1. Title: The Novack Lady
2. Informant Information
David Herrera is a biology and economics double major, French minor, and a sophomore at Dartmouth College. For that reason, he visits Novack Café quite often to get a quick meal to go. He also recently became a brother at Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity.
3. Type of Lore (Genre and Sub-genre): Legend, Legendary Figure
4. Language: English
5. Country of Origin: Hanover, New Hampshire, United States
6. Social/Cultural Context:
Among students, Novack Café has the reputation of being the fast and easy way to get DDS food during the day. But, there is a tradeoff between Novack being fast and easy; it is often not the most enjoyable experience and also not the best food (if not the worst on campus). This unpleasant experience is largely due to someone that the student body calls the “Novack Lady”.
7. Associated File: N/A
8. Transcript:
“She’s remarkably impatient and probably one of the meanest people I’ve ever met. If you’ve ever been to Novack and you’re there trying to get food, you better know what you want or else you’ll get some attitude haha. If you’ve seen Seinfeld – she’s like the soup Nazi. She’ll hop you in line if she’s just not feeling it. She’s all over social media for that reason; people tend to complain anonymously about her. I mean come on, I know I have, it’s pretty easy. I tend to avoid getting Novack in the mornings purely for the reason of not encountering her; I don’t want a rude awakening. She’s all about efficiency, and if you don’t know what you want, you get treated quite brusquely.”
9. Informant’s Comments:
David said that he interpreted this type of folklore as one that reflects, simply, the stress of the student body; “I think people hate her so much and why she doesn’t like us is because we, since we go to an ivy league school and have to work very hard pretty much all the time, we are always in a hurry or always stressed out. For that reason, when we sometimes get bossy or try to move fast through Novack, like I’ve seen so many people do this and even I do sometimes, we just tend to enforce ourselves and get pretty frustrated if they don’t hear our order the first time we say it. As a result, she inevitably gets mad and tends to enforce herself over us…”
10. Collector’s Comments:
My interpretation of this folklore actually agrees with David’s. Like the legend of Old Man Foco, this folklore serves to extend and highlight similar characteristics of the student body. In this sense, it helps to illuminate the “identity” of Dartmouth Students.
11. Tags/Keywords: Dartmouth Dining, Novack Café