So I’m working behind the bar a couple of Friday nights ago. Every table in the restaurant is taken, we’re on an hour wait and the only four seats available are at the bar with a complimentary view of the beer tap handles. I’m running like crazy, keeping up with the drink orders for the Servers and the customers sitting at the bar. I’m sweating in places I normally don’t, but the tips are rolling in which is great because rent is due in a couple of days and I’m still a couple hundred short.
Suddenly, like a hot blast of stale air, they parked themselves on the open barstools and began barking orders at me before the standard “Good evening, how is everybody tonight” salutation could escape my lips. The four of them were probably thirty years old – combined – and the smell of entitlement wafted off them and their designer clothes, making it difficult to breathe.
“Hey, change the channel ta the Dodgers game!”
“I needa menu!”
“I want dessert first!”
“Why is it so loud in here?”
“How long before ya put on the Dodgers?”
I lowered my head slightly and peered at them over the top of my glasses, unsure whether to ask them how they escaped from their babysitter or tell them to go fuck themselves, when the shit hit the fan I didn’t even know was blowing my way.
Like most celebrities you see on TV or the big screen, she looked astonishingly unremarkable without the benefit of having been fawned over and preened for hours on end by professional makeup artists. I recognized her as an actress who had won an academy award approximately twenty five years ago, but her star had long since faded and she had been reduced to making a living by appearing on mediocre sitcoms and substanceless dancing and apprentice shows. She had recently been bemoaning to the tabloids about having to pull her four kids out of private school and sell her “modest” house for $900,000 to help settle an unpaid tax debt, and there she was in front of me sporting a full-on crazy face that had “How dare you even think of not letting my precious little darlings run roughshod all over your servant ass” written all over it.
The little darlings continued.
“It’s too cold in here!”
“You aren’t as pretty as the last girl who waited on us!”
“When can we order?”
“How long do we have to wait for our food?”
“Why is it taking you so long to put on the Dodgers?”
Though I tried my damndest, I must have failed miserably at disguising my thoughts of “What karmic law did I break that I have to endure these ridiculous pasty-faced dungflames,” because that’s about the time Former Movie Starlet looked me over without even attempting to mask the disdain she felt having to address the commonfolk as she leaned over the bar and inquired, “Do we have a problem here?” Fuck me and the side of bed I rolled out of. Realizing that this was one Mexican standoff I couldn’t possibly win, I forced my best fake “I hate your guts but have to pretend like I don’t” smile and just as I was beginning to fabricate what a big fan of hers I’ve been all these years, I was interrupted by…
“Your burgers aren’t as good as McDonald’s!”
“Why aren’t we eating yet?”
“You’re sure lucky my dad isn’t here!”
“We’ve been here for about an hour already!”
“Dodgers…Dodgers…Dodgers!”
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