Feeling extremely nervous with small sprinkles of relief ever so often popping up in my conscience, I sat in the small room waiting for the interview to start. I was a little desperate to find a job at this point and I couldn’t have picked a worst time to start looking for one. I’ve been known to jump into futile situations before but this was ridiculous. I kept going back over and over in my mind on how I abandoned the lovely comfort of home and somehow managed to wake up alone, in this world of great uncertainly.
Once upon a time, I was very content with being the program assistant with adult education and literacy. I processed student’s applications, help coordinate events, assisted in teaching in our local English as a Second Language Classes, among several hundred others things that took place at my desk everyday. I loved this job and I constantly felt that I was making a difference in the lives of others. I fully participated in assisting individuals on their journey to higher education, thus improving their own lives and improving our society. This was something that I took great pride in, and to this day, I feel that we accomplish many great things through the adult education program.
Then one simple day… I felt a thought. I wasn’t sure what it was but it sprouted in the back of my mind like a weed that was desperate for water. I couldn’t comprehend the thought in the beginning; I couldn‘t even conceive the notion of the thought. I tried to get a handle on it but I really didn’t know how to approach it. I felt that perhaps I wanted to go back and finish college or join the Peace Corps or simply get up from my desk and walk out to travel the world and never return. I just didn’t know what the thought meant and it was hanging there like a thorn in my head. One could only imagine that this headache was getting on my last nerve!
Months went by and I decided to leave my 9 to 5 adult education job and I figured I would go back to school but when I started to apply it just didn’t feel right. This simply wasn’t the course for me and I didn’t know why. This is where confusion sat in and I spent the next year trying to decide what direction I wanted to go in life. I have to say when it comes to making decisions I wish I was a girl. The women in my life seem to be able to make any decision and go with it while us guys tend to procrastinate and dwell on a simple thought, unable to go forward or backwards… just standing still with much content.
Shortly after the Christmas holidays, I left home and moved to Cincinnati, Ohio where I applied for the Association for the Blind to be a volunteer coordinator. I figured that this would be a good start to something new and since I enjoyed working in the field of Adult Education, this position wasn’t too far off of what I knew. I also decided to apply at The Kroger Company, just in case I didn’t get the job at the Association for the Blind. So if I did get a job at Kroger, it would only be something that was going to be temporary, something to hold me over a couple of months until I found a job that I really wanted.
So here I was… at a Kroger store right across the river from Cincinnati on the Kentucky side. I had just finished my first interview with Human Resources and was about to start my second interview with someone called The Cheese Master. She walked in and began asking the normal type of job interview questions and we talked about my personality and how she thought my outgoing personality would be useful in selling and educating people about cheese. Then she went on to tell me about the Murray’s Project.
Murray’s is the oldest cheese shoppe in New York City, founded in 1940 by Murray Greenberg, a Spanish Civil War Veteran. It’s location is in the heart of Greenwich Village on the famous Bleecker Street. Throughout it’s more than seventy years of business, it has become an institution with New Yorkers. They have a high emphasis on educating the customer on the more than 200 cheeses they sale in their shoppe on Bleecker alone. Their “try the cheese before you buy it” policy brings the customer back again and again. Always neighborhood friendly and they always keep true to their neighborhood roots.
The Murray’s Project is a partnership between Murray’s and The Kroger Company. This partnership expanded Murray’s influence to Cincinnati where Kroger began opening or converting their own cheese shoppes into new Murray’s Shoppes. The concept of which was a store within a store and a way to expand the Murray’s philosophy in what was generally an experiment between the companies at the time. They weren’t sure what the outcome was going to be but they did know this… it was new and it was different and most importantly, it was clicking with the Cincinnati base of customers.
While she continue to talk to me about the Murray’s philosophy I began finding myself quite intrigued about the Murray’s Project and what Kroger was doing in their retail markets. The way she talked about the customers and how they had some of the most interesting characters come by the shoppe daily thrilled me. I felt that this was something that I wanted to participate in, I wanted to be apart of this partnership.
As the interview went on The Cheese Master asked me what I knew about cheese and for the first time in the interview I was stumped. I didn’t know anything about cheese. I didn’t know how it was produce, created, or shipped. The only time I even had, what I thought, was cheese, was during the times I was chowing down on cheese fries or slices on my hamburgers. That was it!
Then there were those special times like on Christmas when I would open my stocking to find a nice brick of Velveeta. Velveeta was a delicacy in our household. It was the “better, more expensive” cheese when I was growing up as a child and it was sometimes rare to have it. Some of our best meals however, was with Velveeta Macaroni and Cheese and even with the gain of cheese knowledge I still have a personal connection with Velveeta. This was the absolute extent of my cheese knowledge.
So I told the Cheese Master the truth. I didn’t know shit about cheese. I told her about Velveeta and Kraft Singles in which she smirked I acknowledge the fact that I didn’t know anything about the different cheeses that were spread about in the shoppe below us but I did say that I would throw myself into learning about each and every wedge of cheese and be the best there was at it. She thanked me for my time and told me that Kroger would be in contact and I immediately felt the “Don’t call us… we will call you” factor play into it. I returned her thanks and left the room.
It was still cold in early April and the coldness instantly pinched my skin as I walked out the front door of the giant retailer. I instantly realized that I had forgotten my coat and I walked back up to the Human Resources Department to grab it when the HR Director said she was glad that I came back and that it saved her a phone call. She asked me if I could start the next day and with a resounding yes, I agreed.
Later the same day, I got a email from the Association for the Blind asking me to come in for an interview. The job paid more than five dollars more an hour than the minimum wage job at the Kroger Murray’s Shoppe. I responded by saying that I had taken another opportunity and thanked them for contacting me. When it came to the money factor I felt like a complete idiot, but there was something more with cheese, that I wanted to learn. The annoying thought in the back of my head was telling me that this was the path forward. That thought that had been plaguing me for more than a year was becoming more clear and the road forward was forming. I sure didn’t know at the time that this path was going to open doors and I sure didn’t know that I was about to be bombarded with the crazy cheese lifestyle.
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