Sometimes, even I am amazed at the lengths I’ll go to pay for film studies courses. After a month of being rejected by places like Sunglasses Hut and the Sears Portrait Studio (why won’t you return my phone calls?), the last place to turn was a sunny, family-owned Greek deli in the Burlington Waterfront Area. It would be the worst decision of my entire career.

I was attracted to Benny’s because the wacky Greek family that owned it reminded me of my own. I know now that is probably never a good sign. My job interview featured the two co-owners, Maestros and Nick, serenading me with tunes of their homeland, the blonde, apple-cheeked matriarch making me a cappuccino, and the added attraction of the two hunky Greek sons, so blonde and well-muscled they were like my own personal Adonises.

As I looked around at the framed posters of Olympus Island, the big hunks of corned beef rotating on a spit, and the smiling senior citizens chomping down on smoked meat sandwiches on rye, I felt a sense of belonging. “You’d better watch out, or you might become one of the family,” my father joked. That was a risk I was willing to take.

I arrived at the deli at 8:00 the next morning. Already, the place was in chaos, with senior citizens holding out their walkers threateningly and demanding extra peameal bacon. I had barely enough time to slurp down a glass of water (what, no cappuccinos?) before the onslaught of angry demands began.

“Chandelier!” Maestros and Nick would cry out in their demonic voices. Off I would go, carting heavy, boiling hot stacks of dinner plates coated with ketchup, fried eggs, and every so often, false teeth.

My arms straining under the load, while trying to dodge the pissed-off owners who were no longer singing but making cracks about my ketchup-stained Ramones t-shirt and delusions of grandeur (“Such a stupid girl! Thinks she’s a writer! Wash those plates again, Chandelier!”), I thought to myself: if only I hadn’t blown that job interview at the Gap by talking about Marxist theory.

I came to Benny’s from a cushy corporate background at Blockbuster Video. At Blockbuster we had things like uniforms, rules and regulations, human resources. If we couldn’t make a shift, we could try to switch it with a co-worker. Imagine my surprise when I called up Benny’s to try to change my 8-2 p.m. with another lost soul who worked there.

“Is Shannon there?” I asked Maestros. “There is no Shannon,” he replied. “Oh?” I said.

“Shannon wanted too many days off,” he replied menacingly. “And if you take too many days off, we will do to you what we did to Shannon. Goodbye, Chandelier.”

I told myself that if I could last a week, which seemed incredulous at the time, I would be the strongest person in the world. I ended up lasting the whole summer, cutting up pickles the size of watermelons and serving plates of moussaka to creepy elderly dudes who would ogle my stained jeans and kiss my grease-slicked palms.

Sometimes I’d have fantasies of running out with the pictures of Olympus Island and never looking back. But I actually felt worse for the sons. They were stuck working at the deli every summer and hated it even more than I did. Plus, these were their relatives.

While I have vowed to rise above my bad experience at Benny’s so-called “Famous Deli,” I will never forgive Maestros and his clan. $10 in tips isn’t worth the abuse-and neither was the 15 per cent discount on souvlaki.