the bitter waiter

I heard that

OVERHEARD:

MOM: Honey, if you don't eat all your veggies, Santa Claus won't come.
LITTLE GIRL: Why not Mommy??
MOM: Because Santa wants us to be healthy!
LITTLE GIRL: Uh oh...Is that why you were crying the other night when you were drinking that bottle?  Because you knew Santa wouldn't come because you weren't being healthy?
(silence)

Whatever Mishka wants

An aspiring Persian actress and her hairy sugar daddy recently sat themselves in my section late one night as I was desperately trying to leave, and with a slew of incompetent new hires manning the rest of the floor, there was no way I could transfer the table and skidaddle.

I approached with reflexive flared nostrils as her scent violated my space.  I can only describe her perfume as a blend of cotton candy, pine cones, and sweet ham.  I was about to ralph all over their table when her bleached blonde hair and Crayola make-up went straight for my eyes.  This woman was attacking all my senses, and I hadn't even said "Hello" yet.

"I vant blush wine on rocks," she pouted.

"And you?" I asked her date, Magilla Gorilla.

"I vant vodka energy," he said in a monotone.

"Come again?" I asked.

"Vodka.  Energy drink," Magilla clarified.

"We don't have energy drinks," I said.

"Then how about you go to CVS next door and buy one?"

Then how about I wake up tomorrow with the voice of Aretha Franklin, the looks of Brad Pitt, the money of Donald Trump, and the nine lives of Lindsay Lohan?  Because all of those are far more probable than me so much as dabbing the sweat off my brow to put out a fire engulfing you, let alone going to a drug store to fetch you a Red Bull.

"Not gonna happen," I said while looking at myself in a non-existent mirror.  "But you're more than welcome to order vodka on the rocks and mosey on over to the store yourself." 

"I just do vodka cranberry," Magilla told me in a victorious tone.  He showed me.

"Ehhhhhh," Mishka whined.

"Vat wrong?" Magilla asked.

"It cold in here," she pouted, again.

Before I could receive yet another order from his highness, I high-tailed it to the bar for a vodka & cranberry, as well as their drinks.

When I returned, I overheard Magilla's pep talk.

"Tomorrow we just call Varner Brothers and say 'Hey you got to see this girl, she about to be really big, let her come do audition."

Just imagine how Warner Brothers will respond swiftly to such an appeal to logic!  I can hear her heartfelt Oscar acceptance speech now - "Ehhhhh, Kodak Theater really cold."

She gave me a pouty look as I made it clear I was stifling a laugh.  I would have given one of you, dear readers, in exchange for a chance to watch her do audition. 

"Are you two ready to order?" I asked.

"She and I need low-fat, she need to look good for headshot," he informed me as she was licking the salt off a handful of tortilla chips.

"I'd recommend a salad then," I replied.

"I don't VANT salad," she said as chip fragments lingered in her upper lip hair.

"Bay-bee," he cooed. "Tink of how good being actress vill taste!"

"Ehhhhhh," she whined.

She eventually got her way, and before I could say "Razzie," she was smacking her lips on a plate of nachos and a fried pepper filled with cheese and sour cream.

They proceeded to order several more rounds of drinks until I returned to find her a blubbering mess, sobbing inarticulately on his shoulder.  He was also drunk and speaking equally unintelligibly.  He motioned for the bill.

He paid in cash and did not wait for change, which meant I got a 40 percent tip. 

However, the next day he called the restaurant because he was pretty sure he didn't get any change.  But...I had no clue what he was talking about?  You see, per what I told management, he was so drunk that I actually had to pay some of his tab out of my own pocket.  I went about my shift, little angel that I am.

For you see, I don't need an enabling ape or a bizarre studio pipe dream to pull off a convincing performance...

 

Aunt Pookie

You know that rotund, effervescently cheery lady who everyone loves and adores?  The one who's always quick with a picture of her grandchildren or an ear-to-ear grin any time she tells an anecdote about her fascinating life, as everyone around listens with rapt attention?

Yeah, I want to slap that woman, because I see through her carefully calculated visage.  Others find her kind and bubbly; I find her fake and cloying.  She knows that sweet old ladies get away with everything, so she puts on the Mrs. Claus front and everyone else is shamed into adoring her by her passive aggressive pleas for attention.

"Oh, you know, I'm still looking forward to Christmas even though my kids never come back to L.A., and when they do, they never take me out to dinner."

"Honey I would leave you a huge tip if I could, but with my possible Arthritis I just haven't been able to work in awhile."

"Oh, this doesn't come with guacamole? I was sure betting on some guacamole.  But when I think of all those poor homeless people who don't have anything it makes me smile just to have a meal in front of me!!!"

I call her Aunt Pookie.  Each week she comes in with that bright-eyed smile, expecting trumpets to blare and red carpets to be rolled out, as if the sole highlight of our lives is seeing her and smelling her Ricola breath.

"I just thought I'd stop by," she beams, allowing a good 30 seconds for applause as if she's the special guest star who just stepped on stage at a live-studio-audience sit-com.

For years I have been fortunate enough to avoid waiting on her.  Until earlier this week.  I greeted her, determined to show that I was unphased by her phony baloney. 

"Well hi handsome," she started.

Appeal to my vanity.  You're good... 

"Hi there," I replied with minimal warmth.  "May I bring you anything to drink?"

"Oh I just hate to be difficult," she said with as much sincerity as Lindsay Lohan on her first day of rehab.  "But last time I was here, the manger - God bless her - said she'd buy me a drink because the kitchen workers - God bless them - accidentally mixed up my order.  I told her no, but she insisted." 

She smiled, then giggled.

"What would you like?" I replied.

"It won't be any trouble to get the drink, will it?" she asked, perhaps annoyed that I wasn't sitting at her side with a cup of cocoa, ready to enable her tedious anecdotes. 

"Nope," I said.  "What would you care for?"

"Oh I feel like I'm troubling you," she said.

I went from indifferent to annoyed.

"My job entails bringing people food and drinks," I responded.  "Those facets are certainly not the most annoying part of my job."

"Oh good," she said as if I'd caved and showered her with praises.  "Because I'd just LOVE a top shelf peach margarita, and let's have some fun and make it a double.  Doesn't that sound lovely??" she giggled again.

"I wouldn't know," I replied.  "I don't drink."

"You know my first husband was an alcoholic," she said without missing a beat.  "Yep.  He sure was.  That's what killed him.  It was so, so?  Tough on me?  The anger, the loneliness?  But then I said, 'Sheila, it wasn't about you.'  So I read up on alcoholism.  It's a serious disease.  I think it's wonderful that you don't drink."

I could have further used my little lie to make her feel stupid.  I could have claimed Gastritis or that alcohol killed a loved one and made it clear I wasn't an alcoholic.  But whatever I said, I knew she'd find a way to spin it into another pity party for Pookie, so I refrained.

"So, a double peach margarita?" I repeated.

"Top shelf..." she said, a small amount of her chipper demeanor fading as she realized I wasn't having it.

I returned with the drink. 

"Were you ready to order?"

"No thanks," she replied with a shade of attitude.  "As my usual servers know, I like to take my time.  I sure hope you're not in a rush."

"Oh I'm not going anywhere," I replied, deciding to turn this into a fun game.  How do you make a saccharine sweet schemer break her well-rehearsed jovial facade and show her true colors?
--
Sadly, you don't.

Try as I might to undo her - taking just a little longer than usual to refill her water but apologizing with a smile for the delay; pretending the credit card machine was acting up just to test her impatience - she remained resilient and faux sunny. 

She left without incident, leaving a 10 percent tip and a smiley face on her credit card receipt.

The next day I was called into the manager's office.  Aunt Pookie had called to "comment, not complain" about my service.  She "really didn't want to get [me] in trouble - God bless him," but thought they should know I didn't "treat her like a grandma like everyone else."

I stared at my manager as if to challenge her.  "And?" my eyebrows said.  She sighed, rolled her eyes, and I returned to the floor, just daring Aunt Pookie to come in that night.

For the next time I see her, I am going to sit down beside her, regale her with pictures of my nieces and nephews, and show her just how sweet-natured and chatty I can be.  Game on, bitch.

Your awfully wedded wife

"A man is incomplete until he is married. After that, he is finished."
                    - Zsa Zsa Gabor

You won't find someone more indifferent to marriage than me.  Having grown up in the foretold future that is the prim and proper Midwest, marriage was something my friends dutifully did after college.  But if you're like me, crying in a history class not because they're talking about the Holocaust but because you can picture yourself winning an Oscar for playing one of the survivors, marriage isn't your life's dream.

Thus I find it baffling when I wait on customers clearly at the half-way mark of their marriage.  They show as much interest in each other as they do the homeless man yelling "I'm taking a shit!" outside the front door.  The vitriol is palpable, and no other scenario makes me feel more like I'm serving lunch in a landmine.

But last week.  Ooph.  Last week's unhappily married couple made me feel goose bumps of awkwardness, and not the good kind like when you see a picture of Jessica Simpson leaving Winchell's Donuts with a dozen.

First I met Jill, a joyless J. Crew WASP with not a chip but the block of cement from which the chip came on her shoulder.  Pretty in an uptight, angry-fuck kind of way, she growled at me when I approached her with chips and salsa.

"Sorry my husband is late," she said.  Her tone betrayed any sort of apology but instead highlighted a need to point out her husband's flaws. 

"May I bring you anything to drink while you wait?" I asked.

"I'll wait for my husband..." she said in an annoyed tone, as if this were her third time to tell me that.

I kept a safe distance until her better half, Jack, showed up.  I pretended to refill a water at the table next to them so I could eavesdrop.

"Sorry," he said, not sorry.

"It's fine," she said, not fine.

"So....did you order a drink yet?" he asked.

"No, I think it's really rude to order a drink when your company hasn't arrived," she said with a sharply honed tongue.  "Where is our annoying waiter?"

You rang, Fraulein?

"We're ready to order," Jill snapped.  "One order of veggie fajitas, corn tortillas, black beans, no sour cream."

"Sour cream on the side," he said.

"No sour cream," she steamrolled.

"And a pitcher of margaritas," she added.  "And not the gross house pitcher.  Use your featured tequila.  Rocks.  No salt on either glass, none."

"Thank you..." Jack added to me with a desperate smile.  Handsome in a geeky way (think Dylan McDermott if Dylan McDermott knew that Han shot first), he earned my sympathy.

I returned with the pitcher.  Jill was angry-texting as Jack sat across, trying in vain to make eye contact. 

"Blended," she said.  For some stupid reason I thought she said "splendid," mostly because I'd quickly learned to gloss over the noises that escaped from her bitch hole.

"Excellent, enjoy," I said and started to walk off.

"EXCUSE ME," she yelled.  "Did you not just hear me?  I very clearly said 'blended.'  This pitcher is on the rocks.  It's not excellent, it's not blended.  Blend.  The pitcher."

Oh I'll put something in the blender, all right.  How about we start with that burlap potato sack posing as an expensive sweater, preferably wrapped around your severed head.?

"Honey, you didn't say you wanted it..." Jack tried.

"Then.  He should.  HAVE ASKED," she retorted.

I took the pitcher, woke up the bartender and asked him to blend it, and returned to find Jack and Jill in the incipent stages of having it out.

"No, because last week when I complained about the girl at Nordstrom, you took her side and made me look like a witch," she said to him unabashedly.

I set down the pitcher. 

"I'm so, so sorry about that," I said looking directly at him, seeing that he caught the true cause of my apology.  He gave a defeated smile.

"No no, all my fault," she said mockingly.  I poured their glasses and shortly thereafter the food was served.  As soon as she was finished eating, Jill put her phone in her purse, did not acknowledge her husband, and walked out of the restaurant, leaving behind only the echoes or her witchy high heel click clack.

"Anything else?" I asked Jack.

"No thanks, just the bill," he replied.

He quickly paid (25% tip) and left.  I felt such sadness for him as he exited. 

I wish I could have told him years earlier, just as I have said to many of my friends on their wedding days, that "This marriage will make you happy.  For a few years.  Then you'll find yourself physically repulsed by the idea of sex with the other.  You'll resent every single small, unimportant quirk of your spouse.  You'll always wonder if you should have entertained that impulse to flee and move to a big city, and your kids will be a perpetual reminder of the binding of your decision.  Oh, and I hope you guys cut the cake soon."