#14 Emerald Grill
A lovely little story about a terrible job that wasn't even one of my worst. Stay tuned for more!
Emerald Grill
The Emerald Grill was somewhere between a diner and a truck stop or maybe they are one and the same. Anyway, I usually worked 11-7 or 2-10. Sunday nights were typically slower but that’s when the repeat customers came in, including a couple in their 50’s who no one wanted to wait on. The man’s eyebrows were thick black caterpillars. He looked like a poor man’s Eugene Levy. The wife was about 6’ at least 250 pounds, always draped in a black fur coat, wearing red lipstick she could not keep off her teeth. A beast of a woman. She cast the shadow of Big Foot as she stomped across the icy parking lot in her Naturalizer boots, hanging onto her poor frail husband. To see them walk through the door was to anticipate disaster. It was impossible to guess what might set her off. She would lose her mind about the temperature of the soup or consistency of the gravy and the husband would just sit there admiring her. Was he brainwashed? Poisoned? I don’t know.
Sometimes she’d talk about their son and get lost telling stories about him, she was so kind while talking about him so I’d let her go on, knowing if I listened for too long, the food would come up, start to cool, and then she’d lay into me about that– “Quit dilly-dallying and do your job!” But if she started being nice, it was so rare, you wanted to keep that going.
One Sunday night they came in and the husband ordered a bowl of soup, as per usual, but she, who normally ordered an omelet or Denver sandwich, so she could complain about the eggs, asked for a hot hamburger but with French fries instead of mashed potatoes and no gravy.
Let me just tell you, a hot hamburger, anyone knows, is a hamburger patty served on white bread, cut diagonal and spread apart to make room for an ice cream scoop of mashed potatoes, and then the whole thing is covered in gravy. She insisted on French fries instead of mashed potatoes, even though the hot hamburger was the Sunday Special, and there are no substitutions on specials.
I went back to the kitchen looking for Wade the cook, but instead found Lambert, the mentally disabled dishwasher who was normally accompanied by his helper, but for some reason he worked solo on Sunday nights. Lambert always wore Dickies overalls. He had a black buzz cut and four teeth. He was in the cooks’ part of the kitchen, where he was not supposed to be. “Where’s Wade?” I asked.
“Wade’s in the cooler,” Lambert bellowed in his monotone gruff voice. Then he gave me a big gleaming 4-tooth smile.
“Better not be in the kitchen, Lambert,” I said.
“Are you gonna watch Matlock tonight!” he yelled.
“Oh, I don’t know.”
I walked back to the cooler and found Wade sitting on a stack of milk crates texting away on his phone.
“Wade, I’ve got an order.”
He didn’t look up, just nodded.
“Can you come and make it, please?”
He looked up at me, then back to texting. He folded his flip phone and then trailed me out of the cooler.
I went out to the waitress station and got my list ready for closing cleanup:
wrap pies and caramel rolls
fill all salad dressings, wrap and date
clean all the nozzles for the fountain pop
clean and refill all the ketchup bottles
vacuum
“No subs on specials,” Wade called.
“I know, I know. But can you please just do it? It’s for that crazy lady. No one else is here.”
We stared at each other for a few seconds.
“Please, Wade. Come on. I do not want to deal with her tonight.”
“Whatever.”
I hoped that meant he was going to do it. I knew what I was really asking: I was asking Wade to make a hamburger and fries, substitute the bun for white bread, and charge her $5.99 instead of $7.99.
Things weren’t going well between Wade and I, so this order–the substitution–only added to the contention. When I first started working at the Emerald Grill, he was dating another waitress, Angie. I was surprised to find out about this coupling because Wade was around 26 and a dork, not good looking, probably 5’8”, and not athletic. Angie was very cute, very athletic (she was in high school with me and played all the sports) and younger than me, and I was 20 at the time. I think Wade knew she was out of his league and it was only a matter of time, but while things were still good, he was VERY high on life. He was actually the nicest cook at the Emerald Grill. Compared to Dennis, who was either hungover, drunk, or anxious to get drunk, and Justin, who sometimes went to the back to throw plates on the floor because he had anger issues and he told us it was therapeutic to break dishes and much better than bashing someone’s head in, Wade was the perfect co-worker.
The imminent break up happened and Wade seemingly broke with it. He turned quiet, angry, and exceptionally hard to work with. When there were two or more waitresses on the floor, things didn’t get too bad. He knew he was outnumbered. But on Sunday nights, it was just me and Wade. I’d ask for things like, side of gravy, side of BBQ sauce, and he’d throw compotes up in the window, not making eye contact, and then retreat to the cooler. He went from playing pop music, Nelly and Papa Roach, to dark, angry heavy metal. A few weeks after the breakup, Wade set his sights on me. Not only was I uninterested, I was already in love and cohabitating with my high school sweetheart. Wade spun this as yet another rejection which made our working relationship even worse. The worst thing for a waitress is to be on the outs with the cook. It can make or break a shift or your whole job.
“Order!” Wade called.
“Order!” Lambert called from the dish area.
I placed a napkin on a salad plate and then put a soup bowl on the napkin. The napkin kept the bowl from sliding around. I filled the bowl with minestrone soup, added two packets of saltine crackers and a soup spoon, grabbed the hamburger from the hot window, and carried the food out to my table.
“Can I get you anything else?” I asked. They both looked at their plates, quite pleased with their orders.
I went back to the kitchen to start cleaning and filling ketchup bottles. I had already taken all the bottles from the non-smoking tables and lined them up by one of the big sinks in the back. I grabbed a stainless steel mixing bowl from the dish area.
“Can you get me a roast beef sandwich”? Lambert bellowed.
“Let’s wait till your shift is over, Lambert.”
I had made the mistake of buying Lambert a roast beef sandwich a few months earlier. Then a milkshake. Wade had warned me, “Don’t start.” I didn’t listen. Lambert was like a cat and he’d gotten increasingly more demanding.
I filled the mixing bowl with hot water, twisted all the ketchup lids off and put them in the water to soak.
A few minutes had passed so I went back out to ask wannabe Eugene Levy and his awful wife how everything was going. She was looking for me, anticipating my return, and when she saw me come through the swinging doors of the kitchen, she began summoning me with her hand. As I got closer she beckoned with her finger rather than the whole hand. At the table, she continued with the finger, “I want you to see something,” she said, gesturing toward her plate. “These are class B French fries. I’d like class A French fries.”
“I’m sorry, what?” I’d only ever heard of American fries, the little square breakfast potatoes, and French fries, the more popular of the two. I knew of wedge cut fries, crinkle cut fries, and steak fries. But I wasn’t a French fry expert by any means.
She picked up a fry, inspected it, and put it back on the plate. “These are class B fries,” she repeated. “Look at them, they’re like the cast offs, the second chances of fries. I am used to beautiful golden fries, and these are not class A fries. Can you go ask Wade to please make me some class A fries?”
“Sure,” I said, turning back to the kitchen. And because she had referred to Wade by name, I assumed she knew him and he would know exactly what she’s talking about.
“Hey, Wade? Can you remake the fries for my table? She wants class A fries.”
“She wants what?”
“Class A fries?”
“What are you saying?” he asked.
“My table? The lady, the beast, says she wants Class A fries,” I thought if I used her clever name it may ease the tension between me and Wade.
He nodded.
“She says she wants class A fries and that the fries on her plate are class B fries.”
“Go ask her what the fuck class A fries are. We have one kind of french fries. Fries in a bag.”
I returned to the table, “Miss, Wade said we only have one kind of fries, and they’re always the same.”
“Look at these,” she said, finger-kicking them around her plate. “These are french fry PIECES. I want CLASS A fries.”
“I’m sorry ma’am but I asked Wade specifically, I said ‘class A’ and he doesn’t know what that means. We get all the fries from the same company. They’re all the same.”
She shook her head. “No, when you go to Simplot* they classify the fries. They separate them into different classes–Class A, Class B, and probably hashbrowns.”
*Simplot was the potato plant in town a few miles down the road. It made our whole town smell like french fries.
She just stared at me.
Does this lady really think I’m deeply invested in this job? Furthermore, does she think I have anything to do with the french fry classification system at Simplot? And what does that have to do with us? And even more furthermore, what does she think I can do about it here, at the Emerald Grill, at the mercy of Wade, a pouty man boy with a twice-broken heart?
I didn’t know what else to do. I walked away.
Lambert had come out from the kitchen and was sitting on a barstool at the counter, watching a Christmas movie playing on the TV.
A man had come through the front door and was standing at the cash register.
“Hi,” I said approaching the till. “Can I help you?”
“I want to place a to-go order,” he said.
“OK, what would you like?”
He looked up at me and laughed as if sharing a joke with himself, as if there was something on my face I wasn’t aware of. These types of interactions weren’t that rare for a 20 year-old me, or 20 year-old women in customer service, in general. The distance between a person’s position in life and the hugeness of their ego increases the pleasure they take in being rude to customer service people.
I squinted, sneered at him, his tinted glasses and what looked to be a toupee. Look, anyone coming to the Emerald Grill was questionable, period.
“I’ll take an order of french fries with a side of gravy.”
I wanted to tell him, “you should know our fries tonight are Class B.” But instead I rang up the total. “$3.24,” I said.
“I need a senior discount,” he said.
If he was 55, he was barely 55. And he was rubbing me the wrong way.
“Do you have an ID?”
Again he looked at me and laughed as if I was the joke! Ha! Buddy, you’re asking for a senior discount on a plate of fries! Class B fries at that!
Turns out he was 55 so I had to void the order and redo it with a 30 cent discount. I handed him his slip and returned to the kitchen to make sure Wade had gotten the cook’s copy, but he was missing again. I walked through the swinging doors and found him by the big sink and my lidless ketchups. He was drinking Michelob Light and I asked him where he got it.
“In the cooler,” he said.
“I have an order.”
“What is it?”
“Class B french fries. Class C if you can swing it.”
He smiled, the first time in a long time.
I knew I’d better go check on the Levy’s so I returned to the dining room to see them packing up to go.
“We need our slip,” the wife said.
“Sure thing,” I said. “I’ll meet you at the till.”
They paid a total of $11 for a hamburger and fries, a bowl of soup, and two cups of coffee. Stiffed me a tip, and told me as they were leaving, “I’m going to talk to Troy about you and about those french fries.”
“Wonderful,” I said, slamming the cash drawer.
Troy was the owner of the Emerald Grill, the one who kept the Michelob in the cooler and he was also having an affair with one of the waitresses, Lisa.
The guy who was waiting on french fries, posing as a senior citizen, must have heard her mention “awful fries,” and his eyes perked up, away from the free newspaper he was reading at a table.
“Order up,” Wade called.
I headed toward the hot window.
“Order up,” Lambert said as I passed him, still sitting at the counter.
I grabbed the styrofoam box of fries, lifted the lid to make sure there was gravy inside, and then walked it out to the guy in the dining room. I tried my best not to throw the box at him, then quickly turned to the other side of the dining room to clean up the Levy’s table. No tip there either. As I brought the dishes back to the kitchen, I noticed the french fry guy eating his fries at the table.
“Sir,” I called, “that’s a to-go order.”
I didn’t wait for him to respond.
Fuck that guy.
I went back to work on my ketchup. I wiped down the glass bottles.
Lambert had followed me to the back. “I’m ready for a roast beef sandwich,” he said.
“Not now, Lambert.”
We had a ketchup station on the wall which is a contraption I had not seen before and haven’t seen since the Emerald Grill. It looked like half a trash can with a split down the middle. You can Google it. It’s called “Vol-Pak Rack Wall Mounting and Valve Pump Kit for 3 Gallon Pouched Condiments” It’s specifically made for pillow-sized bags of ketchup. The bags had a valve on one end that you had to get in the split, and it made filling the ketchup bottles a piece of cake, but changing the ketchup bags was a pain in the ass.
Of course the ketchup in the wall mount was empty so I went to the back to get a new bag of ketchup. I slipped a new dispenser mouth piece on and tried to fling the ketchup bag into the wall mount. But I missed the split in the wall mount, where the dispenser is supposed to fit, the valve popped open, and a fountain of ketchup unloaded on my forearms.
Lambert started yelling and laughing, clapping his hands.
I was stunned, standing there covered in ketchup. I wanted to cry but I was still so mad. At the classless french fry lady, at Wade for being so difficult, at the asshole dirtying my table who would definitely not leave a tip.
“Lambert, will you please bring me some dish rags?”
Lambert, who normally didn’t seem to read the room or social cues, hustled to get me a stack of rags.
I turned on the sink and rinsed my arms with the sprayer, then sprayed the wall and the sides of the sink. Ketchup was dripping onto the floor, onto my new white Nikes. The mess just kept growing.
“Lambert, will you please get the trash can?”
Lambert hustled to find the trash can and wheeled it over to me. He looked in my eyes and closed his mouth.
“Nikki?” Wade called, rounding the corner to find me and Lambert. “What the fuck?”
I shook my head.
“The french fry guy is asking for you.”
“I can’t right now, Wade.”
I grabbed the 3 gallon bag of ketchup, which surprisingly still had a lot of ketchup inside of it. I heaved it in the trash can.
“What are you doing!?” Wade said. “You can’t just throw that away!”
“Wade, please just leave me alone!”
“So what, am I supposed to wait on that guy?”
“Really, Wade?” My voice cracked. “I am covered in ketchup! There is ketchup fucking everywhere! I have made ZERO dollars tonight. Will you please fucking help me or go away!?”
Lambert started laughing and clapping again.
“Get me a mop! Do SOMETHING! Help me!”
Wade stood there stunned.
“What about the french fries, Wade? What about the french fries! The french fries aren’t beautiful, Wade! I’m losing my fucking mind! The guy out there,” I increased my volume, hoping he’d hear me, “The guy out there can go FUCK HIMSELF WITH OUR CLASS B FRENCH FRIES! I’M LOSING IT. I’M FUCKING CRAZY. I’M FUCKING DONE!”
Lambert grabbed the “Vol-Pak Rack Wall Mount for 3 Gallon Pouched Condiments and tore it off the wall like the Hulk.
I went to the break room and grabbed my coat and purse.
“I’M LEAVING, WADE.”
I walked into the dining room and there was Mr. Senior Discount standing by the cash register. I looked over at the table where he had been sitting. The empty styrofoam box sat there next to a wad of napkins and used silverware.
“What!” I said, “What do you want? More free things? I’m not working for you! Clean up your mess and get out!”
Lambert had followed me. He was wearing his coat and mittens.
“Will you give me a ride?” he asked.
“No, Lambert. I’m not giving you a ride. And I’m not coming back.”
“Are you going to watch Matlock tonight!” he called after me.
I got in my car and never went back to the Emerald Grill.