Episode 34: How to Experience a Chain Restaurant

I've worked at a lot of different restaurants in my life but the only one that really resembled a chain was a place in North Carolina called Fitzgerald's. There were only two of them, so maybe that doesn't count. But they were carbon copies of each other, with fake 1920s memorabilia and spats hung on the wall and stupid machine-gunned bullet holes in the wall. Because yeah, nothing sounds more delicious than a filet named after Zelda Fitzgerald, who went insane and died in a fire when her nuthouse burned down. Make mine well done, please!

Anyway, there was this big tall country-assed donkey girl named Mary who worked there and she had a way with the tables, yes she most certainly did! More than once, I'd hear her say something like "Land sakes, you'd think a big fella like you coulda cleared his plate! You can do it, Big Boy" and the guy would be like a full-grown forty-year old. Or "okay, y'all, you got everything? 'Cause I gotta go take a crap so if you need me I'll be in the bathroom..." She got complaints all the time but she never got fired, largely because we were all fairly sure she had a knife in her purse. Which brings me to: you should be nice to your servers, whether they're enslaved at a chain restaurant or a local independent. Because all the stories you hear about server revenge that people say are all exaggerations? They're not. I personally once saw a male server stir a bourbon & Coke with his winky and then serve it to some toothless hillbilly, who I must say totally deserved it for ordering a goddamned bourbon and Coke in the first place. I saw a hamburger bun go down someone's pants...front and back. You can complain about servers, you can even get them fired. But you can't un-eat the food they just clipped their toenails into. I'm just saying.