Busy, Busy, Busy

 

(This job is great exercise.)

I got to the Waffle House at 9 p.m. Weepy Wanda was standing over the sink and on the verge of tears. She tried to hold them back, but it wasn’t long till she burst like a damn.

I patted her on the shoulder. “What’s wrong?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know. I was busy during my shift, and now I have to drive home. It takes me almost forty minutes.”

“So it’s the commute that’s got you down?”

“I’m not sure. I just get this way sometimes.”

After the manager left, she walked to her SUV to smoke pot. Dwayne the Dwarf and Pork-Chop Jane went with her. They burned dope for the next twenty minutes.

But Wanda’s mood swings didn’t keep the customers away. On the contrary. They kept coming and coming and coming. You assholes have to remember one thing. This is the 4^th of July weekend, and all the white trash love their hash browns. So we were fucking slammed.

Benson, the slowest cook in the world, was the only guy at the grill. And he was going nuts.

“Where the fuck is Dwayne?”

I said, “He’s outside getting high.”

“That’s just fucking great.”

I tried to call out an order, but he told me to hold my fucking horses. That’s when I thought about punching the little punk right in the mouth. However, I suddenly remembered that I’m quickly approaching sixty years of age. And there’s no fucking way I’d be able to take a kid in his early twenties. Therefore, I decided to cool my engines.

I said, “OK, Benson. No need to get your panties in a bunch. Just tell me when you’re ready.”

He shot me the stink eye. “My panties aren’t in a bunch.” Then he paused for dramatic effect. “Man, I hate this fucking job.”

Unlike Benson, I don’t hate working at Waffle House. I find it to be great exercise. I’m constantly running around to get all my tasks completed. And I think that it might actually improve my health. Plus the money isn’t terrible. I look at it this way. At least I’m not slinging hash in Djibouti. Things could always be worse.

Later that night, I had two booths filled with Mexicans. They ran up a bill of $110 dollars and paid in cash. The guy handed five bucks. Needless to say, I was crestfallen after looking at the mess they left behind. I didn’t even say goodbye when they departed.

But as I was cleaning up their slop, I noticed a crisp twenty-dollar bill pinned under the salt-and-pepper shakers. It made me feel a little guilty. I thought they had screwed me, but it turned out that they had followed the social convention of 20 percent.

This gig tends to make a guy a little greedy. Tomorrow, I’ll do my best to be friendly to everyone. Even the deadbeats.

Yet the biggest surprise that happened during my shift was Pork-Chop Jane. She actually spent most of her time inside the building, and she kept up with the majority of her tasks. You could have knocked me over with a feather. It was nice not having to do everything…which is usually the case when she’s my partner in crime.

Overall, the night went OK. I made $270 for ten hours of work.