Hello, my name is Nicholas Jeff. Try not to make too much fun of my name, but I would agree that it’s pretty fucked up. And so is my life. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t have any horribly wrong with me, but I just get into these dumb situations that just drive me crazy.
For example, today, I woke up, stepped out of bed, slipped on a Lego and landed face first onto an end table, which was on the side of my bed. I guess I hit it so hard, because my laptop, which was on the table, somehow fell off and cracked. Now, this should be an omen for a bad day. But I promise myself that I would not look at things like this as if it was going to be a bad day. I’m going to try to worry about the laptop until later, think positive and move on to try to get to work by 10:30 a.m. It’s 10:25 and it takes 20 minutes to get there. Not to mention, I still need a shower and eat something. Okay so I’ll just call my job—phone’s dead, the battery wasn’t charged. So I just took a shower, made a quick sandwich, and ate it on the way to work, which I arrived 33 minutes late—shortly after we open at 11 a.m.
“Nick!” my boss, Donald, yelled, “You’re late!”
I told myself not to panic, I was just going to tell him a lie based on the truth. “Yeah, I slipped out of bed and –”
“You have a write up waiting for you in my office. I need you to sign it! Try not to be late anymore because that’s your second offense.”
Umm, didn’t I lie wrong? Cause last time I check, I really did slip out of bed. That was the part that was true. I didn’t even get a chance to tell my lie yet. Never mind that, let’s just try to keep this positive.
If I didn’t mention before, I bus tables at a restaurant called Shelly Sholes’ Bar and Grill. We serve pastas, pizzas, ribs and, well basically an American Cuisine. But it’s very expensive; you could easily pay $50 just for three courses and a non-alcoholic drink. Even with my discount, the same meal would cost $25, but Corporate is working on getting rid of that—but that’s a whole other story all together.
Anyhow, I was walking around the semi crowd restaurant to make sure that everything I needed to start my shift was done: fill up ice tea bins, fill up all the ice bins, and make sure there were clean rags everywhere. Well, everything was done except the ice tea bins, which require me to brew the tea in a three gallon pot, and move it to the proper section to cool off for its next use. As I was started brewing, a customer screamed: “Hey I been waiting of over an hour to get some ice tea, how long does it take to freaking make some freaking ice tea?” The funny thing is that we only been open for a few minutes, maybe fifteen, but definitely not an hour.
“Okay sir, I’ll get you some ice tea as soon as it’s ready.”
“And how long will that be?”
“I dunno, two or three minutes, maybe five. I just start—”
“Hurry up, I don’t have all day.” He cut his eyes at me as he tapped his wristwatch. You know maybe it me, but nothing I say seems to be important. I can’t seem to finish a thought to say my life.
Minutes later, the ice tea is finished brewing, but was still very hot. The customer keep staring at me like a one year old would wants something you’re eating, but can’t seem to ask for it.
“Sir,” I told him, “let me just let this cool off and—”
“I don’t have time to be waiting, I’m very thirsty and I need something to drink now. Just pour me the glass with a lot of ice.” Okay so I poured him a glass, with tons of ice, moved his full glass of ice water to the other side and placed his semi cold ice tea on the table.
“Okay sir, is there anything else I could get you?”
“Thank you.” Translate: get lost you served your purpose.
“Umm, just out of curiosity, was anything wrong with your water, anything I should address to—”
He looked at me like I was an unwanted houseguest who didn’t want to leave. “I don’t drink water. Thank you very much.” Translate: I’m serious, get lose before I call a manager, because you’re in my way.
For the next few minutes, everything seems to be fine. That customer was not asking me for anything, but I was talking to my manager for some reason—whatever. I was clearing and resetting table, alone, but effective. Everything seemed like it was going to be fine. In fact, I started to tell myself, this is why I have to stay as positive as I can because good things happen whenever I’m positive.
“Nick,” the manager said after he finished his conversation with the Ice-Tea man, “I’m going to need to see you in my office.”
In the office, Donald started the conversation with: “So what do you think you did wrong today? No more specifically, what do you think you did wrong with that customer?”
“I’m going to need you to be a little more specific. I have no clue what you’re talking about.”
“No clue whatsoever? Really?”
Really, no clue whatsoever. But I started to think out loud to figure out what I did. “Okay throughout course of the day, I’m getting coffees, sodas, even food to any number of customers. I’m talking to about 3% of them, which is very high for a busser. But there’s no way I could possibly remember every single on of them or every single thing I’ve done with them.”
“You served a man ice tea today correct?”
“I serve a lot of ice tea today.” But why did that ice tea man come to mind all of a sudden.
“Let me be frank here, because you don’t seem to know, and I don’t know as to why, but you served a man ice tea today and it was lukewarm. It nearly burned his tongue and that made me very concern—”
“I’m sorry, but how many people do you know nearly died of lukewarm burn wounds, let alone from lukewarm liquids?”
“You tone of sarcasm is going to get you fired.” He fired two people this week for saying worst.
“I’m just trying to understand—”
“The point is that we at Shelly Sholes take pride in making sure our customers get what they pay for. He paid $4.75 for ice tea. He should get cold ice tea. You need to make sure that if you’re getting someone ice tea, and I know you a busser, that really more of a servers job, but you need to make sure it’s cold. Or I’m going to pull you back up here and I’m not going to be nice about it like I am now.”
Nice? He called this conversation nice? Man, I oughtta—wait…I cant say anything, this is the only job I got, no one’s hiring, and he already fired two people yesterday for getting sarcastic. So I nodded my head apologized and when back to work. Guess that was an omen this morning.
Authors bio is coming up shortly.
