Can I take your odor?

Sorry for the delay in new posts, dear reader. I have been unwell due to the unrelenting assault on my sinuses. You may assume, logically, that I'm referring to pollen. Nope. Pollen is a natural part of our world, a nuisance to be sure, but something your senses can cope with. I'm talking about people. Smelly, smelly people. Old ladies specifically. For some reason I seem to be the preferred server for dried up old widows that have marinated in Sweet Honesty perfume their entire lives. I have the nose of a bloodhound and this is my personal Hell. I'm not a princess type- I can handle skunk spray, dead possums and Port-a-Potties cooking in the summer sun. But I would rather breathe in the crusty fallout wafting from the patchouli scented dreadlocks of a whole horde of Umphreys McGee fans than endure one more woman that smells like the entire staff of the Moonlight Bunny Ranch. One thing you will notice about these old biddies is that they are never accompanied by men. FACT. They are always eating with other women, usually other not quite as old ladies who are mysteriously immune to their +5 crippling eau de parfum attack. How, you may ask? It's simple: just like in the horror stories vampires always have a Renfield, a human that does their bidding but is unaffected by their creepy magic, these fragrant she-ghouls have human sidekicks. They are apprentices who have sold their souls to Mary Kay in order to learn the Dark Secrets of the Sisterhood. I have noticed that the Smelly Ones always eat very little, usually soup and a whole mess of crackers. That's because they don't get their sustenance from food. They get it from the bodies of their many dead husbands, whose dessicated carcasses swing  lazily from the rafters in the attic amongst  piles of old  romance novels and dusty Nativity ornaments.

Don't forget the crackers.

Why we drink

 66YWA3RSBXXX

Completely drained by a Kids Eat Free dinner shift, I only have the energy to relay an actual conversation with a table this evening:

A family of nine, Ma, Pa, Grandpa, Auntie and a passel of young 'uns which included a little girl around 4 years old that was a ruddy little butterball ordering dinner. After a starter of cheese fries each of them ordered fried chicken and substituted their vegetables for a double helping of cheese fries with extra ranch dressing. It was at this time that I began to suspect the cause of their collective obesity...

Grandpa decides he wants fajitas, to the clan's consternation.

Me: "How do you feel about guacamole?"

Paw: "Huh what?"

Me: "Are you a fan of guacamole?"

Paw: "Naw."

Me: "Would you like something in place of guacamole, more pico de gallo or sour cream perhaps?"

Paw. "Jest give it to me normal."

Me: "It comes with sour cream, pico, mixed cheese and guacamole. If you don't like guacamole we will  double up on one of the other things. Which of them would you like?"

Paw: "Jest make it like it comes."

Me: "I need you to tell me what you would like it to come with."

Paw: "I want it normal. Do it like normal."

Me: "It is up to you, sir to determine what normal is. What. Would. You. Like. With. Your. Fajita?"

Paw looks around the table at his slack jawed kin. He is beginning to regret deviating from the fried chicken option. "I want it like how you make it."

This goes on for some time until I am forced to make an executive decision: "You appear to be big  fans of cheese. How about cheese? A lot of cheese?"

It turned out he didn't want "none of that other stuff" after all.

Valentine's Day is rubbish

Too soon?

It's that time of year again, gentle readers when I go on my perpetual Valentine's Day rant. For those of you currently in the throes of a dizzy romance, just read on and shake your head at how jaded I am. Then come back to it in about a year and a half. That's right. Because romance is rubbish and Valentine's Day is the high holy day of nauseating delusion and of course, marketing. If the jewelry store ads were honest they would say "Compensate your wife for putting up with you for another year! A tennis bracelet is cheaper than divorce!"
Or perhaps, "Get a necklace for your girlfriend this Valentine's Day and she may go down on you! Sure it would be cheaper and more of a sure thing to go to the Happy Fortunes Health Spa but that will make you feel dirty inside."

That's the ugly truth. Not that Ugly Truth. Even the presence of Gerard Butler couldn't persuade me to endure that movie, yet another comedy that uses irreverent 'guy humour' and sex as the bait on a barbed hook of what is obviously a chick flick. However, the picture says it all. The truth is that love, that breathless, passionate whirlwind that feels like a family of chipmunks in your gut, that kind of love is a myth. What?! Yes indeed. As far as Mother Nature is concerned, we are meat puppets she moves around with hormones in order to ensure a constant supply of  more little meat puppets and so on. Eventually she will probably change her game plan in light of how messy we have made the place but for now it's the mating game all the way. And the chief puppet string in all this is oxytocin. It's this hormone that makes us go on the crazy love bender. It engenders feelings of elation and suppresses cortisol, the stress hormone that we restaurant people are junkies for. It makes us feel safe and all tingly inside. It makes us feel in love. What produces oxytocin, you may ask. Well let's just say there's a lot of it going around at the Happy Fortunes Health Spa. Blowjobs. Yep. And all that good stuff. Orgasms are nothing but oxytocin generators and when you're trippin' on that stuff you feel just like Bella in a meadow with Edward, frozen in a moment of endless adoration. But, like sparkly vegetarian emo vampires, this feeling is fictional.

"How could this EVER get old?"

 Of course it feels authentic while you're experiencing it. The Flower Children in the '60's really believed the Age of Aquarius was upon us and the Nuwabians believe in the Spell of Kingu. Seriously, Google it. The point is that the use of drugs persist in our society because they work. Love is just another of these chemical compounds. It looks like this:

Mmmm.That's good lovin'.

"Do you do anything special for birthdays?"

What did we used to do to celebrate birthdays before our culture became a giant satire of itself? Perhaps in the old days when we all owned one pair of shoes that we only wore to church and walked around barefoot the rest of the time the birthday was something that passed without much incident, or maybe we would get a reprieve from having to milk the cow. If we were among the elite we may have a ball thrown in our honour and a boar would be roasted, musicians assembled while we minuet the night away like some Jane Austen story, ladies gathered around the Waterford crystal punchbowl giggling elegantly. Oh, and we would give the peasants the day off.

And what about now, in modern times? How do we commemorate the anniversary of the birth of our friends and family? If we really want to show them the depth of our esteem we will stop at a grocery store and get a cake off the shelf. It will be either yellow cake that tastes like freezer burn and plastic or chocolate cake that tastes like freezer burn and chicory. It will be frosted with stuff that came from a bag of powder that was re hydrated and coloured with food dyes that have been banned in most European countries (what do they know about science, stupid Europeans) and tastes like cotton candy and methamphetamine. If you're lucky you will be able to get the lady in the bakery to personalise it for you. If you're really lucky, none of her seething hatred about her subsistence wages and lack of a decent company insurance plan will be psychically telegraphed into the cake and curse you and all your friends that eat it. And don't forget the candles!

But there's something even worse than that paltry scenario.Yes, it's the restaurant birthday. That is the absolute nadir of the birthday repertoire, the lamest of the lame. These idiots get so excited about it and aren't ashamed to show it. When you go to greet a table and one of them gets that mischievous twinkle in their eye, you know what's coming. But just like a bad dream, you can't get away. "Do you do anything special for birthdays?" they enquire with a girlish giggle.

Here's what you want to say, what your soul is screaming to reply but like in the nightmare the words just won't come out:

 "Oh sure, we are forced, like literally forced to go and draft several other employees to drop what they're doing, no matter how busy and come over here to you, a party of complete strangers that we now despise to atonally and listlessly recite a trite and disingenuous litany that contains empty words of goodwill when in fact we would love nothing more than for all of you to drop dead right now."

"Great! Do you have cake?"  

Why would you want to broadcast to an entire restaurant of people the fact that you are such a pathetic friend/relative/spouse that you were too lazy to stop at the Wal Mart bakery and now have to demand a free slice of stale tasteless cake at a chain restaurant? You are making a spectacle of someone that tradition dictates you should be celebrating. It only makes sense if the birthday boy/girl is under ten years old, and if they are, that makes you an even bigger pile of shit for dragging them out for dinner when if you had any class you would throw them an actual party at home, or rent out the Champagne Room at Chuck E Cheese. Are we supposed to drag out a pony, all arrayed in equine finery for them to ride around the restaurant?

"It's a living."

 Perhaps some balloon animals

That is EXACTLY what it looks like

...or this guy?

"You have to sleep sometime!"

This video says it all:

I.F.H. MONDAY'S from Nick Swardson

Small children in restaurants

Have you ever been working a crazy shift where your cortisol levels were up there in Top Gun mode and you were balancing twelve theoretical plates on top of  twelve metaphorical sticks while walking a tightrope of hypothetical fire and you go to a table with a minute window in which to take their order, only to have everything skid to a screeching halt while some snotnosed child is given the opportunity to 'tell the nice lady/gentlemen what you want, honey'? Time slows down. Everything stops. You glance anxiously around at your 19 other tables that need drinks, their check, napkins, dessert, ice, more lemons for their ghetto lemonade and of course, more  ranch dressing. The clock is ticking and everyone's attention is directed to this kid, this little tyrant who won't take his eyes off his Gameboy (I'm calling them Gameboys forever, I don't care. DSi, DsLite, PsP whatever.They will always be Gameboys) and rather than stepping into the role of 'The Decider' the inept parent will make you wait, internally chronicling the 92 things you could be doing while this benumbed and distracted child mumbles something inaudible or giggles and bangs his head on the table. This is the sound of money going down the drain:
"What do you want to eat Billy?"

He'll have the mahi mahi

"*mumble mumble*"
"Do you want a corn dog?"
"Macaroni!"
"They don't have macaroni, honey."
"MACARONI!"
"Do you want pizza?"
"Macaroni pizza!"
"Get off the floor Billy. Do you want a burger?"
"I like Pokemon!"
"How about a burger? Get him a burger."
"I want ice cream.I want ice cream!Ice cream!"
Harried server: "It comes with one side item. Which would you like?"
"MACARONI!"
And so on.

When did adults decide that being in charge was too much hassle? Do these people let the kids decide what time they want to go to bed (never) and what they wear to school ( Darth Vader helmet and pajamas) or if they would rather go outside and play or stay in and play XBox (why play football when you can play Madden 11)? I hope not, but they actually might. A kid that still hides under the table at restaurants is not sophisticated enough to make dietary decisions for himself.

I blame Charles Dickens. Yup. Before his cornball little stories, children had a position on the social scale above farm animals but firmly beneath adults. Any adults, not just their parents. People had kids because they were organic sources of free labor who took care of you in your old age. They were quiet and respectful and were content with a cup and ball or a hoop. They got to run around and play until they were about eight years old before they were forced into a  life of hard labor that was mercifully cut short by diphtheria. Then Dickens laid a colossal guilt trip on everyone with that Christmas Carol and Little Nell business. Fast forward to 150 years later and the little bastards are running the show.This is a classic case of the lunatics taking over the asylum.

ranch tsunami

In the aftermath of a brutal double at the Fajita Factory, it occurs to me that my job would be infinitely easier if my uniform had the following upgrade:...

I'm only doing this until I finish my degree in comparative Armenian literature.

...except instead of shots of Red Headed Slut like in the picture it was a big ole' tank of ranch dressing. Seriously. Just about everything on our menu is just a vehicle for, or thing to dip in or slather ranch dressing on. Which is pretty gross just on principle but gets truly disgusting when you realize just how heart stoppingly unhealthy it actually is. 2 fluid ounces, a typical ramekin is an artery clogging 38% of your recommended daily fat intake, 20% of saturated fat and 15% of your daily sodium. That should make you want to go fondle a defibrillator right now. Hell, we should mount those on our backs just for good measure. Maybe we could work it into the hostesses' uniform. I was up until recently blissfully unaware just how nasty the ranch lovin' could get. It isn't uncommon for one person to ask for a small bowl of it with their battered and fried beast. 

I used to wonder where ranch dressing got its name, but now I believe that its called ranch because if you eat it all the time you become a hulking smelly herd creature like the cattle that live on...yes. You get it. Ranches.  Hey, for those long shifts you could strap on this number:

Who wants some?

I'm not saying the Satanic stuff doesn't taste good. You could toss a week old roadkilled possum in it and it would make it palatable but that is precisely why it is so evil. There are lots of things that are gratifying to the senses that are just plain wrong, for example unprotected sex with strangers. That sort of thing has become stigmatized because now we know about things like syphilis and other worse afflictions. Not that long ago it was commonplace for respectable gentlemen to frequent brothels. If you look into it, almost all of the Impressionist painters (except for Claude Monet, the lamb!)  had some venereal disease or another, probably from the same skanky hooker. But these days our fear of a slow and painful death has taken a lot of the glamor out of prostitution unless you're a governor or senator. Now that we know about dietary science it's time for ranch dressing to take its ride off into the sunset of history as well. You know it's gotten out of hand when they have these at weddings:

Yep. Exactly what it looks like.This couldn't be more pornographic if it was fountain of jizz.

the manifesto

This is my first announcement. I started this blog so my brothers and sisters can have a place of their own to kvetch, philosophize and share their experiences in this sordid business that pays our bills. I think of it as group therapy, and Gods know we need it. Gods, you say? That's right, because I don't care what religion you are (or aren't) what gender you are or are into or any of that. We are all in this together, a giant fraternity of intelligent individuals who for various reasons don't fit into the 9 to 5 workforce. It can be demeaning to wait on folks and the general lack of respect we endure doesn't help. Some people think they're better than us because we are servers. Some men confuse us females with their girlfriends because of their fucked up views on women, and somewhere there is a gnarly cougar hitting on a waiter young enough to be her son, and he's going along with it because he needs the money. Who is taking advantage of who in this scenario? The answer is: nobody. We all benefit from it, even though it can be less glamorous than sucking the shit out of a port-a-potty sometimes. This is not a place for angry rants. Ok, this is not a place just for angry rants. Those, while cathartic aren't productive. Let us try to learn from experience, and find ways to enjoy the waiting game.You don't have to be a server to relate to this. Retail wage slaves suffer the same kind of idiots as us and they don't even get tips to ease the pain. Just in case you've never seen the Twilight Zone episode that gave my blog its name, here ya go: