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Family dinner via FaceTime

May 7th, 2019  |  Published in New York Sits Down to Dinner 2019, Uncategorized

Marcos Herrera shows off crates of live lobsters at the Lobster Place Wholesale warehouse. Photo: Maura Whang.

In silence, a man in a blue Yankee fitted cap sits attentively at his desk scrolling through emails, his hand ready to pounce in case the phone should ring.  The amber glow of the setting sun through the open windows behind him accentuates his cherubic features and stocky figure, which has been filled-out by a durable-looking navy cotton duck vest, the words “Lobster Place” emblazoned in red over his heart. There is only one other person working in the open-cubicled floor sitting opposite, also checking his email.  The two men exchange a few pleasantries, and quiet pervades once again.  A jumbo-sized digital clock with lucent neon numbers mounted on the wall counts the passing seconds.  A miniature golf set is laid out in a corner, two putters ready for action they won’t see that night.

A cell phone suddenly vibrates on the man’s desk.  Marcos Herrera looks up.  His wife, Ruby Morales, and seven-year-old son have just texted what’s on the table at home for dinner.  To Herrera’s right sits a white plastic deli bag that contains his own dinner, a store-bought chicken parmesan sandwich, to be eaten at his desk a few hours later.

It’s Tuesday at 6 p.m. in Hunts Point in the Bronx, at the Lobster Place Wholesale office, where Herrera, 30, has been a nighttime Customer Service Representative since 2017, fielding calls and emails from clients placing orders for the following day.  He’s worked for the company on and off since 2005, in customer service and as a fish butcher.  Joe Cooper, lead sales executive for the company, says that’s not unusual: it’s a close-knit company.  It doesn’t hurt that they offer employees a twenty-percent discount on all seafood, which Herrera takes advantage of. 

Although Herrera’s schedule, Monday through Friday, 3 p.m. to 12 a.m., precludes him from having dinner with his real family during the week, it hasn’t stopped them from sharing the experience; Herrera will usually FaceTime with his family for 20 minutes while they eat.  Their weekend meals, together, are that much more special, whether seafood is involved or not.  Herrera never tires of it—but Morales avoided it until she met her husband. 

“I hated absolutely everything about it, the smell, the taste,” Morales recalls, “I guess you can say he taught me how to eat it.”  Her best dish?  “Orange glazed chipotle salmon with quinoa and oven-roasted asparagus,” Herrera decides. 

Marcos Herrera’s desk at the Lobster Place Wholesale office. Photo: Maura Whang.

Herrera was born in Puebla City, Mexico in 1988, the youngest of five children whose parents moved the family to Brighton Beach, Brooklyn in 1994.  In 2001 Herrera returned to Puebla City with his parents, but in 2005, harboring an itch to go back to school, and a dream to make his own way, he moved back to Brighton Beach, alone, and started working at the Lobster Place in Chelsea Market on a tip from his ex-brother-in-law.  Unhappy on the retail floor, Herrera took a job in 2008 at the Fairway Market on 74th and Broadway for six months where his knowledge of seafood and butchering grew, and a year later returned to the Lobster Place as a butcher at their Hunts Point wholesale division, which operated around the clock.  Herrera’s shift was 6 a.m. to 2 p.m.

The commute from Brighton was an hour and a half, but the plus side of butchering was that Herrera could leave for “lunch” around 9:15 a.m., often picking something up at one of a number of neighborhood spots, including Tolte’s, a now-closed Mexican deli on Lafayette Avenue run by a couple from Toltecamila, one of Puebla’s smaller cities.  The couple’s niece, Morales, 27, who was born and raised in the Bronx, worked shifts at the deli between classes, and Herrera found himself making the walk to Tolte’s more often than not, and earlier than he was hungry, to catch her before she left. 

Morales’ schedule was more flexible but as grueling as Herrera’s, because she took travel and hospitality business classes in addition to her job.  But Herrera and Morales both had Sundays off and after six months realized they were a couple.  In 2012 their son was born and they were married in 2016, soon moving to an apartment that is a 20-minute walk from the Lobster Place.

Marcos Herrera slicing salmon in March 2016, when he was still a fish butcher for the Lobster Place. Photo: Courtesy of Marcos Herrera.

Spotting a good opportunity, Herrera transferred within the company to his current position in 2017.  Cooper notes how much pride Herrera takes in his work, and has witnessed him grow both personally and professionally, despite the toll of working late and solitary hours.  When Cooper leaves at 5 p.m., the only person still in the office is Herrera until the second customer service representative, Ibraahiym Bernard, 31, arrives for his even-later graveyard shift. 

Morales now works the breakfast shift at Fresco by Scotto on the Upper West Side.  She’s still taking classes and will get an associate’s degree in business administration management this May from Bronx Community College. 

While Herrera misses the hands-on work of being a butcher, he and Morales have time on the weekends to explore new recipes, often with seafood brought from work.  Herrera particularly loves to prepare “drunken mussels” in white wine, garlic, butter, and parsley, or fresh oysters with mango, salt, pepper, and hot sauce, while Morales has grown to love grilled salmon and lobster. 

When pressed on what he’d like to study, Herrera’s eyes light up and he concedes he wants to learn to cook professionally.  But for now, he’s content to support Morales and bring his son to school in the mornings, despite how late he gets home.  He knows it won’t always be like this.  “I’m letting life happen; a lot can happen in a year,” Herrera said. 

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