I am realizing I’m probably someone else’s abjectly terrible restaurant employee story.

I worked at McDonald’s back in high school, and I could probably make you a coffee table book of stories from when I worked there. One late Friday night as I’m working a closing shift, I’m helping to train a new guy on the grill. We had two clamshell burger grills, so when it got slow late at night, we’d close one…

“Dear Ask A Clean Person:

I became somewhat close with a manicurist during a time when I was getting my nails done regularly. We weren’t friends, but I liked her and we did have real conversations about things. Among other things, she told me about how she and her husband got to America, beginning with paying someone to help them stow away on…

The soup of the day is usually Hitler miss, but I’m sure you’ll just Goebbels up today’s gestapo soup.

Wat.

My first job was at a restaurant where all the employees were kids from my high school. I was the dishwasher. We still employed the three sink system, meaning I was adequately shackled with the proper “Work is Hard and It Sucks, But Goldurnit it Was Much Harder In MY DAY” attitude that has helped me successfully and…

My non-neurotypical son started pre-school this week. He licks random objects and is scared of public bathrooms. I had whipped myself up into a frenzy of anxiety about all of the things that could go wrong. When his teacher texted me a picture of him having his snack, laughing with some little friends he made, I broke…

Sometimes I fantasize about having an extra room all to myself and how I would decorate my “lady cave.” It would have a velvet couch, lacquered walls, sparkly textiles, a chandelier hanging from the ceiling, and a Champagne fridge.

woman does thing, is happy. society burns.

Lately I’ve been doing that on a semi-professional basis.

Retail workers know exactly what’s in back. Going to the back to “look” for something they actually know that they have or not is a much needed breather. Plus they’ve learned if they tell someone they don’t have it in back they won’t be believed. The longer they spend “looking” the happier the customer tends to be.…

I work at a farmer’s market. We’re basically a small barn in the middle of an empty fill lot on the side of the highway. People are ALWAYS asking me if I “have any in the back.” That, or “Do you grow all this out back?”

Bichons-the devourer of souls.

I will never get over the fact that when I worked at Borders cafe and they crosstrained us in the bookstore, the same customers who treated me like shit every single day in the cafe, did not recognize me at all in the bookstore and treated me like I was some kind of scholar, trying to strike up conversations with me…

no, not every time. not even most of the time if you are a normal customer. i mean if there is a stockroom and a good chance of something in the back, most of the time the employee will just go check right away.

Acquaintance in University wrote a paper on Romance Novel Euphemisms. My favorites were “moist honeycomb” and “fluttering love wallet”. Its been 10 years and my friends and I still insist on referring to lady parts as such.

I lost it on a lady once when she harangued me for 20 minutes about why we don’t have white Zinfandel, what kind of place is this, do I even know what that is (lol). We have a small but well cultivated wine list, and I tried as hardnas I could to steer her toward a drink she might enjoy, but she wasn’t having any of…

I worked at McDonalds long ago... I had several customers who would conclude their drive-thru orders with “that’s to go” — like they would if they were inside. It’s kinda irritating, because — am I going to expect them to eat it in the drive-thru lane or something...

One day, I’d kind of had it — I hear the “that’s to…