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Sunday, January 26, 2014

All the Nuts aren’t with The Pancake’s Part 6

The Graveyard Shift tends to have the same people work it all the time.

There is Lois, a waitress and Paul her boyfriend, who is a line cook. Paul and Lois moved here two years ago from Colorado because they were looking for a change. There is no bigger a change I can imagine that trading Colorado for Colonie New York.

Lois is in her early 50s and Paul is in his mid 20s. She tells me that she used to be his babysitter but I don’t know if she is joking, or saying it just to get a rise out of me.
As a couple, they have a great dynamic but Paul clearly thinks that he is working at a four star restaurant. He will refuse, by yelling at the top of his lungs to any substitutions that I might try to slip in unnoticed. Lois can substitute her heart away.

“Geoff!” Paul will scream while bringing the back of his spatula down on the “pick up” bell. “Ting, Ting, Ting” it chimes. So if I didn’t hear Paul yell at me the first time, the constant “ting, ting, ting’ of the bell should clearly get my attention.

It does get everyone’s attention within a 5 mile radius of his cooks line.

“Yes Paul?” I will say before I pivot over to him. I will actually act as if I don’t know why I am being called over and take my sweet time walking.

Paul will huff and puff but wait for me to be standing directly in front of him. He will shake the order in my face, his face turning a light crimson and scream “You can’t substitute Pancakes for Grits!” “Go back to that table and tell them!” Then he will ball up the order and bounce it off my head or face for effect.

So now, I have to walk back to the only table that I currently have, un-ball the check and tell them they have to change their order. Every time the table will try to reason with me “But we are the only ones in the entire restaurant!” “Uh-huh,” I grunt.

Paul will scream back at the table from the cook’s window. “Geoff is new here, he is just learning the rules!” “Don’t baby him!” I suddenly become the asshole. It gets old fast.

Another oddity on the team is Jason. He is the official Graveyard Busboy that we work with. He stands about 6’3, he’s bald with dark framed glasses, a hulking build and a strange crooked stare. Clearly he has had some sort of head injury because he tends to stand and stare at women customers he thinks are pretty. He does this to the point where they become alarmed.

When this happens, he try’s to be cool by staring at them from a distance and from behind things. He will hide behind a potted plant or the register until the patron freaks out, usually screaming for a manager. Then one of his will have to calm down the customer that is complaining. We have to explain that Jason is a bit odd and clearly has a head injury. Then we try to make her comfortable while Jason will go to the kitchen to calm his nerves by eating something from the bus tub. He will stay there until the customer leaves.

Everything at Denny’s is done by seniority. Open shifts have to first be offered to the people who have worked for the company the longest. So even though the Breakfast Crew, who will not work a Dinner or Graveyard Shift, still have to be offered the open shift first. If they say “No” then it gets trickled down to new people. If someone from the Graveyard Shift goes on a vacation, one of the women from the Dinner shift will work their original dinner shift and cover the Graveyard Shift. It is so hard to work an additional shift.

One of the woman with the least amount of seniority on the Breakfast shift has been working at this particular Denny’s for 35 years.

I can never pick up any available shifts, since I have been here a couple of weeks.

Also the rule I learn the hard way is to “Never ask any of the girls (as they refer to themselves) from the Breakfast Shift if you can either cover their shift for them.” It’s bad enough that they barely talk to you and that their customers show up at the end of our Graveyard Shift sit in our seats but refuse to order because they are waiting for the Breakfast Shift Waitresses to take over.

It’s cool that some of their customers have been arriving every day for the past ten years and it’s a little like family. Unfortunately, these customers want nothing to do with me waiting on them.

I get called Fag, Homo and Queer by customers on a daily basis and not even behind my back or mumbled into a napkin, but right to my face. If I complain, the boss tells me to “Ignore it,” and that there is “Nothing” he can do.

I remind him that “Its is illegal to discriminate, even if its discrimination by a customer.”

He just laughs, shakes his head, and then asks me, “Well, why don’t you just quit?”


To be continued…

Geoffrey Doig-Marx holds all written and electronic rights to his writing "A Day in the Life/Down the Rabbit Hole". It cannot be reprinted in part or whole without his written consent.

Sunday, January 19, 2014

All the Nuts aren’t with The Pancake’s Part 5


Sitting on my bed beneath my posters of Madonna and Rob Lowe. It’s late at night and I have my curtain closed. I glance up.  “Oh Rob,” I sigh like a 15 year old schoolgirl when I look at him. His dreamy eyes and smile sparkle back at me.

“It’s all ok.” Next to him is Madonna, highlighted by a purple boarder this is her “Boy Toy” phase. 

To me Madonna is so much more. She is everything that I want to be. Talented, pretty, famous and doesn’t have to worry about money, ever.

“What do you want to be when you grow up?” I ask myself. The grumble in my empty stomach answers my question. I have had nothing to eat since breakfast.

I am worried. I am worried about money. The weekly graveyard shift at Denny’s brings all types of weird folks to eat eggs at 4 am in the morning but doesn’t give me enough money to live on. Sometimes, if I’m lucky, there is a whole cavalcade of non-stop freaks that think that they are amusing. Unfortunately, to the staff they are just drunk. And when they are drunk a table of 4 will say cute things like:

“Just wait until the end you’re going to get a great tip.”

Or when asked if they want something to drink, one of them will mumble.

“No thanks. I just want water.”

Unfortunately, to get money to pay my bills I have to sell Denny’s food. I can’t get a tip on water.

So I will launch into “Can I get you anything to eat?” My pen is poised above my pad ready to write.

“Yeah, one of them will slur before passing out. One Grand Slam and four plates!”

The only constant thing I get from these drunks is aggravation.

The weekend is the time to make the money. Lots of drunks, spending money, fighting with each other, throwing things and vomiting. Yes, vomiting. Who knew there would be so much vomiting? No one pays any of us to clean up vomit yet it seems to be my constant chore. I’ve been known to leave an empty bus bucket by a table for someone to vomit in.

“I’m going to leave this here if one of you needs it.” I will say slipping it beneath their booth. The staff is very good at immediately recognizing some one who has been over served. It becomes a second sense.

I also learn that I have to walk slowly once the bus buckets filled. I have learned that you don’t want to splash any of that on your leg, especially not if it’s the first table of the night and you still have seven hours to go. It’s bad enough that the polyester uniform I wear holds the smell of Denny’s food long past it’s washing.

The only problem with the weekend graveyard shift is that lifers closely guard it. There is a staff of about 4 women all in their mid 50s who need this job and have had this job for years. Training with them is a nightmare. They take all the tips you make for them and they hold back information on how to do something. If I learn the secret of how Denny’s does things I become more valuable and they become less. Of course this is in their heads. Or at least I think it is.

There are only two waiters at Denny’s. Me, and this guy named Anthony. He’s gay and I’m gay. So everyone asks if we are going to get together. I have yet to meet Anthony but swear that I don’t know him from the clubs.

“Don’t all you gays hang out together?”

The truth is “Yes, we do!” I answer the bus boy as I watch him eat the discarded food out of the bus bucket. At least he takes it into the kitchen before digging through it.


To be continued…

Geoffrey Doig-Marx holds all written and electronic rights to his writing "A Day in the Life/Down the Rabbit Hole". It cannot be reprinted in part or whole without his written consent.

Sunday, January 12, 2014

All the Nuts aren’t with The Pancake’s Part 4

The rapping on the wall continues as the dogs came plopping down the stairs one at a time to follow me.

“Do you need help?” I yell into the crack of George’s bedroom door. “Rap, Rap” is the reply back to me.

The puppies continue bouncing down the stairs and gather at my feet. I grab the handle of George’s door and try to move the knob back and forth. The door is clearly locked.

“The door is locked,” I scream back into the crack of the bedroom door.

“Rap, Rap,” is the reply.

At the top of the basement stairs Bill appears wearing his floor length robe. He is wearing it off his shoulders and his elbows hold it up. “Girrrrrrrrrl,” he purrs placing the back of his hand to his head as if nursing a hangover. In the other hand he holds an unlit cigarette.

“Sugar, Why are you yelling?”

“I think someone is locked in George’s room.”

Bill looks at me as if I had told him that the sun rises and sets daily.

“And?” Bill asks raising his cigarette to his mouth. With the other hand he begins to fish in his pocket clearly looking for a lighter. He finds the lighter, pulls it out, and holds it in the air.

“George doesn’t want anyone in his room.”

Bill states matter of factly before lighting his cigarette.

Bill takes a long dramatic drag on his cigarette, pauses, and then slowly blows the smoke into the air. Looking directly at me, he says,

“George doesn’t want anyone in his room.”

“Clearly there is someone in his room.” I remind Bill. “I am trying to help them get out.”

“I wouldn’t,” Bill says as he picks a piece of tobacco off his tongue

“But someone is in there!” I shout at Bill

“Let me be clearer.” Bill pauses, taking another drag from his cigarette.

“George doesn’t want anyone in his room, or freed from his room.”

Bill purrs once again and then minces down the stairs towards me. He looks like a broken Norma Desmond doll to me. He is just missing the head wrap.

Once he reaches the bottom of the stairs, the puppies begin jumping and barking around his feet trying to get his attention.

“Sugar Pop, It’s a game.” Bill says speaking in a whisper five inches from my face. “A game that he used to play for free that he now pays for.”

“Get it?” He asks as he flicks the ash off his cigarette.

“Sugar, you’re going to get along a lot better if you just mind your own business.”

Bill pushes past me but pauses midway in front of the wall to George’s room.

“If you don’t be quiet you will get beaten.” Bill screams to whoever is on the other side of the wall. “Not that you’ll mind,” he finishes whispering under his breath.

Bill walks to the toilet, opens the front of his robe and urinates into the bowl. The reflection in the mirror shows me that Bill is wearing nothing but a t-shirt under his robe.

“You’ll get used to it.” Bill says shaking his dick as he looks back over his shoulder at me.

to be continued…


Geoffrey Doig-Marx holds all written and electronic rights to his writing "A Day in the Life/Down the Rabbit Hole". It cannot be reprinted in part or whole without his written consent.

Sunday, January 5, 2014

All the Nuts aren’t with The Pancake’s Part 3

Everywhere I go, the puppies are sure to follow. Imagine one giant, fighting, barking, swirling mass of extreme cuteness swirling behind me wherever I go. It may take the puppies a half an hour to follow me down the stairs to the basement and an hour to get back up the stairs. 

It is so cute to watch them stumble and bumble over each other to follow me, so my annoyance wanes.

It seems that when Bill and George were together, they decided to raise Boston terrier pups to sell to make extra money. They shared the mother and had her mate with another breeders dog. When Bill and George split, Bill threw a hissy fit, took the mother and the pups and went to his Mom’s house. Now that Bill has returned, they have agreed to start their business venture again. Each pup’s starting price is $600.00.

It seems that everywhere I step, a puppy has marked that spot with either Number 1 or 2. The house quickly smells like a petting zoo. Unfortunately, I am the only person who this seems to bother because I pick up after the dogs all the time. Unfortunately for me their favorite spot to relieve themselves, seems to be my bedroom.

Remember I don’t have a door just a curtain to keep noise and puppies out.

I am now even more exhausted than I have ever been before. The puppies keep me awake day and night. I have taken to wearing dark sunglasses that hide my eyes in Helen’s class but my snoring betrays me. In an effort to stop my snoring, Helen raps a ruler on my desk causing me to jump. She then asks me to stand and recite The Wreck of the Ancient Mariner, and then asks me what it means to have an “Albatross around ones neck.”

Five minutes into my explanation I am saved by Helen and her impromptu story about her husband and the curse of Tutankhamen. Thank god for her foggy brain. I quickly sit down in my chair in case I jog her memory that she asked me to stand and talk about the Albatross.

Somewhere in Helen’s head she has a brilliant idea; she wants me to be the editor of a book that the English Department puts out yearly with various students work in it.
She thinks that I am exhausted from studying my English Lit book late into the night and reminds me “How hard it is to be a dancer.”

“Oh Joy!” I think when she asks me to meet with her later to discuss my participation.

Acting class is not going much better. During daily improv I am asked to be an animal. I choose to be a sponge so I can lie on the floor and not move. This begins a ridiculous argument with my acting teacher about may lack of respect for him and whether a sponge is really an animal. It’s true I think that I have developed a lack of respect for my acting teacher but I am just too tired to care.

I have also signed up for a physiology and anatomy class, which meets on Tuesday/Thursday’s. I can’t remember which way the blood pumps or any of the names of the various bones, veins and muscles and I don’t care. My brain is becoming a mash.

After class I run to get a quick nap before heading to my full time job on the Graveyard Shift. The puppies follow me down the basement stairs where we all pause on the landing. I can hear a knocking on the wall coming from George’s room. It isn’t in a rhythm but sounds like someone heard me come home and is trying to get my attention.


To be continued…….

Geoffrey Doig-Marx holds all written and electronic rights to his writing "A Day in the Life". It can not be reprinted in part or whole without his written consent.

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