Bob The Fish Guy

For the record, I loved working here. I actually wish I could have done this full time, and had started years earlier. Yet as it turned out, I was only able to last about 3 months, in this murky grey zone somewhere between full and part time. This mostly because, insanely enough, it became my THIRD job that I was holding down, all at once, for those few months there in late 2006. It couldn’t have arrived at a better time, though, and for this I have to thank my good friend Dan Bandman. My hiring here was entirely his orchestration, under circumstances that are no less than bizarre.

But before we get to all that, let’s run down the particulars. Bob Reany is the guy who owns the place, this extremely brash New Yorker. His youngest son Devin works full time here, and oldest son Alex also chips in a handful of hours a week. Also Bob’s mom, Pat, ever so slightly more than that. She’s this hilariously grouchy old lady (hilarious to me, anyway; others are less than enthralled by her antics)(then again you could say that about the entire family) while Devin is this bespectacled, ballcap-rockin’ dweeb. He is a huge baseball nerd, though, so we at least have this to discuss, and in fact during any lull whatsoever, Devin can be found religiously kicking back in front of the lone computer here, to visit one or more New York Mets websites – that’s his team and he is completely obsessed with them, would easily do this for hours if left to his own devices.

Alex, who clearly must have gotten most of his genes from his mother, whoever she is, stands taller than the others, is more the conventionally handsome type, and actually has what you might call at least a modicum of normal social skills. So a total outlier with that clan. He’s also going to college during most weekdays, which is why he doesn’t work here much. The interaction between these two brothers is possibly most comical of all, because they don’t have a whole lot in common whatsoever. To the extent even I am in (silent) agreement with Devin, the day the two of them are sparring, because Jon Stewart is coming to speak at OSU, and it’s only open to students – Devin wants to go, but doesn’t attend; Alex attends, but can’t go, and is therefore adamant his younger brother can simply borrow his student ID. Devin correctly considers this totally preposterous, that there’s no way he could pass for Alex.

“I mean, all he’d have to tell them is he forgot to take his acne medication!” Alex is complaining to me, when Devin refuses.

Apart from this family, the only other two employees are this dreadlocked black dude named Rich, with whom I probably interact the most, overall, and this mild-mannered guy in the back, Bobby, who is basically tasked with nothing more than handcrafting soups every day, and washing up his own dishes afterwards – but oh, what soups these were! Typically nothing short of phenomenal. And such a huge draw that it made sense for Bob to have Bobby focus on these every moment of the day. These would rotate out regularly, depending on what we have available, although two of his more fondly recalled concoctions for me are the Pumpkin Nut Brown Ale Cream Soup, with tilapia and swordfish in it, and also the Black Bean Corn Stew, also featuring sword. These might sound strange, but trust me, they were awesome, a sentiment you could apply to everything Bobby made.

And an extremely nice guy, too, although he didn’t say much. As for Rich, we have a decent amount in common, as far as chatting about music and the nightlife scene and so on. Although it’s originally bothering me for the longest time, at least the first few weeks, because right off the bat I feel like I know this guy from somewhere, but I can’t figure it out. Then one day he mentions he likes to play pool at Oldfield’s On High, and that’s when it hits me: that’s where I met him, on just a single occasion. It was a night where he was running the pool table, I showed up, and though typically not very good at all, was having some kind of flukish night and kept beating him. And while he seemed to have some talent, I could tell he wasn’t exactly a pro, yet seemed to regard himself as a real hustler and was getting extremely agitated that I kept winning. I don’t mention any of this now, though, because he’s a pretty cool cat and it’s okay to let that night slide into obscurity.

Then there’s Bob. As mentioned he’s this totally over the top, highly vocal character from NYC, but this doesn’t bother me in the slightest. You might even say that I prefer this management type. It never fazes me to work for dickheads (though I wouldn’t even characterize him as this, not really): just give it to me straight, I can handle it. This is so much better than the typical corporate environment, or what you would even call the joke of a management style we’re running into over at Wild Oats, where the bosses will tell you one thing one day, tell you the complete opposite the next, then get all huffy and pissed like you’re some kind of troublemaker when you call them on it and ask for clarification. And that’s as GOOD as it gets for the most part over there – at least then, they’re speaking directly to you. Far more common is for those clowns to tell this guy to tell that guy to tell someone else to tell you that you need to knock it off with such and such.

This is not going to be a problem with Bob Reany. If he wants to flip out on you, he’s going to do so right then and there, at maximum volume. But at least he is consistent, and knows what he’s doing. So as a result, I really vibe with the guy. In fact, the whole reason Bandman called was that he heard Bob was hiring, and instantly thought of me. “I had a feeling you two would hit it off,” he says.

II.

One day Rich is on this extended kick, ranting in amusing/amused fashion about the Reany family, one with concludes with him smirking and saying, “and of course the crown jewel in all of this is (extends his arms and raises his palms for dramatic effect)…Granny!”

So, yes, there’s the Pat experience. Although she’s one of these cranky old people who is so over the top that it’s impossible to take seriously, and is therefore more hysterical than anything. Her most notorious episode by far stems from the day mayor Michael Coleman stops by our shop, but she has no idea who he is. Yet for some insane reason Pat is actually left alone helping him. To say she “muddles” her way through a friction filled transaction with Mr. Coleman, owing entirely to her thickheaded abrasiveness, is an understatement. Although our illustrious mayor handles it well, to his eternal credit. All he wants is for Pat to cook him two fish sandwiches in this nifty contraption Bob has, which does most of the work for you, provided you set the timer right. Except she apparently doesn’t, as Mayor Mike reluctantly returns and asks if she can cook them a little longer – she grudgingly does, though is grumbling to everyone all over this building afterwards that she was just stuck helping “some crazy black guy.”

It’s therefore obvious why I think her interactions with other people are 100% pure buffoonery. Yet even when directing her tirades at me, it’s comedy gold in my ledger. There’s this night where I plastic wrapped all the bowls in our case, per daily closing ritual, and while I’m admittedly so experienced at this point in my career that these babies are tight as can be, i.e. a wrinkle-free Saran wrap sheet, she’s still arguing with me for a minute or so there whether I did this or not, whilst she is looking right at them: “you didn’t wrap those.” “Yes I did.” “No you didn’t.” “Yes I did.” Until she finally poked one of the bowls and discovered – lo and behold – there was indeed a sheet of plastic covering it! There were plastic wraps covering each of the bowls! How amazing!

“Oh,” she says with a sheepish grin, “I guess you did.” Then issued a somewhat backhanded compliment about how she’d never seen anyone wrap these so tight.

Early in my tenure here, she actually punches me in the arm because I’m trying to store tilapia with sheets of wax paper in between the layers. Putting away the fish at night, and she sees this, totally wigs out.

“We don’t need these! Come on, you worked at Whole Foods, you should know that!”

I calmly explain to her that every place you work, they all have completely different methods for pretty much everything. But they act like you’re completely off your rocker if you have experience and yet show up and don’t automatically already know this particular place’s methods for doing everything (as she is doing just now, for instance). Anyone who’s ever worked for multiple businesses would know this to be true…which come to think of it is probably why I already expect as much, and am able to shrug her off.

Far more hysterical is the night where it’s just the two of us working, yet again, and I just can’t take this seafood cart anymore, its balky wheels which won’t quite roll right. Therefore decide to flip it over and grease them with some sesame oil I found nearby – a tiny bit of which ends up on the floor.

“Why didn’t you think to take that outside?” she barks.

“If I thought it was a big deal I would’ve taken it outside.”

“That’s the problem with you smart guys,” she curses, sprinkling salt on the oil, “you never think about the easy way to do something. Well, you can’t get workman’s comp for being stupid if you slip and fall on this – and I’d go to the hearing, too, and tell the judge, he’s a moron, I saw him do it, don’t give him anything!“

Aside from the bucket o’ laughs this inspires, however…I don’t see how wheeling the gimpy cart all the way outside and oiling it and bringing it back in is “easier” than sprinkling a little bit of salt. But maybe that’s just me. To fill this picture in a little better, also consider this day where she gets on me, two separate occasions, for leaving the skin on the cutting board after cutting it off by request for a customer – while I was still dealing with the customer. It reminds me of this older jackass at the Sawmill Road Kroger would go POSITIVELY APESHIT if you didn’t clean and sanitize the grinder the instant you were finished using it, before you even got around to wrapping and putting out the ground beef, even though nobody else I’ve worked with in all my years of meat/seafood experience operated like this. But anyway the real kicker with Pat here was later that same day, she left an entire mahi mahi fillet sitting on the cutting board for half an hour.

III.

But yeah, how this job comes about in the first place is completely off the wall. Sometimes you just have to speculate the universe is looking out for you and leave it at that. I had seriously just spent the earlier portion of this day in August at the Child Support Agency downtown, which nobody else whatsoever knew anything about. Had just been handed a thoroughly baffling verdict, to the tune of $580 per month I’d be forking over to baby momma, which I can assure you in 2006 dollars was certainly no small amount (hell, even in 2025, this is not exactly pocket change). It left me wondering how in the world I was going to manage this, even working two jobs. Dan knew nothing of my plight – none of my friends did, I hadn’t mentioned it to anyone – leading up to this meeting. With my head still ringing, I show up for an afternoon gig at Wild Oats, directly from the Child Support Agency. Shortly upon arrival here that afternoon…Dan calls the store, asks me if I might be able to squeeze in working for Bob The Fish Guy, because they need help, and he feels like I would really vibe with this dude.

And he’s right. All it takes is one short conversation with Bob, where we dip out to one of the picnic tables outside the North Market, for us to hatch out an agreement and exactly what shifts I’ll be working. And from the outset, it’s apparent that this is a perfect fit. As previously mentioned, I’m not the least bit concerned about his blustery tirades, feel confident enough not to land on the wrong side of them too often. And when I do, well, then he probably has a point. He obviously knows what he’s doing – is generally considered one of if not the absolute top seafood captains in town – and I might even learn something from him, who knows.

Meanwhile, as far as the perks, he has one gigantic heaping mound of clean Bob The Fish Guy and/or all purpose North Market shirts always at the ready, meaning you never have to wash any if you don’t want to. I show up and throw a fresh one on, grabbing whatever I want from the impressively diverse arsenal, then throw it in the nearby hamper later, when it’s dirty – at least most of the time. To this day I still have at least one Bob shirt and two North Market ones dating from my tenure here. Which I obviously wore out of here on the nights in question. He also gives us one free meal a day, from his somewhat diverse array of offerings, and best of all, perhaps, is that I am paid in cash. I’ve never been able to figure out why any legit businessman would do so, but you do run into this from time to time, and all I can reason is that it must just be for convenience’s sake.

Also, I’m so brainwashed by corporate retail life that it takes weeks upon weeks to adjust – if ever I truly do – to the fact that nobody cares what I’m doing with my time here. Working for various millon and billion dollar megachains, you’re always looking over your shoulder, attempting to stay busy at every minute even if the work is technically done. Here, you just have to do your job. There is no “manager” patrolling the North Market. Especially on the many nights where I’m closing alone, if I want to sit and read a book for hours (and of course I often do just that) while keeping an eye on the counter, so long as the required tasks are done and done right, then Bob doesn’t give a fuck. It’s unbelievably refreshing.

During this era, North Market Poultry is across the aisle from us, and are by far our most interacted with allies. Jerry, the owner, does get on me one day for wearing a Wild Oats hat into the building, and yells at me to take it off – which I don’t mind doing, because his point about not advertisting for other businesses, competitors at that, is a valid one. His wife, Annemarie, is also in the mix plenty over there, as are Dan Bandman, Chris Burney (he of local band The Sun), and Hubert, this hardworking yet extremely nice and somewhat older Polish guy who eventually opens his own shop in this market. They frequently give me their leftovers at the end of the night, to the extent my fridge at home becomes overflowing with them – to this day, hearing, seeing, or smelling anything to do with Chicken a la King instantly reminds me of this place. And then a couple other familiar faces at the very least are floating elsewhere around the building. Eric, a former bartender at R Bar on High Street, also works the juice bar here, and Shea, a former coworker at Wild Oats, is over in Omega Bakery. She’s also dating Chris Burney at the time, and swings by to say hi often in her travels.

IV.

Things take a surreal turn just three weeks into my tour of duty, though. I show up one afternoon and Bob unexpectedly asks me if I want to run this place. Which is shocking on any number of levels, although we can start first with the most obvious: so what is he going to be doing, then? Well, as it turns out, he’s just gotten a job offer back in Manhattan, one which he considers “too good” to turn down. Therefore he is moving back there almost immediately, yet intends to maintain ownership of Bob The Fish Guy. Can’t hardly handle the day to day affairs from that distance, however, which is why he’s making this pitch to me.

I’m extremely flattered, while also considering it amusingly telling that he didn’t offer it to his kids, certainly not his mom, nor for that matter Rich. And it goes without saying Bobby would have no interest in this level of responsibility. Yet I mull the matter over and finally admit to him that…I just can’t take him up on this offer, not with a clear conscience. And the reason for that is, which I hadn’t spilled the beans on yet, was that I planned on moving out of town at the end of the year. More than a plan, actually – it was happening. I needed this job so badly that I hadn’t mentioned it to him until now, was just banking on issuing the standard two weeks’ notice when the time arrived.

In retrospect, I probably should have just said screw it, taken the extra money he (presumably) would have given me for that role, did my best for the next three months, then bailed. Because I wind up shooting myself in both feet by turning it down. Among my other concerns, though, are also personnel related, shall we say. Everyone does a fine job and all, but I have an extremely hard time imagining that Devin and Alex and Rich are going to really listen to anything I might say from an orders-issuing standpoint. And having your head on the chopping block as the guy “in charge” without possessing any real authority, eh, think I’ll pass on that one. Also, though confident enough, can I really and truly handle that job, anyway? I believe I could, but who knows?

Bob’s standards are mighty high, after all. I’ve stood there watching various fish mongers show up with their wares, only to have him cherry pick through the merchandise and sending them packing with half or more of their intended delivery refused by him. This one older guy, who apparently also used to work here at one point, sometimes looked more on the brink of bursting into tears, rather than the anger I would expect, when Bob shooed him away, still holding most of the fish he’d shown up with and hoped to sell. But he needed whatever meager crumbs Bob would throw him, and apparently had no choice but to continue doing business with our mercurial owner.

Given all this, there’s one more dimension to relate about this enterprise, which is completely unfathomable, and makes no sense to me no matter how many times I turn it over in my head. Bob ran a somewhat maniacally tight ship, had the most refined standards from a merchandise standpoint that I’ve ever seen, and was constantly talking about his numbers. Not just his numbers, either, but the market’s overall numbers, versus how they did x numbers of years ago and so on.

So you would suffer through all of this on a typical day, only to reach closing time. Where you’re taking all the cash he accumulated throughout that day, and stuffing it into a safe in the back of the shop, which had no lock. There’s a sign on the safe door saying SMILE! YOU’RE ON CAMERA! which everybody obviously knows to be false because…his safe is seriously cleaned out in its entirety on a regular basis. Somebody is drifting in here, after I leave but before the market’s doors are closed, and wiping him out. Constantly.

It happens a few times right off the bat, after I start here. This is one of those situations which is incredibly awkward for everyone who works here, and I can’t understand why he wouldn’t just get a damn safe that works. But there’s no way to make yourselves look any less guilty – again one where bringing it up and denying any culpability, I feel, only makes a person look more guilty, not less. The only way to look less guilty, really, is to not mention it at all, which is how I choose to handle it.

Though it must be somewhat apparent that this is weighing on me, anyway. Because one day, apropos of nothing, Bobby says to me, “hey man, don’t worry about it. This has been happening for years. Since way before you got here.”

Well, I do have my suspect in the case, but don’t mention this to anyone. It’s this fake rastafarian looking white kid who used to work in one of the vendor stalls elsewhere around here, apparently, yet now goes around cleaning the market floors and so on. Wears this freaking knitted toboggan in the summertime and is extremely chummy with seriously just about every employee in the building, though he curiously doesn’t seem to come around this end much.

I figure I’ll just keep my eyes on him, who knows, something may come of it. At the very least, though, Bob does eventually decide to give up on the crackpot safe strategy – instead, at the end of every night, I take the cash, stuff it into a fish box, take the elevator down into the basement, and stow it in his freezer. And this does work for a solid couple of months without incident. Until exactly one night, shortly before I leave here for good, when somebody has evidently figured out what we’re doing with the money, and it’s stolen out of the basement freezer. I’m not even sure what he decides to do after this, but it seems like we went back to keeping it in the “safe” again.

For months, Bob had been running the shop long distance, via phone calls from Manhattan. It’s the weirdest dynamic ever, though I mostly still love it here. Until the day when Devin and Alex decide on their own that they’re going to cut me loose early, a couple of weeks before my agreed upon end date. They do give me slightly more cash than I was due at that point, as some sort of “severance” pay, which I guess they didn’t have to do – although it’s less than I would have made if simply working out those final two weeks. It’s then that I’m informed they’re bringing back Tim (a friend of ours, at one point he was even Bandman’s roommate), the guy I had replaced. He was working at this bicycle shop in Westerville, but was game to returning when they approached him about it. So yeah, the guy I replaced replaces me, and I am out the door.

2006 timeline

August 11

my first day at Bob the Fish Guy, 1:30-7. I’ll be working exclusively 11-7 shifts from now on, though. I can already tell I’ll love it here – easier and better paying, more laid back than Oats. Clientele not the least bit condescending, not to mention even more girlies crawling out of the woodwork: yeah…….

August 25

unexpectedly given $415 in cash today by Bob for the week I’ve worked thus far – he’s a good guy, he was worried about me having to wait till two weeks from today till I got any dough. Jason (W.O. customer) in shopping, bumps into me, we talk too long, Bob yells, Jason feels bad buys two pounds of sole. “Talk to him all you want, now,” Bob jokes. Pat smacked me a couple of times earlier today. “How ya like working with Pat?” Dan came over and asked me, “she’s a maniac, isn’t she?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you two get along?”

“I think she’s funny,” I admit.

August 30

hookup bonanza. Pete and Dan give me a bison burger they had on display, bun and all, as well as this cabbage (which I don’t eat) stuffed w/ rice (which I do), then Dan brings over these brownie type sponge things, not sure what they’re called, that Shea had donated to the cause from Omega Bakery. Dan also gives me a healthy dose of this coffee like beverage called toddy (not the alcoholic drink, but not sure how this one is spelled) which is potent as hell, I don’t even finish.

August 31

Bob: “I sell 50 pounds of tilapia a week, it’s farm raised and nobody says a word about it, nobody asks. You know what they do to farm raised tilapia? They give it a gene to make it automatically change sexes at some point to become a male so it grows faster. But you feed your salmon some carotene, and all of the sudden you’re Hitler. Back before all this shit started I was selling 150 pounds a WEEK of the farm raised salmon, 120, 120 to 150, I sold a little less when the wild was in season but still….since then, I’m lucky to sell fifty.”

-I’m making tuna patties out of ground up scraps. “What the hell’s the matter with you?” he questions, barks, “would you buy these?”

“Uh…..yeah, actually, I probably would….(he slides over to show me proper method) but that doesn’t mean it’s what you’re looking for….”

September 1

-banana nut bread from Benevolence this morning good flavor but a touch too dry

-black coffee from Touch of Earth Bob springs for late is great

Bob closing with me, as he did last Friday, because his sons are in Italy. Near the end of the night, screaming over at the guy from North Market Poultry who always leaves cooked ears of corn on the eating counter for me: “What did I tell you! Don’t give this guy anything!”

September 8

Dan brought over this shredded barbecue chicken left over for me to take home. I took one bite and thought wow, this is great….but then this second wave of flavor hits you and it’s like HOLY SHIT, this is the best barbecue I’ve ever tasted. Unreal. Of course, everything I’ve tried from that place, virtually, has been unreal. Two days ago, instead of eating my daily meal I’m granted at Bob’s, I traded it (Dan came over and approached me, his idea) for two barbecued chicken legs – “we do a dry rub under the skin beforehand, then we baste it throughout as it’s baking,” Dan explains, “that way the skin doesn’t just taste good, which it should, but the meat does too” – and this is nothing short of phenomenal, plus some mashed potatoes (very good) and these garlic parmesan wings. “These are kinda played out, but I’m proud of em,” Dan says, meaning they’re a bit past their prime, and dry, which they are, but have great flavor. “I’m not gonna hook Devin up,” Dan curses, “that guy’s a tool.” But ends up adding a few extra wings, anyway, tells me Devin can try them if he wants. Then later on that night, Pete brings me over even more mashed potatoes (a different batch) – “very creamy” he says – and these are absolutely ASTOUNDING, the best mashed potatoes I’ve ever had. Then last night, the guy who’s always bringing me the corn on the cob (which I can’t even keep up on, so jammed with it is my fridge) has a container for me to take home of mashed potatoes on top and this rabbit goulash (rabbit, mushrooms, pasta, in some kind of sauce) which is just fantastic.

September 12

These two old guys order 8oz clam chowders each. This burly black guy walks past with his toddler son, and one of the older men darts over, on a mission, begins wailing away on this harmonica right in the kid’s face. The black guy smiles politely.

“What’s the deal with the harmonica?” I ask Devin, after they leave.

He rolls his eyes and says, “they do that every time they’re here, especially if there’s a child around. It’s so ridiculous.”

For the next few minutes, I’m laughing so hard my eyes tear up and I can’t see straight.

Lunch is China Market. These places are interchangeable in name, menu, taste, you name it. Lady seems suspicious, too, when I ask for employee discount, and even then only knocks 50 cents off an order of $6.75 – broccoli chicken and fried rice (75 cents extra for that instead of the steamed). I only order the egg roll after she’s given me the 50 cent discount, and it’s 75 cents more, no discount. Food average, egg roll maybe less so but somehow the fried rice is awesome – not sure how, as it’s pretty much always the same everywhere else. Still, I doubt I’ll be back. Rainy day thus far.

October 17

Alex cracking me up – talking about how for dinner last night his grandma (Pat) made pork chops: no seasoning whatsoever, she just threw them in a pan; and then they weren’t even cooked all the way through; and then she collected them all in a pile and poured water on them, called this “gravy.” He had one bite, told her he wasn’t really all that into pork. That woman is a complete lunatic.

October 27

Pat is in at 3 to close with me. She immediately wraps the bowls in plastic and then plops down in a chair, evidently considering it a job well done and determined to mail in her performance from here.

October 31

I overhear Alex talking on the phone with Bob: “have you ever met any of Devin’s friends? They’re the biggest dorks I’ve ever seen, it ‘s actually almost sad…they’re almost as bad as Devin.”

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