She's been here for 8 weeks to help us through the summer rush, a big mess of a woman with facial piercings, matted dreadlocks, tits pushed up through a bad hippy dress. She's a server, but to say she's a server does an injustice to the profession, if you sat in her section and had 3 courses, 4 rounds of drinks when you got up to leave every glass you touched, every plate, utensil and dirty napkin would still be on the table in front of you. She's fundamentally unable to run the glass washer, fill the ice well or refill waters, bus her own tables, every little thing, and so her help has become a little like carrying a 200 lb gorilla through the shift that takes an order then scoops the tips off the table and does nothing else.
Sloppy, sloppy. Or, as you might more gently say "Kootenay Style".
Anyways, she's tired of being here, the summers been long, she wants to get back to her life in Cranbrook. We all do, and her complaints that she's just there to make her son-in-law's life easier - well, that's what we're all here for. And we're all presumed upon and I'm getting a little tired of listening to complaints from someone who's getting days off left-right-and center; bloody hell just shut up and lets get on with it, there's a mere week, 10 days to go...
***
She'd suggested a few added benefits might keep her around, I was pretty clear that that wasn't an option. Doesn't stop her from trying. And - kindly, I can't say that I'm never that drunk so I just make up some stuff about workplace rules and professionalism and leave it at that.
***
Saturday morning, the night shift, I'm up and at-em, grab my coffee, gonna hit a few garage sales, check the thrift shops, I need a lamp, loveseat, bed, chair...the list is still far too long...but in the few hours before work I'm gonna get something...
Or not. 9:30 and my phone is ringing, I answer, and it's her, she's crying, family emergency, crisis, I have to get to work ASAP, she can't work, and I'm seeing red, I pull over, this *&#@!! of a woman, everyone, JR and his 10 family days off to go see the juggling squirrel in Revelstoke and 3 day work week, C* and her 5 day week-ends to visit her 95 year old dying mother who - predictably, is still alive, though I offered to go and finish her off myself, and now this, it's presumptive that my meagre life is subordinate to hers, free accommodations, all she can drink, nearly always drunk, ready access to a dive bar and all the bikers she can bring home, and I'm to give up my time, my life, so that she can "manage" the dumpster fire that's hers?
Livid, I'm screaming into the phone "Fuck You", it's gotten personal this presumptiveness, that since I don't have a life all summer long I don't mind giving up a bit more of it to her and this, fuck this. Fuck this.
Mentally I'm doing the math - she has 9 children. 1 of them has a job, the rest of them - to varying degrees, are wards of the state, 2 with full time caregivers, her life - best life, a dumpster fire of drunkeness, stray bikers, unreared children, is costing us the taxpayers to the tune of a million dollars or more per year.
She's a living, walking, talking argument for eugenics.
***
I go to work, she's not there, and the place - it's soon enough pandemonium, filled with tables, inside and out, only me and JR - the heydays of summer, and I'm regretting he didn't have the pleasure of working with his Mother in Law in this insanity...
***
Sunday it's the opposite. the taps - on, now suddenly off, and a restaurant that would have been short staffed with 5 servers the day before is now overstaffed with one.
...and now to today...