soda jerk

soda jerk

dated An attendant at a drug store who would prepare and serve flavored carbonated beverages ("sodas"). The "jerk" part of the phrase is a pun on "clerk," and the jerking motion of the soda fountain spigots while pouring. Popular in the lead up to the 1940s–'50s, when drugstores sold food and drinks from behind a counter. Back when I was your age, I had to work as a soda jerk every day of the week in order to afford my first car. The retro-themed café even had a section meant to resemble an old-timey drugstore, complete with a soda jerk and soda fountain!
See also: jerk, soda
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.

soda jerk

Drug store counterman. Those of us old enough to remember when pharmacies sold nothing but medicine and medications, magazines and comic books, candy, and soda fountain treats, a man behind the zinc-and-marble counter made and dispensed sodas, frappes, milkshakes, malteds, and other ice cream–based concoctions, as well as banana splits, Cokes, lime rickeys, and dozens of other refreshments. He was the soda jerk, the name coming from the fountain dispensers with handles that he jerked down to pour seltzer and other soft drinks. For some unclear reason, women weren't soda jerks.
See also: jerk, soda
Endangered Phrases by Steven D. Price
See also:
  • I should have stood in bed
  • I shoulda stood in bed
  • should have stood in bed
  • should have stood in bed, I
  • shake the pagoda tree
  • May the Fourth be with you
  • wheel estate
  • couldn't catch a cold
  • devil looks after his own
  • play on words
References in periodicals archive
Recent additions to the menu include malts and shakes, and just this year Alaskan Soda Jerk added scoops, sundaes, and banana splits, all of which are made with Alaska-made ice cream.
While 150,000 soda jerks won't solve our jobs problem, being a soda jerk is a lot more fun than being a barista at Starbucks or flipping fries at McDonalds.
For the next forty-some years he covered the local scene: He took pictures of steel workers, Negro League baseball players, and neighborhood kids; he made portraits of a coal miner, a female disc jockey, a soda jerk, and a policeman; he photographed visiting leaders like John F.
During this era a Walgreens soda jerk has been credited with the creation of the milk shake.
Not only does Rockwell accomplish this with technical proficiency, but he employs the idiosyncratic invention of the 18th-century French practice of "inserting a surrogate beholder into narrative pictures--a character within the painting's space whose response to the action we may take as a cue to our own responses and through whose eyes we are presumed to see the scene portrayed in its optimum configuration." Hickey points out, "This device is employed as a naughty joke in Jean-Honore Fragonard's The Swing, where the surrogate beholder has a revealing view of the young lady in the swing that is not available to us." He draws the parallel to the revealing view enjoyed by the soda jerk in After the Prom.
In it, a boy in a white dinner jacket perches on a stool at a drugstore soda fountain and looks on proudly as his date on the next stool, a blonde girl in a white formal dress, lets the soda jerk smell the fragrance of her gardenia corsage, while another customer, apparently a workingman and war veteran, glances over and smiles.
Later the family opened a combination pool hall-restaurant, so young John's experiences included working as a soda jerk. Education was local, too: Illinois State in next-door Normal.
"As a college student, I was a soda jerk at a drugstore in New York City at 42nd and Eighth Street.
A voice within will whisper that the former soda jerk from Dawson's Drug Store does not really belong.
In the shop, a male mannequin served as soda jerk. The display was up three to four weeks, and increased sales of the featured items by 15% to 20%.
He was born in South Worcester, the son of Edward and Mary (Cove) Lee, and there met his future wife at the corner pharmacy; he was the soda jerk and she the daughter of the future Chief of Police.
My first real job, however, was at Burnham's drugstore working as a cashier and 'soda jerk.'"
I was a soda jerk behind a fountain, making and serving shakes and hamburgers.
Our bass player, Jon, was in (the punk bands) Soda Jerk and Bicker.
After kicking around the area as a drugstore soda jerk and an amusement park waitress, Lucy moved back to New York City where she became a model for Hattie Carnegie, an internationally famous dress designer.