I interviewed Josh, or "the cute Fox Den guy" as he is more commonly known, on his last day of work at Sidwell. Throughout our interview he smiled and waved at passing students and adults, stopping to chat with many of them.
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| Josh outside the Fox Den |
“My name is Josh and I work at the Fox Den. I’m Mamadou’s assistant.
I grew up in Los Angeles- Hey Sundberg- and I went to high school at Campbell Hall, it’s a private episcopal school. I’m going to American University right now. I found this job on the job board site at American and from there, just came here. Six months. I just kinda wanted to have something to do when I wasn’t in class, and I didn’t expect it to be this easy, to be honest. Mamdou’s the coolest guy in the world, and Shaun’s a great guy. And Donna, who runs the store, is the nicest lady possible. I really expected it to be a lot worse, but everyone’s so nice.
My first job was at a coffee shop back home, like a small local shop, and it was kind of bad just because people were really snobby about their coffee. It was a lot more smug in that area. But I kind of expected that because I lived in Los Angeles.
To be honest I
don’t really like that much about [living in DC]. I’m transferring next year to
Oregon, just to be a little closer to home, and it’s a lot cheaper, stuff like
that. I mean obviously everyone likes being around the historical monuments and
stuff, and that’s cool for a while, but I think it’d be more of a tourist city
for me than a place to live. I wasn’t used to the weather, so that made it a
little bit of a difficult transition.
It’s actually really werid [to work at a high school]. I’m only two years out of high school, I’m a sophomore at AU, and it’s really weird, cause it’s like ‘I was here two years ago!’ And everyone thinks you’re really old. It’s like ‘wow. these kids were born in like ’95 or like ’96.’ It’s weird because I have friends back home who were in tenth grade when I was in twelfth grade, and that’s your year. It’s just weird. I have to walk a very fine line between being an employee here and being like…a kid. I’m still a kid, a little bit… twenties… you’re not officially an adult yet. That’s part of why [this job’s] so easy. It’s just talking to kids you can relatively relate to.
Everyone has a point where they kind of fall out of [high school]. Like I loved it up until like twelfth grade, and then I was like uhhhh get me out of here.
Some girls come over. One says “Josh! It’s your last day?”
“it’s my last day”
“that’s very upsetting”
He gestures at me. “I’m doing an
interview project”
“How… useful.”
“How usef- stop!
Stop being so mean! I have one more day here and you’re just so mean all the
time”
She turns to me. “We greatly appreciate
him.”
I ask them if they want to say nice things
about Josh for the interview. They all say yes enthusiastically.
“He makes really great chai lattes. And if
there’s extra smoothie, he’ll give it to you if you ask.”
“He’s a good Fox Den worker. He’s always
working hard.”
He smiles. “Don’t push it…”
“I mean occasionally he just sits down and
takes a few hours off…”
“There’s always good music in the Fox Den.”
“I switch off
being DJ with Mamadou. He listens to crazy music… recently he’s been into Elton
John Lion King. He did mariachi a couple days ago.”
The girls wave and walk into the Fox Den.
"Honestly I think I’m at that point where I have to start formulating a real idea of what I want to do. I only have two years of undergraduate left, and then I have to decide if I want to go to grad school, go right into a job. But at this point, I think I have a couple things. I’m in business administration, so it’s heading in that direction but you could do a lot of things with business administration. You could go into law, you could go into management… but those all seem a little dry. So at this point, I’m just gonna do the best I can to get through the next two years of school."
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