Counter culture: A different kind of all-nighter at the Wa

After making a quick joke, Tyrone rushes to stack newspapers before the Saturday night crowd swarms the registers with hoagies and Bolis. John restocks his counter, empties the twenties from his drawer and files credit receipts.

And as customers begin to pour in, Brian chuckles over news briefs in The New York Times — two boys arrested for planning to reenact the Columbine school shooting on its first anniversary and a journalist sentenced to prison for trading child pornography. "Everyone in the world is crazy," he says as product scanners beep to the beat of the Muzak blaring overhead.

To many students, these people behind the counter are just faces that stream by in a drunken escapade fondly known as the "Wa run" — faces that blur during coffee-fueled all-nighters in front of computer screens.

Many students nickname Wa employees based on these limited interactions — the Wa pro, straw hat, the matronly old woman, the sarcastic Wa guy, the girl with the hair. But after a closer look behind the scenes at the Wa, these characters develop beyond their labels in situations sometimes serious and often humorous.

Just before midnight on a Saturday, a group of rowdy teens sporting Princeton High School jackets yell across the store and pester other customers. Tyrone sternly warns them to shut their mouths unless they want to be "thrown out of the store."

The store is packed from 11 p.m. until midnight, forcing employees to greet customers, bag food, take money and give change like robots.

But as the rush ends and lines shrink, the volume quiets from cacophony to just the soothing drips of brewing coffee. Tyrone sighs with relief, wipes the sweat from his brow and says that the worst is still hours away. He and John try to predict when the real rush will come and how bad it will be. Tyrone is worried, but John reassures him that the rain will likely scare off many potential party-goers.

At 3:30 a.m., the Sunday newspapers arrive, and in 30 minutes the lady at the deli station will leave, cutting the night crew down to three. Tyrone scrambles to insert sections into neatly folded stacks of newspapers, hoping the rush will be small and die quickly.

A surge in business around 4 a.m. vanishes a half-hour later and customers are scarce. The rush — which tonight was only a flash in the pan according to the Wa staff — is over, and Tyrone has time to joke some more.

"I'm losing all control," he says to John. "Now you're predicting things."

But at 5:30 a.m., Tyrone's panic returns and he circles the store, straightening up messes and misplaced items. He tells employees to start cleaning up behind the counter. The general manager will be in any moment.

Sure enough, a few minutes later, the man-in-charge swiftly walks through the doors and drops his briefcase in the office. With glasses, a receding hairline and a stern look on his face, he is the quintessential manager.

Upon his arrival, the midnight fun ends. The manager tells employees to sweep the floor, restock the plastic forks and change the garbage bags. He rushes to return candy bars and boxes to their rightful places. Everything must be perfect before he can let down his guard.

But when all the shelves are stocked and the floors nearly sparkle, the manager drops his businesslike tone and buys a box of Entenmann's donuts to share with the crew.

The manager's entrance signifies the shift from the midnight crew to the morning crew. One set of Wa workers prepares sizzlis and brews coffee, as another heads home.

A new day

The next night, Brian talks about his favorite writers. He shifts mid-sentence from Goethe to Joyce to Hesse. A few seconds later, he jokingly asks a customer — who requested a pack of Newport Lights — "Trying to quit?"

Though he is young himself, Brian reveals a strong contempt for Princetonians. "I find Princeton students just humorous in general," he says. "I love the ones that boast about their accomplishments all the time. And then there's the ones who buy a pack of Nerds and pay with a credit card."

Brian picks up an empty Boli box from the back of the store and hurls it into the trash, exclaiming "These are your Princeton students!"

Correction: Due to a reporting error, an earlier version of this article misspelled the last name of the writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. The 'Prince' regrets the error.