Waiting Tables

Reading Time: 6 minutes

When I turned 16, I started working at a 1950s-themed diner off Interstate 55. 

One night, there was nothing I wanted more than to run away with a total stranger.  

People (by which I mean old people) enjoy 1950s-themed diners because they like to romanticize the 50s as a purer time when life was simpler. As if it were all jukeboxes, poodle skirts, and milkshakes. But have you ever listened to the lyrics of “Sixteen Candles”? It’s pervy.  

Anyway, anyone who has ever worked in food service can tell you that conservative values and clean livin’ have no place in a franchise kitchen run by teenagers, cokeheads, and ex-cons.

Greg was the “mature” manager on the night shift, and by that I mean he was the oldest. He must have been a whole 25 years old. He used to squat down to fart and then jump up as if the gas had propelled him into the air like a rocket.

He was a tall, skinny white guy with a shaved head, poor posture, and a unibrow. He wore his white button-down tucked into his black pants with a black tie. While working the register, he overcharged rude customers with what he called an “idiot tax”. He then gave us underage girls the dishonest money at the end of our shift as an extra few bucks in tips, which we accepted without any complaint. 

When Greg worked the drive-thru, he sang the McDonald’s bada ba ba ba jingle over the headset just to fuck with whoever had pulled up to the speaker box. And when they pulled around for their order, expecting to find some giggly, goofy teenager, they were met with a very serious-faced man all buttoned up with a name tag that read ‘manager’.

The nights Greg wasn’t working, the younger, less mature managers were out in the parking lot pranking each other with the industrial-sized roll of saran wrap by encasing each other’s car in plastic. That might take place before or after they all smoked a joint in the walk-in freezer. One by one, us waitresses threw on a jacket and strategically timed our trips for a frozen bag of whatever we could pretend to restock to mooch a puff.   

The place was filled with characters. There was Franky, the gay man in his 50’s that called the teenage boys ‘snack pack’. They loved that. Sexual harassment in America’s kitchens doesn’t discriminate. 

There was John, who had been born poor like the rest of us, and since poverty isn’t entertainment enough for the merciless, envious Gods, his family also lived in a dangerous neighborhood. I still remember when he was on medical leave after being shot in the leg by a stray bullet. 

There was Roscoe, a single father supporting three kids and barely keeping a truck running by making milkshakes and washing dishes. Kudos to that man. He would flow seamlessly from digging a fork out of dirty dishwater to blending your shake, no hand washing required.

And that was pretty low on the scale of gross things I witnessed. One of the young men working milkshakes caught a glimpse of his high school bully at the drive-thru window and proceeded to hock the juiciest loogie into his frozen treat. His only words were, “he made my life a living hell.” And we all went about our business. 

Much of our clientele was just as classy. I once waited on a foursome wearing Ku Klux Klan t-shirts. They were on their way to a rally in Tennessee. 

One woman walked in with a lit cigarette and when I told her the dining room was non-smoking, she contemplated putting it out on my forehead before putting it out on the floor and walking out. 

One fine gentleman once cocked his fist back in a rage as if to punch me square in the nose just because I didn’t know how much longer he’d have to wait for his $5 burger and fries. 

But of course, hateful white trash are angry. They are constipated! How many times did a big-belly wacko tell me to keep “the rabbit food” off their burger? As if one piece of lettuce would turn them into a long-haired California hippie. 

On more than one occasion, some kid wanted to order a salad only for their parents to say, “No. You’re going to order real food.” And I had to swallow my tongue as my insides screamed, “Kid, your parents aren’t exactly a pillar of health to be giving food advice. You don’t have to live on beef and white bread. There is a future without colon cancer.” But all I could do was scowl and hope she/he got into a liberal college someday. 

But angry rednecks I could deal with. I knew what I was up against because that is what I grew up around. I was always on familiar ground with that crowd. Trailer trash are my comfort zone, baby. The folks that were hard to deal with were those that “weren’t from these parts,” those that pulled off the interstate because they were passing through—the soccer moms and the business-call dads; the ones that asked, “Do you only have iceberg lettuce?” (I didn’t know there were other kinds of lettuce) and “Are your soups prepared in-house?”; the ones that ordered hot tea instead of stale diner coffee; the ones that squeezed a lemon wedge onto their grilled chicken sandwich instead of smothering fried chicken with mayonnaise. God, those were the people that really freaked me out. Who were these people and where did they come from? Was the difference between us as palpable to them as it was to me? Even when they were nice to me I felt ashamed. 

But it wasn’t all hollerin’ hillbillies interspersed with designer bag bitches. There were a lot of really good people. One of my regulars, Jim, used to bring me hats from second-hand stores. Sailor hats, berets, bowler derbies, pith helmets, all kinds of weird stuff. Gifts. He would stroll in, dressed in a suit with a tall cowboy hat, sucking on a cigar, sometimes with his wife, sometimes alone. He’d invite me to sit down and we’d shoot the shit. He treated me like a peer. That old man meant so much to me, I introduced him to my mom. I always thought I’d like to be a regular where my presence is a little bit of light in someone’s otherwise shitty day. That’s what Jim was for me.  

——-

The 1950’s diner off interstate 55…that place got me through high school and most of college. 

One weeknight, at around 9pm, a man came in and sat down. He sat at a table by the window, which already made him an atypical customer because most people, for whatever reason, usually ask to sit at a booth. 

It was my turn in the server rotation. He was my table. When I approached to take his drink order, he had a map spread across the table. 

“You traveling?” I asked. 

“Yes. ‘Cross country,” he responded. 

He spoke with an accent. 

“Where are you from?” I asked. 

“Kenya,” he said, smiling. He must have already known the impact that answer had on empty diners in the midwest. 

His warm smile, eyes gazing up at me, the two of us by the cold, black window, almost alone in an empty dining room with a checkered floor… the map added an air of adventure to the sincerity in his voice. He had said so little and I had interpreted so much. 

I took his order, holding back, wanting to ask so much more, my head spinning with questions…and envy. 

I wanted to go. 

I wanted to go with him.

I wanted to get into this stranger’s car in the middle of the night and ride off across the continental U.S. Just us, his map, and his Kenyan accent. 

He was motion, while life in Southeast Missouri was stagnation. He was international, while life in Southeast Missouri was local. He was a road trip, adventure, and freedom while my life was high school, waitressing, and labor. He was black in my world full of white. 

He left and I stayed. 

My heart broke. Not for him but for my circumstances. For the world and the position that I had been born into. 

But the things that I was yearning for, I would someday go do. I wouldn’t need the handsome Kenyan to take me ‘cross country. I only needed patience, birth control, and grit. 

I didn’t know that then, though. A teenager only sees in front of their nose. So I bussed the table and carried the dirty dishes to the back where my colleagues were inhaling nitrous oxide from whip cream canisters to get high.