On Career Guests: Outrageous Demands and Refusals

           The science of quantum physics tells us that it is indeed possible for to guest to walk into a Kentucky Fried Chicken and ask for a turkey sandwich. If you think this is outrageous, food service tells us it’s possible for that guest to return the next day with an uncooked turkey and request that it be cooked “with your special chicken seasoning.”

In a surprising new study by specialists in Oakland, this is even more likely to occur than all the molecules in a rock arranging themselves in the same direction and then jumping straight up in the air. Further studies have shown, however, that the likelihood of these sociopathic behavioral patterns among guests may be directly related to the guest’s career.

 

Example 1: Graphic Designers or Really Anyone with a Fake Creative Job

            “Are we all set?” you ask the table of two, setting down their sweet teas.

            “Hmmmm…” says one man, drumming his fingers on the table. “Well, you know I really like the sound of this Chicken Sandwich. Could you tell me a little about it?”

            “Oh sure,” you say. You bend down and point to the description beneath “Chicken Sandwich”. “Chicken Sandwich” you read, “slathered with sweet and sticky bar-b-que, piled high with coleslaw and little frilly lettuce shreds, and slammed angrily onto a toasted bun by someone you really don’t want to ever meet. Then stabbed with a cute little pointless toothpick and served on a plate. With some French fries.”

 

            “Ahhh. Well, I have a few questions,” the man announces. “Instead of coleslaw, could you put potato salad on that? I don’t typically tend to enjoy cabbage.”

            “Sure!” you say, scribbling.

“And instead of frilly lettuce shreds….hmmm, well could I get, like, one extra French fry? I know I’m already having French fries, and I don’t really want to substitute anything for the lettuce, but if I could maybe just have one extra French fry, that would be great.”

You nod and write down, “Kittens, rainbows, happy place,”

 

“Oh and I don’t want the potato salad piled high necessarily. If you could maybe put it on an angle? You know what I mean? A sort of…” Here he demonstrates what he means by ‘angle’ by slanting one hand in front of your face. “Oh, and instead of a toothpick in the sandwich, could you put it on the side so that I can use it later? I don’t really understand the idea of trying to pick your teeth with something that already has food on it, you know?”

 “Uhhh—“

 

“Oh and if you have an olive spear instead of a toothpick, that’d be even better. I am terribly afraid of splinters. Also, how sticky is the bar-b-que? I’m kind of a textures guy, you know, I have this terror of maple syrup, it’s pretty much why I don’t eat pancakes anymore. If you were going to compare the bar-b-que sauce to maple syrup, would you say that’s it’s more or less sticky? Also, would it be cheaper if we carved out the inside of the bun, so maybe I just have the bun shell, or maybe vice versa? Texture wise, does one sound better to you than the other? I don’t know.”

 Example 2: Lonely Office Women

            Every day at 1:45, she comes in and orders a “regular burger” mid rare, no lettuce, just tomato and onion, with mayo on the side and ketchup with her fries.

            She is not the sort of gal to demand “the usual”, like some sort of unspontaneous buzz kill, oh no, every day she looks you straight in the eyes, and repeats, “I think what I’d like is one of your hamburgers, maybe medium rare. And no lettuce please. Thank you so much.”

            One day, however, she comes in looking rather wan.

            “How are you?” you ask brightly.

            “Well, I am feeling a bit under the weather today,” she says anxiously, parting and unparting her lips. “I think I’d like to mix it up a little.”

            “Oh, well we have a lot of amazing new salads,” you say. “There’s a new barley salad that will run right through you like a Swiss train. Clean ya right out.”

“No,” she says. “I think I’ll just have your hamburger, maybe medium rare. With no lettuce.”

You blink twice.

“ But I would like the tomato and the onion and the bun on the side.” she says.

“Oh.” you say. “So exactly the same thing you had yesterday except…"

 

"Arranged in the shape of a smile." she says.

 

Your head snaps up, you look her in the eyes. She is not smiling.

 

"Oh-oh-okay, yeah. So maybe two tomatoes on either side of the burger, maybe two pieces of onion acting as eyeballs."

 

"Yes, you can understand now why I have no use for the lettuce," she says, locking eyes with you.

 

"Yes, it is becoming clear now," you say, backing away. "Uh....maybe the mayo dollop can be the nose?"

 

She only stares now.

 

"Okay! Okay, no lettuce, mayo, uh, got it, coming back soon, haha! Okay!"

 

Rejection and Schizophrenia Among Wait Staff

                  

            Clinical trials have proven that schizophrenia in wait staff occurs in approximately 9 out of 10 servers over the age of 24 and a half years old. This disorder manifests itself in the form of exploding at guests in a saucy black woman voice, making fun of guests by repeating them in a small munchkin voice, and winking saucily at small children after asking if they’d like another strawberry lemonade. This disorder has been proven, in labs across the country, to be born from rejection.

             Example 1: Aw Hell No

“Tonight’s special” you announce to your table of five, “ is our Bullhorn Grabbin Ranch Saucy Sauce Lemon Lickin salmon, lightly scented with po pourri, tempered with hints of thyme, pounded with ranch dust and then, for 45 minutes, sautéed in the spicy rare blood of our Lord and topped with a single sesame seed.” You pause and then continue in the voice of a commercial casually mentioning side effects, “Served with a Vanilla Ranch milk shake and a moon pie.” 

            You all sit in silence for a moment (you breathless and proud, the guests simply stunned), before telling them you’ll “let that sink in for a second” before you return for their “final decision”.

            You walk back to the kitchen, maybe giving out high fives or even thumbs ups to the rest of the wait staff as the restaurant echoes with “lemon lickin…” and “single sesame seed…” Regardless of your gender, hair has suddenly sprouted on your chest.   

After five minutes, you return to the table, smiling smugly. You even take the time to wink at each member of the table individually, which takes another full minute.   

            “Have you all had a chance to think about what I said—earlier?” you ask, raising an eyebrow.

             “Um, can I just have the hamburger?” asks one woman.

            A roaring starts in your ears and you feel the blood rushing into your face.

            “Naw bitch you can’t have no fucking HAMBURGER. If you could have had a hamburger, I would have TOLD you you could have a hamburger. What do you think this shit is, fucking CANADA? Fucking PAKISTAN?”

            “Seriously,” murmurs the rest of the wait staff, standing behind you with their arms crossed.       

            Her husband raises a hand as if to defend her, “I’m sorry, I really don’t see what Canada and Pakistan have in common…? Also, weren’t you just white a minute ago…?”

Example 2: Deaf People

            You are chatting with the hostess by the door, and by chatting, of course I mean describing the nightmare of waiting on people from Canada or even Pakistan. Out of the corner of your eye, you see two guests get up from their bar stools, put on coats and head towards you.

            You swirl at attention, immediately ending your conversation. You have never seen these people in your life, and probably never will again.

            “You all have a wonderful evening!” you say, smiling widely. Of course there is something strange about saying this to people you will probably never see again. Why not, ‘Have a wonderful rest of your life!’ or ‘Vote McAuliffe this year!’

             The guests do not reply, and you realize this may be because they were too far away or maybe, like you, also wondering about the phrase about the wonderful evening. They’ve just reached the host stand, they’re now directly in front of you.

            So you try again, “Yeah, like I said earlier, have a good one!....Thanks for coming guys, it’s been a pleasure!..... An absolute pleasure…all our pleasure, to have you come here…”

             Silence.

You turn to the host, lips parted in shock. “Did they just…? I’m pretty sure they just…”

            The hostess squeezes your hand, “Don’t worry about it. It happens to me all the time.”

            You wrench away from her, “BYE GUYS!” you scream. “I hope you have fun!” You run around the host stand and trot after them. “Have a great night! Enjoy the rest of your summer, go swimming or something, it’s gonna be GREAT, have fun doing that, I really hope you have the funest time of any guest I’ve ever waited on because it’s been a fucking pleasure, what’d you eat a fucking hamburger—” The munchkin voice is on full force—“oh can I just have a hamburger and maybe a chocolate milk, can you make the fries crispy I like crispy fries, only the crispiest for me, I bet you like crispy fries—”

             The hostess, encouraged by your bravado, has begun pelting toothpicks at the two deaf people, and screaming out “BYE!” over and over again, also in a munchkin voice.        

           You stop and cross your arms as the guests flee.

           

Insulting Guests

            In the interest of having all guests remain anonymous in this entry, we will refer to all of them as babies. This blog will be more successful for you as a reader if you decide to picture them this way as well. In this way, we will successfully eliminate all suggestions of sexual impropriety, insanity, or never-having-been-out-of-one’s-house syndrome.

            Baby #1:  Approximate Age: 35. Appropriate Baby Shwag: bib reading “I could have been twins”.

You walk up to the baby’s table sporting a new company shirt, with a clever I shamrock Guiness message tastefully splashed across your chest. The baby in question is sitting next to his baby wife, takes one look at you and orders an Irish car bomb.

You imagine that this kind of baby frequently annoys his wife by ordering telecommerical baby weight loss supplements or completely organic reusable diapers.

            You smile. “Was it my shirt?”

            The baby nods eagerly. “I mean, you walked up and the first thing I looked at was your chest!”

            A look of un-baby like horror immediately appears on his face and you watch him turn in slow motion to his child bride, while a series of apparently first words babble out of his mouth. His first discovery as a person newly come to language appears to be that there is a huge difference between the word ‘chest’ and the word ‘boobs’. His arms appear to be flailing as if he were Vanna White were uncovering the letters “C-H-E-S-T” on your boobs.

Being a child wife, she does not seem to grasp this difference and tells him in a uncharacteristically adult way to shut up.

            Baby #2: Also with child wife. Approximate age: forever 49. Appropriate Baby Shwag: a very small piece of candy or an electrical socket with a fork beside it.  

As you reach across the table to refill a water glass, your hidden tattoo (acquired in the mysterious cruel cruel world of adulthood you have lived in since the tender age of 18) pops out of your sleeve, immediately exposing the young, sensitive minds at your table to utter shock.

“Oh wow, what’s that?” Mogely asks, grabbing my elbow. “A dragon?”

“It’s a bird,” you say patiently, tugging down your sleeve.

You even decide to share something personal with this boyish sponge of childlike curiosity. “It’s pretty much the only animal I can tolerate.”

His eyes widen, taking it all in. “Wow, did you get that in prison?”

He laughs with all the carefree bliss of youth, unlike his mortified wife baby who now appears to begging you with her horrified baby eyes to, perhaps, adopt her.

Your eyes suddenly seem to be expanding into big alien saucers of dark knowledge, and with eyes that say ‘Every morning I have to dress myself you know nothing of this adult world of horror’, you blink once and say, “Yeah.”

When you return to the table with a crab cake appetizer and a pocketful of atomic fireballs, the baby is shivering in terror of you. He will not be fed candy and he cannot stop apologizing for his baby faux pas.

Baby #3: Approximate age:  65. Appropriate Baby Shwag: tiny Ms. Benjamin Button t-shirt.

The primly dressed lady baby is sitting at her table (which she found on her own, with no help from stupid adult hostess) on her invisible stack of encyclopedias with her arms folded across her menu, squeezing the bridge of her nose between two ancient baby fingers.

“I’ll be with you in a just a minute,” you say, touching the right shoulder of her shoulder-bladed suit.

“Can I ask you a question?” she snaps up.

You do not say, ‘see above for when I’ll be available’.

“Of course,” you say, smiling.

“So,” she begins in the tone of someone who has no intention of asking a question. “I’d like to order your hummus, but without chips. Can I order raw vegetables instead? I’m gluten free.”

Currently you are working in a burger joint. And on the vegetable level of the food pyramid, that means tomato slices and lettuce leaves.

“Honestly,” you begin, “I’m not sure that we have any raw vegetables we can offer you.”

“That’s funny,” she said, crossing her Button arms across her Columbo chest. “That’s what I had the last time I was here.”

Frantically you rack your brain, picturing some past motherly server trooping over to Kroger to buy pureed peas and carrots for this teething Ben the Buttoness.

“Well, we do have a cucumber relish—”

“Cucumbers are a raw vegetable,” she elucidates.

You are so proud of your little button, but you do not hug her or reward her with dessert. Instead, you promise to have that right out for her.

            If you have never seen a small child eating cucumber relish with hummus, you have obviously never worked in a strictly burger joint where small children naturally come to order this. You have never seen a grown woman adapt so quickly and smugly to the idea of dipping a shredded vegetable into a bowl of pureed chick peas. You have never seen the small intellectual victories of small children who will always know better than the foolish adults in this world who stumble around pretending to know what raw vegetables are.

 

 

1000 year perspective on Food Service

At some point in the future of mankind, approximately in the 3000s, someone will find their calling in a Georgetown 3 credit course on the history of the Why the Hell in American food service. They will go on to specialize in the history of Why the Hell we thought it would be a good idea to invite a baby to a table set with FORKS, KNIVES, and pints of beer without say, arm and leg restraints. The following are a few stories which will be featured in these textbooks.

            Example A: The Destruction Toddler

You couldn’t have seen it coming, and like most things you couldn’t have seen coming when you have complete and immediate loathing for the people you are talking to, you totally saw it coming. Party of 12, parents drinking beers, 4 toddlers all pre-gaming with pints of Sprite, and one in particular catches your eye. In the way that a hamster would if you saw it doing cartwheels on your chicken fresco.

This three year old boy, this small ball of future potential has already destroyed all the crayons and dessert menus on the table and when someone attempts to sit next to him, bellows out a strong, affirmative, NO, YOU SIT THERE, followed by the unbelievable compliance of a woman in a pants suit. Occasionally, he demands more Sprite from you. As his mother orders the $7 Belgian style French fry appetizer obviously required to tame the boy’s wild and free spirit, you watch the boy snatch the wrapped silverware from his mother’s place setting.

Your eyes widen in a shock only masked by the set of questions you now fire at her to prolong your presence at the table. “Would you prefer ketchup or maybe mayonnaise with that? Tell me more about your past with French fries, What are your thoughts on thinking of French fries as a vegetable?” And now the moment you couldn’t have seen coming/have been waiting for, the three year old possible future president of our county finds the fork in the linen roll, wraps his little hand around it and yes, stabs his mother in the face. Your only consolation, you later tell your manager, is that this is the closest thing you could have experienced to a live performance of a Canadian PSA on domestic violence.

You will frequently return to this table, mainly to monitor the swelling three-prong welts growing on the mother’s face.

 Example B: The Toddler who Eats $15 Hamburgers

            Following the trend of experiences that makes you feel like an enabler of gateway drugs or gateway stabbings even, comes the experience with the parents who order food from the Adult Menu for their child. You have learned how to react to requests such as the 12 ounce sirloin or deep fried hamburger for the 3 year old by your experience with people who request hot water with ice or hamburgers burnt until “I could break them like a champagne flute”. Meaning, you do not react. Your face is an unsigned petition. Blank.

            The key here is to not imagine the future memoirs of the pre-congressman toddler, who, much like Governor Chris Christie, will now be destined to mention YOU as one of the landmark enablers of his inevitable battle with obesity and/or temporary resemblance to actor Chris Farley. On the other hand, this memoir would be valuable material in the What the Hell literature of our future. On the OTHER hand, you refuse to be villainized to our future generations, as all Ihop and Country Cookin wait staff are destined to be seen as the Goldman and Sacks pull-the-wool-over-everyone’s-eyes villains that they truly are.

            An interview with one of these irreformable waitresses is quoted in one future What the Hell textbook as saying, “What was I supposed to do? Just tell them no?” Yes. You were. And much like the Nuremburg Trials, the What the Hell textbooks will have these enablers going down in history for their compliance with these outrageous demands for high-caloric food for tiny people. Should have said no. You could have saved yourself many sleepless nights and appearances in Chris Christie’s memoirs. A tip is a small sacrifice to pay for truth.

Food Service Speak

           Overhearing a server speak to a guest is sometimes like listening to a thirteen year old boy speaking to his first real crush. What the hell, I think, listening in. Why is that server telling that old man about his invention of the boiled egg? 

            Example 1: The Plague of the Word ‘We’.

            In any other job, hobby, relationship, and even most mental illnesses save Skitsophrenia and possibly Jehovah’s Witnesses, people refer to themselves as "me" "myself" and even "I".

            Not in food service. In food service, you refer to yourself as ‘We’, ensuring that you are responsible for every decision, mistake, idea, and Free-Fondu-if-your-server-forgets-to-recommend-it-policy.

            “Why don’t you sell spicy bean dip anymore?” the guest asks one day.

            “Well, We’ve decided that it’s just not profitable,” you say, puffing out your chest and letting the guest imagine your bent over a stack of numbers comparing food cost to food sales when you should have said, “Because I ate it all,” which is the truth, or “My boss got the shits from it, and decided to take it off the menu”, which is also pretty close to the truth.

            “Why did you start putting your margaritas in a giant slurpee machine?” the guest asks one day.

            “Because We make so many of them!” you say. “We decided to premake them so you wouldn’t be kept waiting!”, letting your guest imagine you slapping your hand down on a table and screaming, ‘Eureka! A Margarita Machine!’ when you should have said, “Because my boss thinks it makes the term ‘Handcrafted Beverages’ kind of ironic”, which is not true at all, since your boss’s idea of irony is firing you when he finds out you’re quitting, or just simply, “Someone in corporate likes to make at least one asinine business decision every month” which is absolutely the truth.

            Now, this ‘We’ doesn’t really become tricky until you’ve racked up at least five former food service jobs, two of which are rivals of your current company.  

            Now, when a guest makes one of their little Gateway into Conversation jokes such as “Looks like you’ve been doing this a while,” and you begin to talk about your former jobs at Ruby Tuesday, the bodega, Aramark Dining Services and a few other stints you’d rather not really name, you begin your own little skitsophrenic Abbot and Costello routine.

            “I quit that last job when We decided that as bar tenders We couldn’t take tables, which is just stupid, why would We do that? I mean here, We would never make such a stupid decision because We care about We, and We want We-yeah, well—right—We want We to make money, not like We did there where We didn’t give a shit about We—right? Wait? Oh God! We all—we all live in yellow submarine! A yellow submarine! A YELLOW SUBMARINE! No, I do ! I live a yellow submarine, not we! Oh God!” At this point, your head pops off, rolls out the door and grows into a meatball tree.

            Example 2: Giving Guests Pet Names

            There are some strange and arbitrary rules of thumb for this particular category. All male bartenders address male guests as “boss”. This name will not work if females are any part of the equation as it is demeaning for females to call someone boss which implies the possibility of being ‘bossed’, and obviously sarcasm to be addressed as one. There are very extreme subtleties involved when Third Wave Feminism meets the art of Food Service.

            As far as ‘hun’, ‘babe’, ‘baby’, and ‘sugar’, which you might think, one should dole out as liberally as a politician does handshakes, be careful. Male servers, you are not allowed to say these words at all. There is a hollow chamber right behind a woman’s eyes which exists for the sole purpose of storing these words when they are directed at her by a stranger. For the next twenty minutes or so after hearing them, they bounce around back there until they’ve conjured up images of the two of you holding hands on the beach, but the instant you forget to bring her that sugar caddy she asked for, that image twists into you hitting her over the head with a conch shell and feeding her children to sharks. Of course, if you are addressing another male as ‘sugar’ and you are not gay, perhaps you should also see a previous blog entitled Trash Pickup can Be Fun and Rewarding for the Mentally Challenged.

            Ladies, you’re allowed a bit of ‘hun’, but only when directed at other females who you seem to be in danger of pissing off. The key is to slip the word in as though you couldn’t possibly think of calling her anything else, as though her face practically beams Hun. Say it quickly, do NOT croon, and make sure the sentence which ends with that word is immediately followed by another sentence which does not end with that word. In other words, just be natural.

            Also, never combine pet names for guests. ‘Baby’ is fine, ‘boo’ is fine, but the marriage of ‘baby’ and ‘boo’ into ‘baby boo’ is a horrible idea. The same goes for “dear” and “hun” which just sounds like “dear hunt”. That would be strange.

Food Service Diplomacy

            What you didn’t learn about the State of Nature in high school from studying Thomas Hobbes and reading Lord of the Flies, you will begin to understand after a brief stint in the restaurant industry.

There exists but one reaction to a small girl holding four steaming plates over a guest’s head while simultaneously trying to rearrange the napkin holder and the salt and pepper shakers to make room for the incoming meal: the guest loses all control of motor skills. He sits silently, hands folded, sometimes choosing this moment to discover the spear of olives floating in his martini, and inexplicably snatch it from the glass.

The guest, you think, has suddenly imagined that he is involved in a game of scrabble or chess, and it’s Small Girl with Steaming Plates’ turn to make the next move. This is the Guest’s State of Nature.

But this inexplicable paralysis manifests itself in other ways too.

Example 1: Fighting over the Check.

“Is this going to be together, or should I separate it?” you ask.

“Together,” one says.

“Together,” says another.

Both look at each other, then at you.

“Just bring it to me,” says one.

“No, I’ll take it,” says another.

            “Okay,” you say, and begin backing away from the table.

You notice that the guests invariably resume their prior conversation, as if the matter is now completely out of their hands.

            After seven years in food service, you have learned that there are several ways you should, under no circumstances, react to this situation.

            Do not walk back to the table with a plate of chopped tomatoes and politely invite the guests to resume their former argument.

Do not sneak back to the table in your state-mandated no-slip silent-killer shoes, toss the check in the center of the table, and scream “GO, GO GO!”

            Do NOT give the check to the baby at the table and wait for the men you are now referring to as Ralph and Jack Meridew to tackle the high chair. (Especially if the baby has appeared to be hitting on you earlier.)

            And finally, under absolutely NO circumstances, should you pull up a chair and offer to make this into a game of Duck, Duck, Goose.

            Instead, you develop the art of the Slow Stretch. When you return with the check, slowly extend your arm across the table in Hile Hitler fashion and, in the best case scenario, someone will snatch it and both men will think you were handing it to him. In the worst case scenario, everyone will suddenly reach for their olives.

            Example 2:  Putting Fat People in Booths which are Obviously too Small for them

            This is, in fact, a frequent occurrence in corporate restaurants at which there is a readily available salad bar full of only mayonnaise-based items.

As you walk up to the booth to take drink orders, both guests, who are spilling over onto the table in the greatest example of muffin top you have ever seen, greet you with dark looks which say, “Very funny, smart ass.” Through the entire conversation, neither guest mentions the too-small table, while silently daring you to say something about it.

Of course, you have waited on Goldilocks Guests enough times to appreciate the guest who does not search for the table that is ‘just right’. However, you did not seat them, the tiny hostess did, nor did you invent trans fat. You are also not a line ride operator at King’s Dominion, wherein the decision not to tell someone that they are too fat could result in serious consequences. Sure, the impression that your table is constantly giving you the Heimlich Maneuver must be uncomfortable, but that could potentially come in handy. There are usually cherry tomatoes on the salad bar.

 The key here is that you know deep down, in the way that you know never to bring them more butter than they asked for or make a joke involving the possibility of super sizing their table, to ask if ‘this booth is okay’ for them. As innocuous as this might sound, what they will hear, and more importantly, what you will hear is: “Are you too fat for this booth?” (Sometimes, this sound will be accompanied in their minds by the imaginary sound of a stampede headed toward the salad bar to eat all the potato salad.) 

            Do not poke the bear.

Food Service Awkward Sauce

Any server will tell you that the most coveted art of food service is knowing, unlike the psychopathic small people eating fruit loops at your table, when to speak and when to shut up.

            Here are some examples of both.

            Example 1: Imagine this: you are standing behind a bar and tiny college girls holding empty white plates form a line in front of you. You are wearing a hair net and rubber gloves and holding a giant bunch of purple grapes which you have been de-stemming for the past hour. This job is called This is America, of Course there’s a Job for That! Or, alternately, Sisyphus Goes to America!

The girl directly in front of you holds your tongs, perhaps unconsciously clicking them at the bowl. As each grape plops into the bowl, Girl-with-Tongs snaps it up and tongs it onto her plate.

            You are thinking of the way baby birds snap their beaks at their mother while waiting for masticated worms to be dropped in their mouths, which ought to be your first clue that this is as close to a time-to-make-conversation moment as an instance of buying only tampons would be.

            Instead, you look at Girl-with-Tongs’ plate which holds a single boiled egg and a strawberry. 

“Have you been finding everything okay today?” you ask.

            Girl-with-Tongs shifts wide eyes to the right and then back at the grape bin. She is accessing the creative part of her mind which allows her to imagine herself as someone who would speak to Girl-with-Hairnet.

            “Yes,” she mumbles.

            “Good!” you say brightly.

            Ah, but the cheap thrill of feeling useful has got you going. You can’t stop now.

 “Here, I have an idea!”  you say. You start placing the grapes directly onto her plate, gently like topping a scoop of ice cream with a cherry. You are an innovator! You are the best fruit stand attendant Girl-with-Tongs has ever seen!

 Girl with Tongs is still holding the tongs, which have now become completely useless.

“Tell me wheeennnn,” you croon, smiling at her. Somehow, her plate has now become completely full of red grapes, and she drops the tongs into the empty bin. She is replaced by another Girl with Tongs.

It occurs to you that this could also be an episode of Twilight Zone or simply your afterlife.

Example 2: See above, wherein “I have an idea!” is followed by you throwing grapes into Girl with Tongs’ face.

Example 3: This example involves a time wherein silence backfires.

You are no longer employed by the cafeteria at which you made questionable decisions with fruit. Now, you work for a corporation.

It is one of those strange 4:30 in the afternoons in which you are the sole server, and suddenly there are nine parties in the restaurant, and none of them have even received drinks. You begin to notice that one particular woman (party of one) is determined to ignore the “Oh shit” look you have been giving everyone, and pointedly asks questions the way you might ask your accountant about your next twenty year investment plan.

“You really don’t have root beer?” she asks, again.

“Nope,” you say, before realizing that one of your creedoes here in the Corporate World is Life After “Nope”, “Ya’ll”, “Huh?” and “Yep”.

She leans forward and looks off into the distance for a full ten seconds. She appears to have retrieved something from her teeth.

“Well, I’ll just have tea then. Half sweet, half unsweet.”

You whirl away without speaking and return some time later with said tea.

“Oh, could I have an extra glass of ice?” she asks sweetly.

You return with the ice.

This freaking woman then takes a full five minutes to order a single crab cake, with dressing on the side, please be sure there’s no peanuts anywhere near the crab cake, if you can make sure all the cooks haven’t eaten peanuts lately, even a slight peanut-laced sneeze will set this woman’s allergies a-roaring….

Ten requests later, and this woman wants ketchup. You are baffled. In the kind of way you would be baffled by a request for peanut butter soup with no peanuts or a request for a taste of diet pepsi. You whirl away and suddenly you have no control over your movements. You are advancing towards the ketchup dispenser. You grab a plate and a handful of ramekins and proceed to fill fifteen shiny ramekins with ketchup.

If you had, say, only announced the ketchup’s presence at the woman’s table (“Here you are!” or “Here’s that ketchup!” or even a quick yet concerned “Can I get you anything else?”) as you set that two feet by two feet plate precariously at the edge of her table-for-one, perhaps her reaction would have been different.

But no. You sat and ran. Silently.

You sat that ridiculous plate of ketchup at her table, and that is when Crazy Lady became Crazy Ketchup Lady. That year and a half at George Mason studying psychology came in handy for her after all. She jumped up, holding that full plate of ketchup and managed to find your manager, sobbing about her passive aggressive waitress and her fear of peanuts and not wanting to be served food by someone who obviously hates her.

This is when you realize that in food service, silence can be interpreted as a message.