| Coatroom duty. What a joke. A job reserved for people who don�t speak English. Yet, I�m back here like an obedient dog. Moreover, I am forced to make small talk. �Sure I�ll talk your coat for you.� I smile and obey. I laugh, high class, is the role I am supposed to play. Behind the faux-marble counter lined with cherry wood it smells like cheap cologne. Make me wonder who decided to spray that shit back here. Stupid questions. I hate these pointless questions. Part of being a waitress is dealing with your average person, who is an idiot. I can�t stand average. I feel like answered everyone �No hables Engles.� That�s the way it should be anyway. Educated Americans don�t belong doing animal work. There�s no respect for the working class nowadays. I�m sixteen and I feel like I�m getting the short end of the stick, when it come to treatment. Am I any less human? No. if anything my position in society is more respectable. I am part of the under appreciated working class. Screw society. What a joke. It looks like there used to be a cabinet. All the hinges and magnets are there, but there are no doors atop the sparsely painted beige plywood. Some of it wasn�t even worthy of paint. Somewhere along the line someone slapped on a wood pattern that is sticker- like. It is peeling at all ends. The cabinet is emblazon with initials of employees long gone, like footsteps in an alley. They leave only their prints, and forgotten memories. The shadows of the past were not so high class. Trash is scattered in the deep cabinets of initials and safety pins, napkins and tattered magazines. Nails pierce through the faux wood sticker and poke at the still air. Heat generates from the lights embedded in the white tiled ceiling. They�re so hot, I wonder if I could get sunburn. Tissues wait patiently at my right, for tears or the common cold, both of equal value. The faded painting of flowers stands alone, glaring at my back. I can feel its lost pinks, blues and yellows crying for a touch up. The mirror lets me look into it, and it into me. Trying to create some lost connection, from the painter, who is unknown. They stand as just a half illegible signature, with no hope of recognition. His flowers have long withered away, and become victims of time. Buttons whirr isolated in my left ear. Some labeled, chandelier and such, others not. But they still buzz accordingly to the distant conversation and missing silence, which the skin tone walls seem to cry for. The bricks across from me adorn the mirror previously spoken about. The bricks are scattered, like this clubs imitation class. This whole institution tries so hard to be what it never can. There�s nothing calming about the whispers about the chaotic quiet. |
| Coatroom duty |