Short Stories Before Work
Okay — I’m sorry, this just blows my mind. Read this from TPM.
Could someone please explain to me just what in the fuck we did for the Iraqi people that we should feel they owe us anything, much less any sort of attempt to do anything besides blow our shit up at every available opportunity? What the fuck. We invaded their country. We killed them en masse. We turned their cities into rubble, imprisoned and tortured them — fucking A, we can’t even keep their goddamn lights on over there! We can’t run their country as well as Saddam Hussein did! We haven’t done anything but fuck up, exploit them, and get them killed, and now we’ve mismanaged our amusing little war into a fucking civil war for the Iraqis, and now our leaders have the unmitigated gall to climb up on their fucking high horses and act like the Iraqis aren’t pulling their weight. Oh my fucking god, what is wrong with us? We are insane for thinking like this. Seriously. We are seriously, deeply, sickly fucked up in the head.
It just blows my mind.
I’ve got this dishwasher — we’ll call him Stanley, because that’s actually his nickname, don’t know why. He’s a good kid, got a girlfriend, and an adorable little baby girl. He’s poor. He’s had the flu the last couple of days. We’ve got a seriously nasty flu bug going around at the moment. Well, he’s so poor, he just can’t afford to miss work, end of story. So, yesterday, he drags himself up off his death bed and staggers into work.
I caught sight of him in the dish tank, just barely saw the side of his face, and came to a screeching halt. Now, I’ve seen folks who were pasty white because they were so sick — I’ve even seen folks who tinged just a bit green. But when I saw Stanley, I honestly thought for a second that the Zombie Apocalypse had begun. He was walking dead gray. Really. I almost went for the headshot just out of instinct. I’ve never seen anyone turn that color of ashen gray in my life. I sent him home. Later on, I sent his cousin, the cook, out to Stanley’s house with a care package of Immodium AD and Gatorade, with aspirins and saltines from the restaurant, because I found out the kid didn’t have any money to get any medicine or go to the doctor or anything.
This is why I support universal health care. Even shitty health care is better than no health care.
We’ve had an ongoing issue at the restaurant with our TVs. We have this useless gang of non-job-having loser old men that come into the place and camp out all day, being assholes and smoking and drinking up all the coffee and just generally being a pain in everyone’s ass. Recently, we took a bunch of complaints about playing CMT (Country Music Television) on the TVs, due to racy videos and the Dallas Cheerleaders jiggling their tits all over the TV screen. The little old church ladies and uptight parents were all in a dither and bitching up a fit, so we stopped playing CMT.
The ringleader of the useless old farts, we’ll call him Dick, had a fit because he couldn’t watch his jiggly Dallas cheerleaders while bitching at the waitresses and drinking all our coffee for eight hours a day, every day. Seriously. He lives in our restaurant.
Dick has stirred up no end of misery and trouble, including trying to get Mary and I in trouble with shitty comment cards about us, bribing the waitresses to turn the channel — this has spiraled all out of control, and turned into High Drama at the place. Dick has even incited other customers to get involved, including this ex-drunk, middle-aged loser of a lady who camps out on my shift. She’s been up in my face, literally, twice now over wanting to watch CMT.
A couple of nights ago, she was in the restaurant, spending all her time glaring hatred and death at me. Every time I looked, she was glaring at me. Finally, I started grinning and waving at her every time I looked over and saw her giving me the shit eye. She was so mad, I’m surprised I didn’t get hit. She slammed her money down on the counter when she came up to pay, just glaring daggers and murder at me, and I gave her a huge smile and yelled “Merry Christmas!” after her when she stormed out. Heh. She was so pissed off. She hasn’t been in the last couple of days, so I’m hoping I made her so mad she won’t be back.
