How NOT to Get a Job

Tip #1: When filling out your application and you get to the the math section, do not use the restaurant's table as your scratch paper.

Tip #2: If you do, don't use permanent marker.

Tip #3: 22+17+19 does not equal 28.


You're welcome.

He'll Have That to Go, Please.

My husband has made it very clear to our employees that the customers are always right. Except when they're lying.

How do we know if they're lying? Is their mouth moving? Ha ha.

Except it's not really funny because it's true.

How did we become so jaded? Maybe it's the hundreds of phone calls we've had that go a little like this: "Hey man. I ordered five steak sandwiches with extra meat yesterday, and they all had mold on them. I'll be by later this afternoon to get my money back."

Yeah, right, crackhead!

Or what about this one? Our manager R was behind the line making sandwiches when she noticed a man coming out of our kitchen. Holding a drink cup in one hand, he had a bag of frozen chicken in the other.

Where, pray tell, did he get this bag of chicken? FROM OUR FREEZER! Now that takes balls. Imagine walking into a restaurant, going into their kitchen, opening their walk-in freezer door, rummaging through the food, and walking out with a bag of frozen chicken slung over your shoulder like Santa Claus. A really evil Santa Claus.

R walked right over to him and asked him just what he thought he was doing. His answer: "Ma'am, I was just getting a refill."

He Must Really Like Our Sandwiches...

So the other day, my husband was behind the counter, helping a customer, when he heard a terrible retching noise coming from the back kitchen.

"What the hell is that?" he thought to himself. "Here, R, ring this guy up for me," he instructed our dedicated store manager as he walked to the back of the store.

What he discovered still haunts him today: an old man, puking in our three-basin sink.

"Sir, are you OK?" my husband asked the customer, trying not to puke himself.*

Without speaking, the old man stood up, wiped his mouth with his sleeve, and walked back out the door to the lobby. And no, he did not rinse the sink out.

My husband cleaned up the mess and went back to the line to help customers. And that's when he saw it: the old man, sitting, eating his sandwich, in front of other customers, leaned over and puked AGAIN.

And then went right on eating. Now that's a dedicated customer.


*Important side story to understand how weak my husband's stomach is: About four years ago, our son, then two, sneezed. And I don't mean a sweet little "achoo" either. It was one of those ACHOO-and-now-three-feet-of-green-snot-is-hanging-out-of-my-nose-and-if-it-doesn't-get-wiped-off-soon-it's-gonna-fall-in-my-mouth kind of sneezes. We were in the car, I was driving, and we literally didn't have anything to clean it off with because I'm OCD and am constantly cleaning and throwing things away. So, I told my husband to do what any good mother was already thinking: "WIPE IT OFF WITH YOUR HAND!!"

He flinched, but he did it. My husband then gagged, turned, and puked out the passenger window. Except the window wasn't down all the way, so most of the puke landed on my husband's coat and tie he had put on that morning for church. Mind you, this all happened in the space of about 60 seconds at a red light. I'm just hoping my husband didn't get too much vomit on the van sitting next to us.

Trumped

And I don't mean The Donald-style. Unfortunately. In my 1100 sq. ft. house, I'd appreciate a gold-plated faucet everyone once in awhile. But I digress...

Let me back up. When I first met the man who would be my husband, his nickname was Uncle Remus. Not because he was a racist, but because he was a storyteller. The man could spin a web of character, plot, and conflict like nobody's business. He knew when to pause, which words to emphasize, and which words would paint the best picture of the tale he was telling.

Fast forward 15 years. Picture it: a little Mexican restaurant. A sweet, exhausted family of 4 sharing chips, salsa, and the ubiquitous cheese dip. My husband begins with a "You'll never believe what happened at the store today..."

Sometimes I tune out these days when he begins that way, but there was something in his voice that made us all perk up. I think it was about the time he got to the part about a man pissing in the corner of our restaurant.

That's right. A drunk/high/crazy man had walked into our restaurant, walked over to the back corner (yes, customers were not too far away), dropped trou, and proceeded to piss all over the back wall.

My husband saw it happening and had a shit fit! He started yelling and cussing and making the man clean up his own urine with the store mop.

I was laughing and nearly blowing chips and salsa out of my nose. And that's when my husband used his extraordinary story-telling skills to wow our 5 & 7-year-old kids: "Kids, I used bad words you've never even heard of before."

The kids' eyeballs got as big as saucers. Keep in mind that their list of bad words include hate, stupid, shut up, shut your mouth up, and idiot.

But that's when my 5-year-old baby, who had just started kindergarten, trumped his daddy.

"Daddy, did you use the F word?" he said sweetly.

"The WHAT word?" I asked unbelievably, not really expecting an answer.

"Fuckit. Did you say fuckit, Daddy?" my baby encouraged my husband.

That's right. Daddy was upstaged by a 5-year-old. Now he can never tell the guy-pissing-in-the-back-of-my-store story without following it up with the my-son-knows-the-F-word-and-tried-to-teach-it-to-me story.