Have you seen these?
A Year in Books - 2009-12-27
Skip Tracer, Loan Detective - 2009-11-22
New Job - 2009-11-03
The coleslaw got served. - 2009-10-21
Probably a new job. But maybe not. - 2009-10-08

I Hate Basketball
2003-01-10 7:04 p.m.

It is now 8:12 a.m. I don't have to be to work until 5 tonight. That, my friends, is a day off as far as I'm concerned.

The restaurant sucks. I worked 9 hours yesterday, and made about $50. That's not even a bad day. A bad day is when I only make $60 or so. Wednesday, for example, was a bad day. So was Monday, now that I think about it. But $50 is just the Tip Gods mocking me.

I blame the college basketball teams. See, apparently, the basketball season has started, but school hasn't. The college doesn't want to open up the dining room for just 30 students, so once a day, the players come into the restaurant. They order whatever they want, sign the back of the ticket, and walk out. In a month or so, someone from the college will show up, get into an argument with Nick about what "tax exempt" means, and eventually pay the bills plus 15% for a tip.

There's so many kinds of pain involved in this that I don't even know where to start. First of all, they're a Team. They have the Team Mentality, and seem to like doing things as a Team. As a Team, 12-15 people come into a small restaurant, and want to sit together, as a Team. They're not doing anything else! OK, they've got practices, and an occasional game, but there must be more than an hour each day they have free. Why do they all decide to come in to eat together?

You've got to understand, it's a small restaurant. Small dining room. There's only 17 tables. Having 5 of them filled all at once throws a major wrench into everything, especially for the poor server who just effectively lost her whole section for an hour. It sucks for the other servers too, of course, because their sections get overfilled with all the normal customers, but at least they'll get a tip for their troubles.

Small kitchen, with an itty-bitty grill. The cooks freak out a little when you try to give them a ticket for a party of 6. A Team ticket makes the cooks cry.

And oh my God, the milkshakes. The women's team prefers chocolate milk. But of the 15 men's players, at least 10 of them want a milkshake. Waitresses make the milkshakes. Even that wouldn't be so bad if as a Team, they could take a vote and order say, 10 chocolate shakes today, and tomorrow maybe strawberry. But noooo. Two chocolate shakes, two strawberry malts, three chocolate malts, one vanilla shake, two more chocolate shakes, two vanilla malts, and a strawberry shake. Every single day. Twice, on game days. Only two more weeks until school starts....

And then, every single day without fail, one of the regulars says, "My! What a lot of tall guys!" (Strangely, the women players are not particularly tall. Of course, I'm 5'8", so no one my size ever seems tall. You've got to be at least six feet before you even register in my mind as a tall person.)



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