perkins

If patience is a virtue I must be a nun. Some people say that we have to put up with a lot of inconveniences in the present to achieve a better future, we have to stomach a bad steak to truly enjoy the pie. I can accept that. But my future better be bright, because I go through hell every Saturday night.
I am a self-supporting student. I have worked two jobs for the last four years, making enough to live in a small apartment, buy little to no clothing, eat pot noodles, and pay insurance. It gets hectic at times, but I look to the future and justify it all. But on Saturdays I invariably get caught in the horrible reality that is my present. If you haven't guessed, I am a waitress at an all night dinner. One that draws only the most disgusting, drunken, obnoxious of all people, people who get to treat me with no respect. I try to look to the future on Saturdays, oh how hard I try, but I am always brought back to the present.
I work the late shift. The pay would be good if the job was comparable to that of any other waitressing position. It is not, however, like any other waitressing position. Everything is different, the hours make it that way, the location of the restaurant makes it that way, and the customers make it that way. The only similarities between this restaurant and others are that they both serve food, although that is probably questionable as well.
The restaurant is conveniently located at the heart of a row of bars which I imagine taint their drinks with some unknown chemical making their customers so hungry that they predictably become my customers only to realize later that a plate of eggs and hash browns really was not what they needed, but rather a good purging of their guts. This leads to a constant smell which combines all the joy of stomach acid and bile with the aroma of burnt potatoes and under lean meat.
As the bars patrons quietly eat, puke, and leave the joint begins to fill with another group of customers I politely refer as the "munchie-afflicted." While they are most certainly less angst ridden and sick to the stomach, they carry with them their own forms of inconvenience. With out fail they must examine the menu for thirty minutes, and when they finally do order it is composed of ten different side dishes, five of which they will adamantly refuse to pay for because 'they did not order them.' This leads them to more confusion, and they quietly leave without tipping.
As those afflicted with the munchies begin to file out of my fine work environment, I can't help but thank my lucky stars. This is because the next group which begins to fill my tables is the most angst ridden of them all, and usually take a strong disliking to those who look like easy targets. If my earlier stoned customers remain there would most likely occur some sort of altercation between them and the entering 'rough, tough and eight hours worth of drunk' crowd. At this point I will be verbally abused while pouring hot coffee, propositioned for lude yet highly creative sexual acts, and always get at least one salt shaker upside down gag. There is often, yet thankfully not always, someone who steps up the conduct to the next level by finding some new place to pour deciliters of maple syrup or finding a way to break not one, not two, but three plates underneath his table without my knowledge.
I know that it is not simply in my head that this job is undesirable. My fellow employees are a medley of high school dropouts, slipping reformed addicts and alcoholics, and a slew of others who use their work hours as a trigger event to vent all their frustration and problems and make me listen. Although we don't have much in common we still all enjoy the rare moments when we as the victim get to 'take the power back' and kick out some vagrant or trouble maker, or better yet make statements to the police explaining how the revolving pie rack became the revolving pie rack lying on its side in a pile of glass. It is through this camaraderie that we make the necessary small talk that flows like water through a workplace which employs a diverse crowd of people.
So every Saturday night I fight through the same frustrations, the same anger, and the same predictable groups of people. I do all this knowing that my friends are all out having a good time, and that I am stuck at work. I even begin to envy my customers, for although they lack manners and at times brains they do not lack enjoyment. And although I know that in the five hours that I have left on my shift I will be forced to put up with all shapes and sizes of shit, I also realize that in six hours I will be asleep and the night will be forever lost to the past. The future is not much of a consolation, not while you work where I work. No, the only consolation I have is spitting in the food.