation to cast aside all social norms and engage in complete conversational anarchy. “This guy makes guacamole for a living,” they thought. “That means it’s time to do some really weird shit. I’ll tell him all about my divorce and/or my bowel movements.” 

            Once, as I was sprinkling cilantro, a very drunk woman who was sitting with a large group informed me that her friend Jeff, a regular, was unable to attend. “So, I made a cutout of his face and put it on this Popsicle stick,” she explained. She pulled out a startlingly professional-looking head-on-a-stick.“Say hi to Jeff, Guac Boy. Here, why don’t you take a picture with me and Jeff, Mr. Guac Boy? I miss Jeff. Here, say cheeeeeeeeeeese…great picture. I’mma upload this to Facebook. I’ll tag you as… Miiiiiisster…Guac…Boy. Done.”  

            I also found out that older women find nothing sexier than guacamole after they’ve had several shots of tequila. Some confined this to a few subtle flirty comments, but others were more overt. One fifty year-old woman trying to pass for thirty told me “I don’t want garlic in mine. Don’t put any garlic in there, ‘cause I’m gonna make out with someone tonight and I don’t wanna have garlic breath.” 

            “Very well, no garlic, ma’am.”

            She then downed a shot. “Would…you make out with someone who had garlic breath?”

            Without really thinking it through, I decided it would be funny to answer honestly. “Yes, that would be incredibly hot.” What can I say? I love garlic.

            Realizing what I had just done, I whipped up her guac at warp speed while looking at my shoes,then fairly sprinted back to the relative safety of the kitchen and informed the head chef that I was going on break.

            I am far too much of a wiseass to ever make it in the service industry.  

            Guacomole-making is a business fraught with pitfalls and dangers. As such, it is a young man’s game. I was forced to retire after I developed a serious illness, and I was not welcomed back when I recovered. I can’t say I was surprised. The owner was not a sympathetic man. He once fired the pantry chef, an Iraq War veteran, on the day he was scheduled to have surgery in order to remove a fragment of an IED from his back. 

            But I’m not bitter. As difficult as it was, my time as a guac boy did provided me with one moderately useful skill. I can rest easy at night knowing that if the whole “English Degree” thing doesn’t work out, I always have an incredibly marketable skill to fall back on.

            Furthermore, my time as a guacamole boy has given me my lone strategy for survival in a post-apocalyptic world. While everyone else scrambles for guns as the zombies come a-bitin,’ I will head for the produce section of the supermarket and load up on ingredients. I will then ingratiate myself into a group of burly survivalists with my delicious savory snacks, and use their dependence on the creature comfort I provide to eventually control them. If anyone has a problem with my leadership, I will cut them off. No more guacamole for them. I will make hard choices and live in a moral grey area but do my best to remain humane in an inhumane world, and my group will ultimately be the one that repopulates the Earth, planting the seed of life for generations to come, enshrining me as an avocado-wielding hero. Statues of me grasping my mortar and pestle in a victory pose will dot the countryside, and third-graders will memorize facts about me out of textbooks for centuries to come.

            Either that or I will die a horrible death because I have no actual life skills beyond a narrow area of vegetable manipulation. 

Intended publication: some humor magazine.