Mac’s is big on Cape Cod
Jeremy Hobson: For many Americans, today is as much about food as it is about labor. So let’s go next to Cape Cod, Mass., and a place Called Mac’s Seafood that’s been serving up eats to hungry beach-goers since 1995. A few years back, we stopped by to talk to one of the servers and as you’ll hear in this
special Labor Day rebroadcast, she says the whole place really cooks.
Anna Hay: With everything from the kitchen, it gets really hot. It’s a lot hotter back there because we have our windows and we get a really nice breeze since we’re right on the bay. But it gets pretty hot.
My name is Anna Hay and I work for Mac’s Seafood on the pier in Wellfleet on Cape Cod, Mass. Job title: not really. I guess expediter, but yeah.
We have two people who take orders and then I’ll either be getting the food from the kitchen or I get it from someone who gets it from the kitchen. We do soups and drinks here. So we always have clam chowder and lobster bisque and today our soup special is something that I can’t actually say, but it’s like a chicken soup — something really ridiculous, I can’t really say. And then we send out the food to customers.
So I guess if you wanted to explain the restaurant part, it’s definitely a clam shack with more than just shack food.
These are oysters, Wellfleet oysters. It’s what Wellfleet is really famous for — for shellfish.
My cousins Mac and Alex Hay own Mac’s Seafood and they started it a long time ago. And then about — let’s see — five years ago, I started coming up here for the summers to work with them. And then I just graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Next year I’m going to be a 10th grade English teacher at a boarding school in New Jersey.
Yes, going from handing out orders to teaching 10th grade English is definitely a big step. I like to work here because I enjoy helping family and I like the people that I work with, but we don’t always have enjoyable customers. I had a woman recently who was reading the menu wrong and she insisted that I was reading the menu wrong. And she pointedly told me that she wanted me to realize that I was wrong — in my face, that I was wrong. I had to walk away because I would never be rude to a customer, but there’s a point where you cannot be any nicer or nice any longer.
We just always remember that the majority of people love their food and really do praise us for what we do. It’s fun to be up here. You can’t find a more beautiful place than the cape. That’s the great thing about teaching, I can come back every summer.
Hobson: Our thanks to Sean Cole for help with that story.
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