The Worst Story in the History of Stories

04 Dec 2012 8 Comments

by Glory Bea in The Daily Grind Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

During Labor Day weekend, before things got really busy, a woman, 60ish, rushed in the café and asked if she could use the restroom.  Bagheera and I were at the counter rolling silverware when she rushed back out and snarled that we were out of paper towels.  She grabbed a handful of napkins out of the dispenser on the table and went back in the restroom.

Bagheera went to get paper towels while I continued to roll silverware.  I saw Bagheera walk down the hallway, knock on the door, and go in for about a minute.  Then she came hauling ass out of the hallway into the dining room, carrying a trash bag.  She hauled ass past me and said, “Please put a new trash bag in the bathroom.  I have to go home.”  Then the restroom woman stormed out of the café.

I stood there and wondered WTF?!  It was morning during Labor Day weekend, the busiest weekend of the year in Meeteetse, ravening hordes of people would be busting the door down, and WTF?!  I’m ALONE?!  What the fucking fuck?!

A few minutes later Bagheera’s oldest son showed up to help me and he told me why his mom came home puking and was now laying down with a cold towel on her face.  When she went in the restroom to stock the paper towels she dropped the keys in the trash.  Since she had just cleaned the restrooms and emptied the trash she stuck her hand in the little swinging door on the top of the trash can and right into a Depends full of warm runny shit.  The worst part was the woman who dropped the Depends in the trash stood right behind Bagheera and let her stick her hand in it. 

Things would have turned out differently if I had been in Bagheera’s shoes.

It was hours before I saw Bagheera again and she was green for the rest of the day.  There was also some random gagging.

I took over restroom duties not long after that and at first I asked myself:  Who does this shit?  I kept finding gum in the urinal…until I loudly mentioned to, well, everyone in the bar, that the person who fishes the gum out of the urinal is the same person who patties their hamburgers.  Now I find a lot less of a mess.  I seldom find tobacco on the walls or paper towels on the floor, because everyone knows they will get an ass chewing.   

Fear is an excellent motivator.

Wasting Time

13 Nov 2012 9 Comments

by Glory Bea in The Daily Grind Tags: , , , , , , , ,

I don’t know what it is about the Outlaw, but some people think I have nothing but time on my hands.  Granted, the cafe is small and there may be only one or two tables of customers at a time, but what customers don’t see are the half a dozen tickets from the bar side.  I seldom have time to slap my ass with both hands let alone play games with people.

One night Bagheera was busy making pizza dough and I was cooking for/waiting on a couple of tables when two older women came in.  I gave them menus and asked if they wanted anything to drink.  They didn’t.  I went to the kitchen for about 5 minutes and went back out to take their order.  They hadn’t even looked at the menu.  I went to the kitchen for 5 more minutes.  When I returned to their table they still hadn’t decided, but wanted me to describe half of the menu.  I went back to the kitchen for another 5 minutes and received four or five more tickets from the bar.  Before I started the bar orders I went back to the women, hoping to get their order.  They laughed, said they still hadn’t decided, but if I would bring them Cokes they would be ready when I got back.  I wanted to beat them senseless with the menus.  What is going to change in the minute it takes me to grab Cokes?  I gave them 15 minutes to think about their Cokes before I went back.  They ordered two cheeseburgers.  Fucking hags.  I wasn’t sitting on my ass in the kitchen, I was juggling food in between playing their stupid game of wasting my time. 

I am very passive/aggressive.  You want to waste my time, I’ll waste yours.

Another night we were overwhelmed with pizza orders.  Bagheera was trapped at the pizza station so I went out to wait on a large table.  They ordered 3 pizzas and when I asked if they wanted anything else, one guy said, “Go put that order in, and come back.  I’ll tell you then if I want a salad or not.”  Seriously?  Fuck you.  You know NOW whether or not you want a salad, you are just playing games.  I did what he said.  I prepped his 3 pizzas (5 minutes each) then went back to see if he wanted a salad.  He was all out of joint because I didn’t come back immediately.  I explained that I did exactly as he said, I put the order in and came back, bad on him for assuming I was the waitress with time to waste instead of the cook.

Don’t play games.

Saturday night I was busy as hell on the bar side, but dead on the cafe side.  On those nights I let Bagheera go home since there isn’t much she can do for me.  Suddenly though, two tables walked in the cafe at the same time Foghorn Leghorn brought me a handful of tickets from the bar.  I got the order for the first table and went to see if the second table was ready to order.  “No!” one of the women snapped at me.  They were passing cell phones around looking at pictures and videos.  Her husband suggested I come back.  I smiled and said, “I have six orders from the bar so I’m going to go start them.  I’ll be back when I reach a stopping point…I’m guessing 10 to 15 minutes.  Okay?”  Holy shit.  They were certainly ready to order.  Again, fuck you.  If you want to have home movie night, do it AFTER you order.  You aren’t just wasting MY time, you are wasting EVERYONE’S time.

And I guess that’s why it pisses me off so much.  I’m paid to be there.  I’m paid to wait on/cook for people.  However, when one table holds me up there’s a cascade effect and everyone suffers.  I view it as inconsideration beyond belief.  The more time I spend playing games with one table, the longer it is for another table to get their food.  Order your damned food so everyone can eat.   

Bastards.

Doing Things My Way

10 Nov 2012 7 Comments

by Glory Bea in The Daily Grind Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

How things work at the Cowboy/Outlaw:

  • I cook, Bagheera waits tables in the cafe, I get the tips as part of my wage.
  • The bartenders service their own tables, they get the tips.  The kitchen does their dishes, rolls their silverware.
  • If there is a large table in the bar or any table the bartender is too busy to wait on, Bagheera or I wait on it, the bartender gets the drinks, we split the tip.  The kitchen does the dishes and rolls the silverware.
  • The kitchen is responsible for all cleaning, which includes the kitchen, cafe, bathrooms and mopping the bar.

Where this goes wrong:

  • The bartenders are a bunch of lazy fucking communists.  Why work when someone else will do it and you’ll still get paid the same amount?
  • The bartenders are greedy fuckers.
  • The bulk of the work load falls on the kitchen.  There are times I’m on my hands and knees scrubbing some mess while the bartenders are sitting on their asses, watching TV. 

Where this has gone wrong recently:

  • A group of 15 people came in for dinner. 
  • I took their order, cooked their food, Bagheera delivered their food, the bartender (the one who can’t spell ‘potato’) delivered about $30 worth of drinks. 
  • Bagheera & I cleaned the tables, did the dishes, rolled the silverware.
  • The bartender couldn’t figure 20% for the auto-grat and ended up shorting the tip by $10.  
  • Bagheera and I did the bulk of the work, yet I had to split the tip with the bartender, who shorted the auto-grat and screwed me out of $5.  
  • I pointed out that when I worked at The Harribalsac we split the tip based on sales, so the person doing the most work got the most money.  It encouraged people to actually, you know, work.

How I plan to fix this:

  • Tonight a group of 9 men came in for dinner. 
  • Bagheera took their order, I cooked their steaks, I refilled their drinks (twice), I cleaned their tables. 
  • When it came time to figure the ticket, I did the auto-grat.  I gave Foghorn Leghorn 20% of his sales…$5.  He was shocked and dumbfounded because it was a $50 tip.

I would have split the tip evenly, but he tried to give the table to his girlfriend (who was off shift and drinking) so the tip would stay with them.  That isn’t the way things work and he knows it.  The bartenders had a huge kerfluffle about a month ago when the dumbass who can’t spell came in off the clock, waited on a table and took the tip.  Everyone thought she should be fired for taking money from Foghorn Leghorn’s girlfriend.  Since he’s a greedy fucker it’s okay to do the same thing to me though.

They should know better than to try that shit with me.

Plus, I’m still a little pissed about the buffalo T-bone incident.  About a month ago a guy in the bar ordered a buffalo T-bone and a soda.  He ate the steak, drank the soda, and said it was the best steak he’d ever had.  Foghorn Leghorn’s girlfriend came into the kitchen and said, “That guy was so impressed with the steak he tipped Foghorn Leghorn and I $40.  Good job!”  Bagheera and I looked at each other in shock.  Whenever someone tipped me very well because of the cook, I ALWAYS split the tip with my cook.  She never even offered a dime.  I was dumbfounded.  Since then, any time I split a tip with her, she gets 30% instead of 50%.

I am not greedy.  I don’t need to make all the money in the world.  I’m all about letting my coworkers make money.  However, if they want to play the greedy game, I’m more than willing to play it with them.  They are either going to start working and being a little more thankful for the work the kitchen does, or they are going to spend a lot of time wondering why they aren’t making any money.

Updates for The Cast of Characters

05 Nov 2012 11 Comments

by Glory Bea in The Daily Grind Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

I updated the “Cast of Characters” and as you can see, a lot of people bit the dust while I was gone.

Cartman–he isn’t a bar/cafe employee, but he’s always underfoot.  He quit/got fired from the town for sleeping on the job and general laziness.  Bagheera warned me that I should be nicer to him because she thought he was going to go on a shooting rampage, most likely starting with me.  What gave her the clue?  He started selling all his guns for bargain basement prices, but said he was holding on to one AK-47.  Cartman gets free samples and compliments now.

Betty Booze–her days were always numbered, but even I didn’t imagine how complete her downfall would be.  She lost her full time job at the Visitor Center, broke up with her long time boyfriend, Shaggy,  and started living with Davey in a one room house. 

But wait!  There’s more. 

Her 15 year old daughter was arrested for minor in possession of alcohol, which put child protective services up Betty Booze’s ass.  She started popping Davey’s pills, went batshit insane, and just stopped showing up for work.  Davey’s Mormon landlady didn’t like him living in sin, so she evicted both of them.  They had their shit packed in a piece of shit row boat one day when Michele & I drove by their house, and I laughed so fucking hard I couldn’t get a picture.  They moved into a shed owned by a rodeo clown.

I am not making this up.

Everything was fine until one night Davey went on a pill and alcohol rage and threw all of Betty Booze’s stuff in the river.  He went to jail.

I’m sure their story isn’t over yet.    

Shaggy–cut his losses and moved away.  He’s one of the lucky ones.

Davey–if I didn’t think I would get in trouble I would post his mug shot from his most recent stay in jail.

Drizella–got knocked up and quit.

Doc–tried to drink himself to death, spent a week in an induced coma, currently looking for a new liver.  This one isn’t funny. 

Of course, we found replacements for the fallen.  Of course, they are dysFUNctional.

Here’s a teaser:

Special Board:  Hog Wings & Potatoe Salad

Me:  Who keeps putting an ‘e’ on the end of potato?

New Hire in Search of a Nickname:  I do.  That’s the correct way to spell it.

Me:  Ok, Dan Quayle.

New Hire:  Who’s Dan Quayle.

Me:  The former Vice President of the United States who chastised an elementary student for misspelling ‘potato’ only to find out he was wrong.

New Hire:  I have spell check on my phone, and it says it’s right.

Me:  The dictionary on my phone says you’re wrong.

Idiot.  I’m surrounded.

The Gravy Nightmare

14 Aug 2012 11 Comments

by Glory Bea in The Daily Grind Tags: , , , , , , , ,

We have two types of gravy, brown and white.  During the summer when we are overworked and understaffed we are supposed to have one type of gravy, white.  However, Speedy insists “you can’t run a restaurant with only one type of gravy” and continues to make brown gravy.  When Bagheera and I said we were getting rid of it Speedy ordered 3 cases of that shit.

I’ve told all of the bartenders that customers DO NOT get a choice of gravy.  They get what I give them, which is usually white.  The last thing I want is a ten top all ordering different potatoes and gravy.  Fuck that shit.

Is this a hard concept?

Every time I work with Foghorn Leghorn (4 nights a week) I have to tell him, “Customers don’t get a choice of gravy!  They get what I have.”  He then looks utterly confused as if it’s news to him.

I got my ass handed to me on Saturday night.  For some reason it was steak night and everybody wanted a different temperature…rare, mid rare, sort of pink, not pink but not burned, well done, well done, but very tender…I wanted to scream.  This was going on in the bar and in the restaurant.  I was ready to curl up in the fetal position by the trash can and find my Happy Place.

Then Foghorn Leghorn started the gravy choice shit.  I was polite for the first two or three tickets, then I started screaming at him.

During this madness, for reasons unknown to me, people started poking their head over the swinging doors to the kitchen and yelling their orders to Bagheera, rather than sitting down and letting her take their order. 

I lost my fucking my mind.

Then I ran out of white gravy.  I scrambled around and found a container of brown gravy from the day before.  I told Foghorn Leghorn we were now serving brown gravy and again, STOP GIVING PEOPLE A GRAVY CHOICE.

The very next ticket he brought in the kitchen was for fries with country gravy.  I wadded it up in a ball, screamed, “WE DON’T HAVE ANY FUCKING WHITE GRAVY!” and threw it in his face.  He stammered that he didn’t know what “country gravy” was, which made me wonder:

  1. Does he think we have three types of gravy?
  2. Is he really that dumb?
  3. Is he trying to push me over the edge?

  Bagheera told him to get out of the kitchen.  As in now.  I was going to kill that little fucker, but I couldn’t find my knife.

Then there was some issue about cheese on the fries instead of gravy we didn’t have.  Bagheera told him to leave the kitchen and not come back until he pulled his head out of his ass.

The only smart thing he did all night was he stopped a customer from coming in the kitchen to ask for white gravy.

Every time I tried to fall asleep Saturday night, I woke up asking myself, “What the fuck is his problem with the gravy?”  I was awake until 6 in the morning.

Sunday was a slow day and Bagheera and I spent the day cleaning and relaxing.  Foghorn Leghorn spent his day off drinking in the bar.  When we closed we wandered over to the bar and right in front of several of our regular customers, Bagheera asked Foghorn Leghorn, “So…did you ever figure out the deal with the gravy?”  Everyone started laughing because apparently they could hear me yelling at him all the way over in the bar.

Foghorn Leghorn said, “We had a gravy choice until you started working here.  I just haven’t adjusted to it yet.”

I said, “I’ve been here 6 months.  How much more time do you need?”

I didn’t hear his answer over all the laughter.

Dumbass.

Today’s Deadly Sin: Envy

30 Jul 2012 12 Comments

by Glory Bea in The Daily Grind Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

More than a month ago Speedy Gonzales and I got into a big assed fight and I haven’t spoken to her since.  Speedy is 74 years old, looks 55 and acts like she’s 12.  She’s this little bity speck of a Mexican woman whom I’ve known all my life.  That means I know she’s a backstabbing child, but it doesn’t make things any better.

During the fight she called me lazy and a liar and told me I could kiss her ass…all because she thinks Bagheera likes me more. 

Whatever. 

I know I’m neither lazy nor a liar, but it pissed me off that she was willing to be such a freaking child.  “Bagheera used to spend time with me, now she spends all her time with you.”  Waa, boo hoo.  (I’m not making this up.)  She twisted every conversation I had with her into “Holly thinks she’s in charge.”  News flash:  I’m barely in charge of myself and I certainly don’t want to be in charge of the hot mess that is the restaurant.  Furthermore, don’t put your issues off on me.  So, I quit talking to her.  If I refuse to acknowledge her existence, she can’t gossip and lie about what I said.

When Eeyore got the boot, we were without a pie maker, so I stepped in.  Prior to this, my idea of a cream pie was flavoured instant pudding in a pie shell with Cool Whip on top.  Fruit pies came out of a can.  I’ve spent the last month looking up pie recipes and thanks to my friend Michele I have a killer pie crust recipe (it’s called Great Value rolled out pie crusts).  My coconut cream pie is heavenly.  The strawberry rhubarb is awesome.  I made a Pepsi cake that sold out in less than a day.  A slice of Key Lime pie makes you think you are sitting in Miami.  I’ve learned how to make the pie crusts beautiful with different patterns on the edges and tops. 

I’ve put a lot of effort into this and it’s paying off.  People are stopping in for dessert in the afternoons.  People are buying desserts to go.  We are even selling desserts in the bar.  The bartenders are dumbfounded because they are serving pie and beer.  That never used to happen.  Best of all, the profit margin is insane and knowing this, King Triton bought a little glass front cooler to showcase my pies.  Well, also because he thinks I’m awesome.

So naturally Speedy has to horn in on my action.  All the attention I’m getting has turned her green with envy.  It doesn’t look good on her.  She made a peach pie (with filling from a can) with a homemade crust that was so thick and burned we had to toss it.  Today she made a peach cobbler (with filling from a can) that looks like a glop of pie filling on a  plate.  I knew we had to use up the pie filling Eeyore ordered, and I had planned to make a crazy crust peach pie that is truly awesome, but hell no.  Let’s make some sloppy shit instead.

Maybe I’m being childish about this.  Maybe I should let her continue to make her shitty desserts and keep my mouth shut.  I don’t want anyone confusing my desserts with hers, though. 

No, I think I get to be childish about this, dammit.

Do The Hustle!

30 Jul 2012 7 Comments

by Glory Bea in The Daily Grind Tags: , , , , , ,

Last Sunday there was some kerfluffle in the bar (imagine that) involving some bikers.  Apparently, some of the men wanted to “mess up” one of the women and the next thing I knew she was in the kitchen (WHY?!) sitting on the floor by the dishwasher, snotting and bawling.

What is it about the kitchen?  Why does it turn into the bullshit overflow from the bar?  The problems are created over there, why can’t they stay over there?

Since I’m full of sympathy for dumbass biker chicks, I knelt beside her, gave her a hug, let her cry on my shoulder and offered to buy her a shot. 

Yeah, not really. 

I glared at her and said, “You can’t be here.  Your problems are self created.  Get out.”

But Bagheera, alway a kind soul (and always someone who gets conned) wanted to give her a safe place to stay until the rest of the gang left.  My advice was to throw the bikers out of the bar and throw the chick out of the kitchen before we all got tangled up in some sort of biker gang bang.

After about 20 minutes of listening to her sob, I felt bad and chastised myself for being so mean.  I looked at the woman and realized she’s not much older than my daughter.  What if it was my own daughter sitting on some random kitchen floor, crying and afraid of being beat up by a bunch of bikers (for being a whore).  Screw that.  My daughter would never put herself in that sort of position.

Eventually the biker people left and the chick left the kitchen for the bar, where everyone felt sorry for her and started buying her drinks.  Before long she was feeling good enough to let her boobs hang out, and by the end of the night she felt good enough to go home with some guy.

Since then she’s been hustling pool and turning tricks for money.  She’s none too particular about her johns either.  She offered it to the former deputy sheriff the other night.  He hasn’t bathed since 1987, and some nights it takes everything I have not to puke on the floor when I walk by him.  He bought her a cheeseburger instead, proving that when you don’t care enough to wash up, you really don’t care about anything.

All the other Flying Ass Monkeys are in overdrive thinking they might get laid.  I find it amusing in a disgusted sort of way.  I do love a good train wreck and this one is going to be grand.

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