So it Begins -TS-C2-

So I got the job. I think this is where the story starts. I think this is a story. You be the judge.

You know what's awesome about being eighteen? You're such an idiot, no matter what, I don't care if you're the smartest eighteen year old ever, you're still an idiot. But you don't realize it. In fact, speaking from personal experience, you're pretty confident that you are in fact not an idiot, just everyone else is. I happen to be an authority on the subject since I did some investigation and actually lived the life of an eighteen year old for a whole year, just to see what it was like. I was eighteen when I began that experiment.

My initiation into the world of serving, waiting, or whatever you want to call it, was fairly lack luster and did not reflect the glamor and excitement I expected. Some part of me just took it for granted that serving at Steak & Shake would be as entertaining as the countless hours I invested as a customer. Actually, in retrospect, I had a lot more fun serving, but the first few go throughs did not reflect this. They started me out in training with some dumb, fat, white trash girl that was profoundly boring and somehow condescending. I imagine it was a rare opportunity where she encountered someone she actually had some sway over, or someone that wasn't in a position to point out her general nature of sucking hardcore. It is a little bit embarrassing to be trained on how to serve. It is a fairly simple concept. You introduce yourself to a table, convince them to tell you what they would like to eat and or drink. Then you retrieve those things for them. To simplify this mind-bendingly-complicated process, servers at Steak & Shake were expected to memorize and religiously employ a form of short hand that was incomprehensible to anyone not trained in the Steak & Shake language. My theory is the establishment wanted to protect the orders of the customers in case our note pads were intercepted by the Muslims. An example of how awesome the abbreviations were, guess what "K" stood for? Coke. Why not C? Because C meant "cherry". Once we filled out our orders, we took our notepad to the computer where we punched in the order. Then a receipt printed out. We gave that to the cook staff. So, if I'm not making this clear, let me clarify. We had to learn and use this really stupid system that no one else would ever see unless they were trying to make sure you were using their retarded little system. If you weren't I think there was some repercussion. They probably made you wear your bow tie two notches too tight.

Did I mention the bow ties yet? We wore bow ties. We had to. I am not proud of things I have done in my life, and agree to be a bow tie faggot is above and beyond the most regrettable. Even more so than that girl I raped.

To further secure our tickets from the Taliban we threw them away after we wrote them out. Am I unjustifiably outraged by this? Are there people so stupid that they really cannot figure out a system with a piece of paper and a pen to record things like "Cheeseburger" or "Cheeseburger without onions" without needing a Rosetta Stone to decode them? Jesus Christ, I have worked myself into a proper rage. I wish I could say that is the end of my anger. I wish I could tell you I'm taking deep breaths right now and finding the quiet place in my solar plexus. My friends, this is not so. I didn't want to bring it up at first but now I think you must know. Further questioning how stupid people can actually be, I ask, is there anyone out there who does not know how to say hello? Ok, there are people with certain awkward approaches to interaction, but seriously you want to be a waiter? The world needs plenty of janitors my friend, and if you can't approach people that are trying to give them money and not entirely weird them out without a script, then you should seriously consider a career in waste management or explore your passion for suicide. My employers did not agree, so a script we had. Maybe I'm missing something about the psychology of eating at a shit hole diner like Steak & Shake with your family. Maybe you're so angry at your life that you need someone to laugh at and think, Thank God, at least I'm not that schmuck.

"Hello, welcome to Steak & Shake. My name is Sam, and I'll be your server today. Our soups are brocolli with cheese and grandma's liquefied vagina. Can I start you all out with some drinks?" Do you know how much of a tool you sound like when you spit out some clearly memorized bullshit like that? Do we really live in a world where earnest greetings and sentiments of welcome are only receivable in this freeze dried, microwavable and inhuman manner? Is that what you want from your waiter? A robot? C'mon you know that's bullshit. I would like to say that I made it an extreme point of pride not to do that as soon as left the womb like comfort of my trainer's wing. Play it by ear. Some people want that shpeel. Don't give it to them because they suck and you don't want their money anyways cause it probably has retard boogers on it and that shit is like cooties. Be polite, be welcoming, be sincerely nice because Jesus Christ these are the people that are going to pay your wages. Also, they are human beings. Do you really need an excuse to be nice to another human being? Unless of course they're spewing retard boogers out of their upturned noses.

The whole process that I learned from training (and then immediately discarded) puts the plight of America in center stage. Everything about a server's interaction with the customers was so entirely regimented that in five years a robot will be able to do that job and the customers will never know the difference. What is it about predictability that is so marketable? I do not want to go to a restaurant and mouth my server's speech along with them. It is not desirable to me to experience anything, including a dining experience, in some painful bubble of security where I am not required to consider another person as a person but a stooge, a tool for a company trying to execute individuality. Individuality is threatening so to make their customers feel completely at ease Steak & Shake used the guillotine business model and lopped off every employee's head so all that remained was a gaping neck spewing the blood oath of uniformity.

Training only took a few days. At first, I was nervous, and I earnestly tried to do it "right", which I put in quotes to emphasize how not right it actually was just in case you, the reader, are one of those retard booger people and are too stupid to wipe the drool off your chin. I would ask my fat white trash catastrophe trainer questions like, "Ok, well when do we give them refills?" And she would cite the employee manual that said we should refill drinks if ever we notice they are two thirds empty at the three minute first response after food delivery or at the fifteen minute check delivery/dessert pitch but not on the final check drop. At some point I actually thought, and I think most of the servers still think, that somehow this system mattered and made us better servers.

I survived. I whiled away my time in the break room. Two four person tables squeezed up against the wall in what was really a closet designated the relaxation area. Soda syrup traced glass rings on the tables. Salt and scraps of French Fries lent atmosphere to the room. This is where we were allowed to be humans. The younger servers would flirt with each other and play games while sucking on their cigarettes. The older servers would stare bitterly at the wall, like those white bricks dashed their dreams so many decades ago, while sucking on their cigarettes. A server has an interesting relationship with cigarettes. Dolphins swim majestic loops through the ocean and hunt for food, maintaining a pose of power and grace. They can only do it for so long though before the laws of nature force them to the surface where they ejaculate water out of the top of their heads with a wet fart noise. Servers dance through the dining area, juggling trays of food and too many glasses at once while smiling so hard the corners of their mouths crack and bleed. When they make it to that break room, though, they collapse into a chair and gasp for the nicotine that sustains them. Clutching at hair and holding back a tear they convince themselves that they just have to get through today, that if they make fifty dollars they can get their son a new backpack. Then they go back out there and they keep smiling and laugh almost too hard at the customers' jokes.

I sucked those cigarettes down, too. Not because I was so stressed out or had a strong dependency at that point, but because I was a kid and I was scared to be around these people that seemed to know something about the world. These were not my teachers anxiously aiding me to a grade. These people had their own issues. Not only did they not care about how callous my ex-girlfriend and her bull dyke mom were, they would not even think to ask. Dolphins are one of the three species of animals that kill for fun. These guys weren't going to try to kill me, but they sure as shit weren't going to hold me to their collective bosoms and promise me the world was going to be alright. So I sucked down those cigarettes and pretended like I didn't expect them to.

this one is a lot cooler than what we wore