"Potatoes matter to me": An Excerpt From Meeting New People

"Potatoes matter to me. It’s important to treat them with respect. People matter to me too, but I think it’s much better to focus on one thing at a time."

My next novel, Meeting New People, comes out June 2, 2026. If you like you can read the first half of the third chapter here.

I don’t imagine I’ll go on book tour for this one now that I have a day job; somebody has to move the chairs back and forth between the Activity Center and the Wellness Center a few times a day. That sounds like I’m being flip but really I’m not. It’s one of my favorite parts of the job, moving chairs back and forth. There are a number of events in both rooms each day and attendance can vary pretty widely, so you never know which room is going to need more seats, and everyone else gets out of your way and presses the automatic door-opening button for you when you’re hauling chairs.

Little things make you a hero when you work in senior living, and I can usually expect at least one “They sure keep you busy around here, huh?” when I bring the chairs in. I really enjoy hearing that sort of thing. “Don’t drop any,” someone might say. And it’s a great way to get my steps in.

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I’ve done the standard double-barrelled epigraph, although I’ve at least restrained myself from doing a serious one followed by a funny one.

The third chapter is spent mostly with Barbara at work the morning after she’s gone through a humiliating and unexpected breakup with her best friend, Susan. Barbara is a difficult person with decided opinions on correct behavior; I am very fond of her in my head but would probably cross the street to avoid her in my real life. She is rigid and longs to be emotionally flexible in the same way I have always longed to be physically flexible; I would do anything to be able to touch my toes except for consistently stretch every day.

Olivia works mornings and is responsible for Composed Salads. The tossed salads—your Greek, your fattoush, your Italian chopped, your wedge—anybody working the deli line can throw together. We have the laminated recipes posted along the back wall of the kitchen, and all anyone has to do is measure and mix, the real work having already been done by the prep team before the store opens. Bound salads (chicken, tuna, pasta) work pretty much the same way, but Composed gets its own section head, even though she’s only here four days a week, because that sort of thing really needs someone with an artistic vision behind it, not just a couple of spoons and a checklist. By food service standards, the Market Hall is a pretty good place to work, but even so they make sure to keep as many of us as possible working just under 30 hours a week, so they’re never on the hook for too many health insurance policies. This week, she was featuring leeks à la grecque and a sort of bare-bones Indonesian variation on salad Niçoise, which I thought was a nice way of sidestepping the usual sort of tiresome, endless argument over what belongs in a Niçoise in the first place.

Aside from me, I think Eduardo and the other Barbara are the only two full-timers, even though I’m fairly certain everybody except Kai would gladly work five days a week if they could. Kai is a very genial young man who studies at Kingsborough, although he looks about fourteen, and only works on Tuesdays and Thursdays. He’s an all-hander, but everyone else specializes: Olivia, in addition to Composed Salads, helps me with soups when we get backed up, the other Barbara handles catering and holiday orders, Caitlyn makes dessert, Ariel and Hanna split the rotisserie and sandwich section, Orlin washes dishes, and Eduardo is responsible for deli orders, as well as being the only member of the swing shift before the closing team comes in at four. I’m responsible for soups, general recipe development, scheduling, and bookkeeping, and we all cover the register as needed.

It’s not a great system. With everybody constantly going back and forth between various stages of food prep and handling cash, you can easily find yourself washing your hands every five minutes, if not more often, especially since management won’t stock single-use gloves. They’re right not to, I should say. People get overconfident, wearing gloves. They’ll put a little layer of plastic over their hands and think they’re wearing a magical talisman against germs. I’ve seen prep cooks—not here, but plenty of other places—wear the same pair for hours. They’ll switch stations, retie their hair in a ponytail, scratch their nose, move from cooked to raw meat and back again, all without changing them out, because they think only skin can get dirty or something. No gloves is the way to go. It keeps people honest. But there’s always someone waiting behind you at the prep sink, and everybody’s hands look like three kinds of hell all the time.