My friend, the waiter, saw the grim reaper on his way to work the other day. My friend doesn't believe in visions or past lives or meaning in dreams, but he really thought he saw him. The black robe alive with wind play and the sickle. He even saw the sickle.
* * *
My friend, this waiter, he works in a restaurant not unlike the place that I work. Food on a plate, John Denver playing low and that's about it. Save for sixteen miles between the two restaurants, you'd swear they were the same. Sandwich and salad fare with entrees on the menu just to look all grown up.
My friend, the waiter, he swears the entree quality at his restaurant is somewhere in between dog vomit and The Cheesecake Factory, but leaning more toward one than the other. Everything is "made from scratch" except everything that isn't. The extra virgin olive oil is ninety percent soybean oil. The butter is ninety percent soybean oil. The fresh ground sirloin burgers are made from the cheapest ground beef money can buy.
Him and I, we share a lot of the same views on our jobs, on waiting tables and which guests deserve to be served a cup of coffee so old it smells like burnt pencils. We talk work. We blow off steam. We do this because we have to, my friend, the waiter and I. We do this because we are one and the same. We're serving the same crummy food to the same and sometime insane regulars, with the same co-workers and the same problems. To tell these stories in a bar where there are just as many packs of cigarettes on the table as drinks is inevitable. There are thousands and thousands of these stories in the sixteen miles between our two restaurants and I'm quite certain that they're all the same.
Thing is, I can tell his. My friend, the waiter, I can tell his stories because they are not my own. I can tell them without hearing about it the next day at work. I can tell them without giving away any deep dark dirty secret of my restaurant. Besides... his stories are better.
* * *
The Grim Reaper was staring out from behind the fenced in parking lot of the Golden Corral buffet. There was no mistaking it, except, my friend was mistaken. As he drove closer and eventually past the Golden Corral, he could see the Grim Reaper for what he really was; a fifty gallon black garbage bag stuck to the fence, a long broom standing upright beside it.
On the way to a restaurant job, everything means something about your tips to come. If it looks like rain, you're gearing up for a night of squatters that want the dry seat with the roof over their head, but only want to tip $2 an hour. Food, they don't order much of that.
If it looks like a hurricane--your restaurant's patio chairs flying down the street--anybody that walks in the door is to be considered reckless and batshit crazy and Batshit Crazies aren't known for their tipping either. The Batshit Crazies are saving all of their money to will to their dog when they drive their car into a tornado.
The other day, the Hefty bag and the upright broom--The Grim Reaper of Golden Corral--it probably didn't mean a thing at all. Sure, somebody was fired that morning before my friend came in, and sure this person was supposedly dying, actually dying, but things really weren't out of the ordinary in the restaurant. A woman found a safety pin in her catfish sandwich, but she didn't choke on it or anything. The manager on duty told the table that it was a fish hook that the fish must have swallowed, as if the fish they serve are even caught one hook at a time and as if their fillets are contaminated with their stomach contents before serving and it was funny that both the manager and the guest seemed to believe this story, but it was just another day.
Then the next day, the tips died. All of the tips. They all died. Like a switch that flipped when gas went over four a gallon, tips went from $4 to $15 a table to $1 to $8 a table overnight. Desserts are off the table. Waters all around. Extra lemons. Lots of lemons. Let's make lemonade. Free lemonade.
The Grim Reaper of Golden Corral, today we've decided he was saying, "This is what you'll be making now. This is all you'll get. Buffet tips."
The safety pins are all you can eat.
