Wheelchair Full of Chocolate, Head Full of Strategy
For ten weeks I took the first step up the staircase I’d been dreaming about for two years since graduating college. Funny because after the first year post-grad, it’s typical small talk at a party to say “recent grad,” but that label disappears as soon as year two hits. You move on to new chapters of life. In that first year, I became known as the chocolate man, selling artisanal dark chocolate bars made in Madagascar to Whole Foods shoppers in the Lower East Side, Soho, Bryant Park, Upper East Side, Williamsburg, and Union Square. I’d call out to busy shoppers, “Come taste from Charley in the Chocolate Factory,” balancing chocolate bars in my wheelchair as people navigated the aisles.
I ran into some wild characters along the way. One guy pacing the aisles looked like he was on heroin. Another ultra-religious shopper tried convincing me that if I ate his special orange Tic Tacs I’d be healed from Duchenne and walking in two years. I was lucky the Tic Tac wasn’t laced and I didn’t end up chopped into pieces in a river somewhere. Balancing chocolate, vanilla, and specialty treats while navigating tight aisles and ramps tested every bit of focus and muscle I had. Each setup demanded effort, patience, and creativity. I memorized angles, folded tablecloths perfectly, asked strangers for help with setup and breakdown because my mobility made it necessary, and always carried my lemur mascot. Most people probably didn’t notice the work it took, but those hours taught me problem-solving, adaptability, and patience. I often joked I was like a delivery driver for chocolate, making sure each stop ran smoothly and nothing broke along or toppled over along the way.
Every day after work, I’d wheel through Union Square and hit up the fruit vendor outside Joe’s Pizza selling champagne mangos. His cart was piled high, leaning, chaotic, and he was no-nonsense, straight to the sale, tossing fruit into bags faster than you could blink. He became my daily mango guy, a tiny slice of order amid the chaos of the city, and a reminder that some skills transfer whether you’re selling chocolate or delivering work in an agency.
Then I shifted gears to agency life at Porter Novelli, working on a major pharmaceutical client. I was given a dozen internal projects and deliverables I could draft and refine using tracked changes with guidance from senior team members and quick Microsoft Teams calls. I didn’t join client meetings directly, but I did meet and take notes with journalists from USA Today, Essence, Reuters, and The Atlantic. That experience taught me how to communicate clearly, synthesize information quickly, and stay on my toes in a fast-paced environment.
Commuting home offered its own reminder of the chocolate-selling hustle. Walking through Chinatown, I passed street vendors hawking fruit, fakes of luxury goods, panhandlers, and homeless characters pacing the streets. The gritty, chaotic energy of New York City was a sharp contrast to the structured world inside the office. The juxtaposition of the two worlds was strange but lovely, a reminder that observation and improvisation skills I’d honed selling chocolate still mattered in agency life.
The interview stage for roles in health PR and communications follows a very similar rhythm and I am back at it once again. There’s a quick 15-minute recruiter call to start, followed by two separate Teams calls with different senior team members, and then an assignment if you’re lucky enough to make it through all the steps. Behind the scenes, fueled with a lot of coffee and networking conversations fill the gaps. Now that its my second time interviewing around, I’m sharper, more confident, and ready to crush conversations with real experience to talk about, showing that I can navigate the professional world with both poise and perspective.
Somewhere between chocolate, champagne mangos, and navigating Microsoft teams calls in a sharp button-down , I realized the journey is as much about people and observation as it is about the work itself. Each stop, each setup, each meeting built skills and stories I can carry forward, making the second time around not just easier, but smarter, sharper, and ready to roll.
