I Dream of Ice Cream

There's a Seattle ice cream shop that is hiring "seasonal scoopers" and I've been tempted to apply. The benefits include medical and dental insurance and a city transit card, but they had me at "all the ice cream you can eat."

I'm not supposed to go for jobs like this. I'm in my late fifties, "semi-retired," technically on a leave of absence from a high-pressure post. I yearn to work, but I've maxed out in terms of climbing ladders, collecting titles and representing management. Why can't I want less in a job?

It probably goes without saying, but I don't always make the best decisions, especially when it comes to work and finances.

I spent a summer in college volunteering 40 hours a week as a pool and park director for a nonprofit. It was the exact same position I'd been paid to do the year before. I just told them I didn't need the money since I was waiting tables on weekends.

Apparently, I had this idea that there was such a thing as too much money. No one will ever mistake me for Elon Musk. I'm OK with that.

I'm sure there are challenges to working in an ice cream parlor. How many times a day do they have to clean the glass panes that separate grubby hands from the tubs of glory? I'd probably need to regularly apply my winter hand moisturizer due to the freezer temperature.

There would be that guy who wants to taste four — no, 10 — flavors and then pat his stomach and announce, "Yeah, I'm good" before exiting. Like he won the lottery. Was that Elon?

Ice cream makes people happy. This particular shop even has a sign that says that. I could use that in the interview. The manager, decades younger than me, would process my remark and — ding! — a match.

How great it would be to contribute to other people's smiles! Half an hour prior, a customer may have been engaged in an intense Twitter battle — um, Elon? — and immediately lost a hundred followers or, egad, had their account suspended. (Elon!)

Maybe someone in the real world dumped them. Perhaps their grandpa is in the hospital. (Get well, kind sir.) But everything happening beyond the parlor goes on pause while they ogle mocha chip or ponder whether honey lavender will be yummy or taste like fancy soap.

While it seems everyone is hiring these days, I would have to be strategic in applying for the position. I wouldn't lie on my resume — no trumped-up ice cream experience as Ben or Jerry's life coach. I'd just edit things down to a "lite" CV, more Halo Top than Häagen-Dazs.

Busboy? Keep it. Waiter? Sure. Lawyer? School principal? Three degrees? Too much information. Maybe I'd touch up my sideburns with another application of Just for Men the night before the interview.

Surely my pimple-free forehead would make a pleasing first impression, as would showing up five minutes early with my own wheels — no rambling excuse about the bus hitting an Amazon delivery van. Would the boss take one look and decide I was four decades late?

I've wanted to be immersed in the business of ice cream since I was seven, waiting in long lines at Stoney Creek Dairy outside Hamilton, Ontario, wondering if I should go wild and order the bubblegum flavor instead of flipflopping between orange and lime sherbet.

At some point during the dreary days of COVID, things became even drearier when I Googled the dairy and discovered it had become a nursing home. To honor its past, the facility opens a retro parlor to residents on weekends.

Maybe the place will be my next move. Should I mention that if the ice cream shop manager asks about my long-term goals?

I suppose I could have worked at Dairy Queen as a teenager after my family moved to East Texas. Soft serve will do, almost yielding premium ice cream-worthy smiles when the swirly mass is dipped in a chocolate or butterscotch coating that instantly hardens.

But in Texas, the proud home of Blue Bell brand ice cream, I would have been mortified serving my peers as they pulled up in their too-cool Camaros with their stereos blaring Journey or Pink Floyd on eight-track tape. Besides, Dairy Queen's requisite cardboard hat wouldn't have fit over my untamable mop of curly hair. It was neither the right time nor the right place to break into the ice cream industry.

When I moved back to Canada after a stint as an attorney in California, my teaching and law degrees didn't transfer so neatly. I fell into a premature midlife crisis at 30. I staked out a floundering thrift shop in a Vancouver neighborhood which had been the city's hub for all-things hippie in the early '70s. Destiny and good karma for a Ben & Jerry's scoop shop.

Or so I thought.

I wrote the company about franchise opportunities. As I awaited a reply, I fantasized about being paid to say their goofy flavors like "Coffee, Coffee BuzzBuzzBuzz" and "Chubby Hubby."

When the reply arrived in the mail, I was as excited to open it as when I was a comics-reading kid who'd sent away for sea monkeys. Alas, my ice cream dream was dead on arrival. B&J said it wasn't considering the Vancouver market. I took it personally. The brand hasn't tasted quite as sweet since.

I no longer yearn to own an ice cream shop. I don't need to manage one. Don't even need to fill in surveys about what should be the next flavor on the menu. (Just, please, no retro week featuring rum raisin. Save the raisins for cereal and bran muffins.)

I'm fortunate I can find pleasure in both the consumption of ice cream and the prospect of dispensing it. Giving might be better than receiving. Almost. My mind still spins on the all-you-can-eat job perk. Would I have to declare that as a benefit on taxes? How would I quantify it? I suppose some of my earnings could pay for an accountant.

Let sundaes with a cherry on top be the capstone of my career.

Gregory Walters has been published by The New York Times, The Globe and Mail, CBC, The Gay & Lesbian Review, Funny Times, Vancouver Is Awesome, Cottage Life, Junto Magazine and Writer’s Digest. He has a blog, Aging Gayly, and is partial to salted caramel ice cream and freshly made waffle cones. Read More